Loves, Past Loves, and How They Overlap

Hello world, it's been a while.

I know, I know.  I haven't written a blog post in over two months.  I have lots of excuses for that, but rather than wasting any time telling you what they are, I'm just going to get into a rant about my feelings.  Because, well, let's be honest, that's what I do best.

Over the past few weeks I have been having serious Lord of the Rings nostalgia.  The Hobbit movie came out last week and I've already seen it twice.  If you knew me in middle school, this won't surprise you.  Because in the middle of middle school, Middle Earth was my home.

Those who have only known me since college might find this surprising because of my love of Harry Potter.  I think a lot of people believe that if you like Harry Potter you can't like Lord of the Rings and vice versa.  They expect you to pick sides.  But I love them both, and believe it or not I love them both equally.

I cannot deny that Harry Potter has shaped my life in a way that nothing else ever will.  As Harry grew older, so did I and because of that nothing will ever truly match the kind of love I have for the series.  But when I was a seventh grader, my golden three were Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, not Harry, Ron, and Hermione.  Middle school was hard.  I mean, I know it's hard for everyone, but when you're an introvert that intensely loves fantasy fiction...well...you tend to be the girl who gets asked out as a joke.  So in middle school it really wasn't safe to actively love Harry Potter the way I do now.

In middle school everything you loved as a child is suddenly labeled as stupid.  It's that awkward period in everyone's life when they desperately want to be adults, but end up becoming even more immature in their attempts to seem older.  I think that's why I fell in love with Lord of the Rings.  It seemed like the sophisticated version of Harry Potter, so it was safe for me to love openly.  A lot of people probably still think that LOTR is the sophisticated version of HP and while I understand that some people will simply like Lord of the Rings better, I also believe that a lot of those people are still stuck in that middle school "I-am-trying-really-hard-to-impress-people-with-my-cultured-and-sophisticated-interests" stage.  Now of course I find it pretty funny that I ever believed that because though both works of fiction are undoubtedly similar, it is only because they share the same genre.  Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are not trying to accomplish the same things and therefore should not really be compared.

That being said, I absolutely adore both series.  Even though my love for Lord of the Rings may have spawned out of desperation to seem cooler than I was (and let's face it, an unhealthy obsession with Orlando Bloom) I still believe that Lord of the Rings is brilliant.  I think the books are written uniquely and brilliantly, I think the intricate details of language, culture, and history of all the characters is brilliant, and I think the movies are the most brilliantly perfect movies ever to be made....That's right, if it wasn't clear already, I think the LOTR movies are about a thousand times better than the HP movies.

I don't think this is interesting to anybody else, but I find it sort of fascinating that my obsession for Harry Potter came after my obsession for LOTR.  I mean, I've always loved HP, but my outward passion for it only became more pronounced close to the end of my high school career, when I finally felt it was safe again to openly be myself.  A lot of me wonders if this is simply because as people grow older, they yearn more and more for their childhood.  Am I just trying to hold onto childhood as long as I possibly can?  Is that why my loves have become Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and One Direction instead of Lord of the Rings?  Maybe a little bit.  But I'd like to think it's just because I'm becoming more accepting of all kinds of entertainment and all different sides of myself.  I'm not in middle school anymore and I've realized there's nothing to be gained from crapping on any kind of entertainment.  All that does is make you seem pretentious and hurt the feelings of the people who DO like the thing you're crapping on.

Anyway, although Harry Potter is more in my life now than Lord of the Rings, I know that LOTR is never going to  leave my life completely.  I'm glad that The Hobbit came out so I could remember that.  If you haven't seen The Hobbit...GO DO IT NOW!  It's so good.  I had really low expectations for it since I didn't think they would be able to transform one 300 page book into three movies, but I thought all the stuff they added from the appendices was really entertaining.  And somehow they did a really great job giving the movie the epic feeling of the LOTR movies while at the same time capturing the silly, whimsical feeling of the book version of The Hobbit.

I seriously can't wait until part two comes out on December 13th next year.  It's my sisters' birthday, so I'm pretty sure I know how we'll be celebrating. :)

The Whole Point

Hey, world.  Let’s talk about how The Casual Vacancy destroyed my otherwise lovely day.

I am TERRIFIED to read this book.  I was terrified about its very existence back when J.K. Rowling announced that she was going to write another book.  I was scared because I was worried that the book would undermine the beauty of the Harry Potter series because there was no way it could ever be as good.  Now I know that my fears were completely valid.  

I have not yet read The Casual Vacancy as it has only been out for a day, but I have already read some reviews that make me want to cry.  I knew that The Casual Vacancy was going to be a book for adults.  But I had no idea that it was going to be a book involving rape, drugs, and suicide.  I’m not particularly pleased that the most influential person in my childhood is choosing to do a book like this, but it is not my place to tell J.K. Rowling what she can and can’t write.  Besides, I have learned long ago that just because I love a book that does not mean that I have to love the author’s real life choices.  Less Than Zero and Ender’s Game are two of my favorite books.  And because they are so fantastic as stand alone pieces of literature, I have forced myself to accept and ignore the fact that Bret Easton Ellis and Orson Scott Card are ignorant jerks.  I love Harry Potter, but that doesn’t mean that I have to love J.K. Rowling or any of her other books.

Anyway, what’s worse than the reviews of The Casual Vacancy are the people who comment on these things because predictably, just like I thought they would, they start bashing Harry Potter.  I just read the New York Times review and found the biggest onslaught of hatred for Harry Potter.   So many people insisted that the books were silly and meaningless and poorly written.  These people have forgotten that Harry Potter was originally a series written for young children.

Many people are upset because the reviewer compared Harry Potter to The Lord of the Rings.  As both a Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fan, I found the reactions to this statement to be particularly disheartening.  I know that the world is going to insist that I’m only saying this because I’m a petty child with undeveloped intelligence and no concept of what makes good literature, but I don’t care, I’m going to say it:  I think that Harry Potter is definitely the equal of Lord of the Rings in every way as far as literary merit goes. But that hardly matters.  Because “literary merit” is the biggest heap of bullshit ever to stain the world of entertainment and literature.

Now, before you decide to discount everything I say, I’ll have you know that I am an English major.  My life revolves around reading the classics.  I enjoy the classics.  The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, Brave New World, Dubliners– I think they’re all brilliant.  But I also think that Harry Potter is brilliant.  For different reasons.  Anyway, I’m about to go into the most long-winded rant about why Harry Potter is just as good as all of the classics.  But I’m going to get really crazy here and say that Harry Potter isn’t alone in this.  All literature is just as good.  ALL of it.  That’s right.  I’m talking Twilight, Eat, Pray, Love, The Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Grey.  I went there.  And I stand by it.  In order to keep this shorter than a Harry Potter novel though, I will use only Twilight, Harry Potter, and Eat, Pray, Love as examples.

Most who know me, or know of me, immediately think of me as “that Harry Potter girl.”  I don’t really have a problem with this.  As far as identifying features go I’d say this one is rather complimentary– better than being “that guy with the creepy mustache” or “that girl who wears too much eyeliner” anyway.  I guess I bring it upon myself, I must subconsciously want people to think of me this way.  Otherwise I wouldn’t proudly saunter around campus with my Quidditch schoolbag, Undesirable Number One t-shirt, and Gryffindor lanyard, I wouldn’t deck out my room with a plethora of posters consisting of mostly Neville, the trio and many of the movie titles, and I definitely wouldn’t stand outside of classrooms reading Harry, A History or Looking for God in Harry Potter for the third time.  I’m a big fan of outwardly expressing my love for these books, because then people notice and comment and for a moment or two we are connected by something we both passionately love.  And that, ultimately, is what I believe the purpose of literature is:  to connect all of humanity, celebrate in our unity and discover ourselves to have a better understanding of life.  That’s always been my problem with other English majors.  A lot of us seem to think we’re too good for books that are accessible, because we as English majors have a rather pretentious view that our heightened knowledge of literature elevates us above the average reader and therefore we should have higher standards in a book’s “literary merit”.  This is not how it is supposed to be.  We’re supposed to be trying to understand all of humanity, not the only the privileged few.  In many ways, Harry Potter, Twilight, and Eat, Pray, Love have succeeded in a way that complex and acclaimed novels have not.  Because they have connected to a greater number of people, they have increased the world’s shared experiences and connected people so deeply in a way that they could not otherwise be connected.  The lessons learned from these best-sellers, whether they be cheesy or not, have meant something powerful to a much larger number of people, and that seems like the whole point to me, that people would find a shared feeling of passion and understanding from reading a book and feel a strong sense of kinship because of it.

 On that note, if you would try to deny the effect these kinds of books have had on society, you would be a complete idiot.  Some people think it is despicable that you can take the Eat, Pray, Love tour of Italy.  So here’s my question.  Why?  Here it is once again, the proof that this bestseller is bringing people together in a way that they otherwise would not have been able to experience– it’s bringing people together out of love and passion for something.  What about that seems wrong?  In Forks, Washington on September 13th they now celebrate Twilight day as it is the setting of Stephanie Meyer’s novel.  Maybe to the non-Twilight fans of Forks, this seems irritating, but to someone on the outside, someone who could care less about the birthplace of Bella Swan, I think it’s a fantastic idea.  People being united by a common love always seems like a good idea to me.  And then of course there’s the fandom of Harry Potter.  Now, this I know the most about so I can tell you for sure that the effect this fandom and community has had on my life is astounding.  I'm sure you've heard this before, but I'll say it because it's true: Harry Potter is more than a book or movie series, it’s one of the most widely recognized and loved communities in the world.  Harry Potter has brought together people in ways that nothing else I’ve ever seen has.  How many books series do you know that have their own musical genre?  Maybe you’ve never heard of Wizard Rock, but believe it or not there are over 700 Wrock bands just in the US and millions upon millions have been connected through their concerts.  Did you know that Wizard Rock sky-rocketed John and Hank Green into YouTube superstardom?  Did you know that this resulted in a community of watchers called “Nerdfighters” who band together to decrease what they call “worldsuck” donating to charities all because they have realized their shared love of Harry?  Did you know that there is a real life Dumbledore’s Army called The Harry Potter Alliance that fights for equality and hosts charity events all over the country in the spirit of the books?  I don’t know about you, but to me, all these things –music, charity, friendship– all because of a book, that seems like a real world miracle to me.  This is all just proof of how much these accessible books have deepened our understandings of one another, connecting us all through shared experiences that go even beyond just reading the novels.  This is the whole point, people– this is the point of literature epitomized, it’s supposed to bring us together, and that it what these novels do.

I can understand people not liking Harry Potter because they’re not into fantasy.  I can understand people not liking Twilight because they’re not into romance.  I can understand people not liking Eat, Pray, Love because they don’t sympathize with or understand Gilbert’s plight.  What I cannot understand, is how people can condemn these books because they are happy.  Are we that bitter, people?  Why does everything have to be about drugs or suicide or rape?  Those things are important, tragic books are important, but so are books that inspire hope.  And I do not think it is foolish to endorse hope.  I do not think it is foolish to say that a happy ending is not cliché.  A happy ending is what we all secretly want for ourselves, right?  So why can’t be accept them in literature?  Why does a happy ending make a book less adequate?  People seem to forget that a number of Shakespeare’s comedies end in happy marriages and that nearly every single Jane Austen book ends the same way.  These are perhaps the most celebrated artists of all time.  And we accept these endings from them, so why can’t we accept it from today’s literature?  Why do we cringe when Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione and Bella and Edward and Elizabeth and whoever her husband is get together in the end?  We’ve extolled it in the past.  We still praise it actually.  So why is it suddenly stupid for a story to end this way?  It doesn’t make sense.  You would think that after all the grim drudgery of everyday life that we would want to see a happy ending.  Being optimistic isn’t a sin, people.  One of my favorite author’s, John Green once commented “…what I really do like about Twilight…it’s fun, it distracts me from the pain and brokenness of the world and it argues that true love will triumph in the end, which may or may not be true, but if it’s a lie, it’s the most beautiful lie we have.”  In the end, all novels are fiction (yes I am aware that Eat, Pray Love does not apply to this point, but bear with me), they’re all lies.  So why is it so wrong for them to be beautiful lies every once in a while?  I, for one, understand why people would want to be distracted from “the pain and brokenness of the world” and I am not going to mock them for it.  The world can suck sometimes and guess what?  Stuff like Twilight and Harry Potter makes it better.  Because it brings some happiness to people’s miserable lives.  And again, I fail to see how this is a bad thing in any way, shape, or form.

I also refuse to believe that these books make people stupid.  There is something to be gained from any book.  If you do not learn anything from reading a book, you are not reading it right.  If you look closely enough, there is always something significant lying within the text that may not be noticeable upon the surface.  As someone who has read the entire Harry Potter series six going on seven times, I can tell you that if you read closely there is symbolism and deeper meaning that goes far beyond just the simple pleasure of reading a children’s story.  There is much more there than wizards and house elves, and plot twists.  I’m not as much of an expert on Twilight and whether or not it contains something beyond sparkling vampires (I once read that the entire thing is a Mormon allegory but who knows), but if the entire point of the series is to relish in the fact that true love with conquer all, then I fail to see why this is an insufficient message for a book to have.  The same goes for Eat, Pray, Love.  It gives people hope.  Call that cliché if you want, but with that one word, “hope,” President Obama had a campaign that eventually won him the election.  It’s a powerful thing for sure.

So here’s my last argument.  Are these books indulgent?  Hell.  Yes.  ALL LITERATURE IS INDULGENT.  You are in denial if you think otherwise.  Anyone who has ever written anything is indulging in a passion.  Also, we as readers are indulging in our passions every time we pick up a book.  Entertainment is always indulgent.  Read one poem, watch one movie, see one play and tell me how it is not indulgent.  Oscar Wilde once said that “All art is quite useless.” So in his eyes, all art (having no purpose at all) was on an equal playing field.  I would like to alter this idea slightly and say that all art is quite indulgent.  But just because it is indulgent that doesn’t make it a bad thing.  I know I sound like a broken record but I’ll say it again since this is my conclusion:  the point of literature is to share in an experience that can help us to better understand each other– and indulging in our passions this way is how we do it…so remind me…what about this is a bad thing?

Abby Disagrees with Hank Green

All right, it’s happened.

Hank Green, I have a bone to pick with you.

Now, normally, I agree with absolutely everything that Hank Green says.   He’s one of my biggest idols.  I love that he loves nerdy things that I love and I love how intelligently and complexly he views the world.  But I do not love his new song.

On Friday Hank played his annual song about Harry Potter.  Usually, I love his Harry Potter songs, but I disliked this one for many reasons:

Firstly, it seems to me that a song that overall seems to insult the Harry Potter universe is not at all a good tribute to the fandom that brought you internet fame.  The message of Harry Potter is a message of love, and I feel like the point J.K. Rowling was trying to make throughout the whole series was that even though the world might be full of injustice like slavery or corruption and general unfairness, in the end, love is what gets us through it all. 

Secondly, his points are invalid.

I’m the first person to point out inaccuracies in the Harry Potter universe, but everything Hank brought up just doesn’t make much sense to me.  So I’m going to take some of the quotes from the song and point out what about them seems wrong to me.  Excuse me if I don’t get the lyrics exactly right, I had to awkwardly pause the video to type them out myself because I couldn’t find them anywhere online yet.

“You make it seem like your world is so pristine.”

Read ONE Harry Potter book and tell me that the main characters don’t freely admit how corrupt and shitty parts of the world are.  For instance see ALL of book five.  I don’t know about you, but the Wizarding world has NEVER seemed pristine to me.  It probably only seems pristine to you because fans have been putting it up on a pedestal and therefore failing to imagine the place and the people who inhabit it complexly.

“Well you don’t seem to have much industry.  Wizards work at a school or at the ministry.”

False.  The reason it seems like everyone works at these two places are because these are the two places where our main characters are generally located.  Wizards seem to have pretty similar occupations to Muggles.  They can work at a hospital (healers), they can work at a shop or pub (think Diagon Alley, people), they can work as professional sportsmen (Quidditch players) or they can work as bank tellers…therefore discounting Hank’s next claim:

“And by letting Goblins house your currency, you’re letting them control your whole economy.”

Gringotts may be owned by Goblins, but it’s not like Goblins are the only beings involved at the bank.  Not only Goblins work there.  Bill Weasley works at Gringotts, remember?  So does Fleur Delacour. 

“I don’t understand how any business gets done when a wand only costs seven galleons.”

According to the Harry Potter Wiki page,

“Galleon or Gold-Galleon is the most valued coin of the wizarding currency. One Galleon is equal to 17 Sickles or 493 Knuts. Galleons are made of gold.

In the late 20th century, the Galleon was also equivalent to £4.97 GBP, or $10.17 USD”

Now, I don’t know how legit that is…but if it IS legit then seven galleons is about SEVENTY DOLLARS!  Which is kind of a lot of money, Hank.  I mean, come on.  You like money a lot.  So I know you know that’s a lot of money to spend on one thing.

If that doesn’t convince you, let us remember what exists in the Weasley’s vault as far as money goes.  In Harry and Ron’s second year of school when they visit the Weasley’s vault there is only a little pile of sickles and ONE galleon.  So galleons are a pretty big sum of money.  Think about it!

 “They say you can put a stopper in death and I’m wondering why you haven’t shared that yet.”

How about because the wizards had to go into hiding because they were persecuted?  I’m pretty sure this has been explained several times…  The wizards aren't keeping their knowledge secret because they’re jerks, they’re keeping their knowledge secret because they don’t want to be put on trial and killed.  Seems pretty reasonable to me.  If you need more convincing, check out the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy.  

“Cuz when my friends and family die and the wizards aren’t helping then I wonder why.”

In the words of Albus Dumbledore, "To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." THE WHOLE POINT OF HARRY POTTER IS THAT DEATH IS WHAT MAKES LIFE MEANINGFUL!  GAAAAAAAAAH!

“You’ve got known racists playing politics.”

Yes.  And that’s completely unique to the HP universe…oh wait.  No it’s not.  That happens in real life.

“You’ve got slaves making your food.”

Well…yeah.  That is a problem that probably should have been solved since she introduced it.  But hey, no one cries about the fact that George Effing R.R. Martin won’t solve the problems he creates.

“I think I’d rather deal with the problems we have here.”

Oh, you mean like the aforementioned racists playing politics and a so called shitty economy?  Yeah, because we don't have those problems here at all...

Okay, I should probably wrap this up and quit ranting.  I love Hank.  He's one of my favorite people in the entire universe.  But I just don't really agree with this particular video of his.  What do you think?

The Flaw of Fred and George

I am very fortunate to have two amazing people in my life.  They are the most beautiful, talented, understanding, intelligent, and enthusiastic individuals that I have ever met.  They are wonderful.  They are my sisters.  And they are identical twins.

Yes, my little sisters, Molly and Megan, share all of those wonderful personality traits.  In so many ways they are like Fred and George:  people love them for their sense of humor, their unique approach to problem solving, and their dedication to those they care about.  But here is where the comparison ends.  Because Molly and Megan are more than just charming and funny twins– they are individuals.

This has always been the problem with Fred and George.  They are interchangeable.  While they are universally loved, they are not fully developed, separate characters.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Fred and George, but it really bothers me that they are so one dimensional.  It’s like their entire character is that they are twins and that they are funny.  And yes, I said “character” instead of “characters” on purpose because they are essentially the same character.  They often complete each other’s sentences– something that people love about twins and expect from twins for some reason.  I think it’s cute too when they say things at the same time, but it also contributes to the idiotic stereotype that twins “share brainwaves” and are actually “the same person.”

Lots of people will tell you that they have a favorite Weasley twin, but I’m sure that none of them can give you a valid reason.  Usually, it’s Fred and their reasoning behind it is because he’s dead.  That’s just stupid to me.  And whenever I point out that it’s stupid, people are always like, “Oh no, I’ve just always liked Fred more…he talks more…there’s something about him…”  And of course, none of that makes any sense.  Fred and George have an equal amount of lines.  Usually after one speaks the other chimes in right afterwards.  J.K. Rowling obviously did this on purpose because she wanted them to be equally loved…which is annoying.  The Fred Weasley page on the Harry Potter wiki claims, “Fred Weasley was the more outgoing, daring, and sarcastic of the twins” and provides a few examples, but they are such slight differences that I hardly think they are significant.  It seems like the person (or people) who wrote this page probably just didn't want it to seem like they were the same character because they’re one of those really defensive HP fans who freaks out whenever someone tries to have a debate about something and bursts out into a “LEAVE J.K. ALONE!” kind of rant.

Another annoying thing about Fred’s death is that it seems to me that she only killed Fred because he had a twin.  Because she knew there would still be one left over once he had died– so that character, in a way, would still live on.  She even goes so far as to say that George eventually marries Angelina Johnson…with whom FRED attended the Yule Ball.  THAT is maddeningly infuriating to me and actually makes me a little sick.  Rowling probably thought it was cute when she decided that, but I think it’s a cruel and miserable situation for both George and Angelina.  Considering they attended the Yule Ball together, I assume that Fred and Angelina had a somewhat romantic relationship.  And if that was indeed the case, then it is extremely inappropriate for Angelina to even think about dating George.  Like, did she think, “Oh well, Fred is gone, but at least I still have George as a backup!  Good replacement since they’re the same exact person.”? That’s not okay at all.  Even if they did both sincerely love each other, I think there would still be doubt in George’s mind all the time, wondering if she was only with him to stay close to Fred.  So while I’m mad at J.K. Rowling for killing Fred, I’m angrier at her for what she did to George.  I think she saw Fred as the safest Weasley to kill.  If you think of it from George’s perspective, losing Fred is the worst possible thing that could happen to him.  But George isn’t our main character, he isn’t even our main Weasley character, so we don’t get that kind of insight into the true horror that comes with Fred’s death.  Instead there’s just this awful, guilty acknowledgement that I’m sure every single person thought while they were reading, “Well, at least we still have George…”

And that shouldn’t be what we think when a character dies!  We should be thinking how awful it is because that character had so many unique qualities that contributed so much to the lives of the characters around them.  When Dobby died, we were devastated because Dobby had always tried to save Harry in his own eccentric way, wearing tea cozies and mismatching socks.  When Dumbledore died, we were devastated because he was the greatest sorcerer of the age and probably the most prominent father figure to Harry.  To me, the most upsetting thing about Fred’s death isn’t that we lost such a unique and amazing character, (because honestly he still existed in George) but rather that George lost his twin brother, a bond and closeness that most of us will never fully understand or experience.

 I understand why Fred and George are presented the way they are.  That image of twins is an image that most people find alluring.  It’s an image they can understand.  That’s okay, I guess, because Harry Potter isn’t a story about the hardships of being a twin and the importance of recognizing the differences between twins.  But it still bothers me because I’ve seen my sisters get grouped together every single day of their lives; being called the wrong names by their friends, having their achievements or failures combined for no reason at all.  Because I’ve witnessed this first hand and seen how much it bothers my sisters, I hated every single time someone messed up Fred and George in the books.  And I hated even more that they never resented it.  They were just okay with being the same person.

J.K. Rowling tries to makes up for Fred and George’s similarities in her characterization of Parvati and Padma Patil.  In fact, I think that Padma’s whole existence in the books might be so that J.K. Rowling could feel okay about the way she portrayed Fred and George.  This way, every time someone brings up this argument she can be like, “Oh no, I completely understand how twins can be different.  See how I put Parvati and Padma in separate Houses?”  That is kind of a good argument too…except that we never really see enough of Padma to know that she really is any different than Parvati.  They’re in different Houses, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t just as similar as Fred and George in personality.  It’s possible that Padma is just as silly and gossip obsessed as Parvati.  Trust me, I know plenty of clever people who love to gossip…how do you think they get all of their information?  My roommate and I are almost exactly alike in personality, but Pottermore sorted me into Slytherin and her into Gryffindor.  I probably sound like a broken record by now, but Houses are stupid.  They don’t define who you are or really even what your values are, which is annoying because that is their whole purpose and they fail at it.  Hermione is clever, but she’s in Gryffindor, not Ravenclaw.  So putting Parvati and Padma in Gryffindor and Ravenclaw respectively proves nothing about them as twins.

I’m starting to rant now, but I can’t stress my irritation with this enough.  Twins are separate human beings and it really just frustrates me how uncannily similar Fred and George are.  When I read the Harry Potter wiki pages about them, I really want to believe that the few examples they give of their differences in personality are relevant…but I just don’t think they are.  They’re so very subtle that I’m not sure I really buy it.  Anyway, what do you think?  Do Fred and George come off as the same to you?  Do they differ in personality just enough that you think it’s believable?  Give me some examples!  Preferably not the ones from the Fred and George wiki pages…I’ve seen those and I’m not convinced.

Abby Advocates Musical Freedom Using the Example of Wizard Rock

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures.

You probably didn’t see that coming from the title, did you?  Well, it’ll make sense later, I swear.  But for now, a rant on guilty pleasures.

For some reason, people everywhere are always trying to tell you that the stuff you like is stupid.  Now, if you like throwing babies into volcanoes or kicking puppies then they’re probably right about that– but that’s not the kind of stuff I’m talking about.  For the sake of my argument, let’s limit the definition of “guilty pleasures” to meaning certain forms of entertainment such as music, TV, movies, or books. 

Guilty pleasures are stupid to me for a lot of reasons.  Firstly, if you feel guilty about doing something, it should be because the thing you are doing is wrong.  And secondly, no one has the right to tell you that the forms of entertainment that you enjoy are wrong or stupid.  Good entertainment is a completely subjective concept.  You shouldn’t have to feel guilty for liking any of the things that you like.  If you like Twilight or Glee or Jersey Shore or Justin Bieber you should just go ahead and like those things without feeling bad about it.  NEVER let anyone tell you that the thing you like is stupid and never let them make you feel stupid for liking the things that you like.  You should never have to defend your love for anything.  To me, it seems that any form of entertainment is worthwhile entertainment as long as it makes at least one person somewhere happy.  That’s pretty much how feel about of everything in life.  If the things you do make you happy and they’re not hurting anyone, then do what you want and don’t apologize to anyone for it.

Right, now that I’ve spewed out all that crap, I bet you can guess what the connection I’m going to make to Wizard Rock is.  By a lot of people’s standards, Wizard Rock is not “quality” entertainment.  The reason for this seems to stem from a lack of understanding.  Most Wizard Rock isn’t trying to be amazing.  And most popular Wizard Rock had extremely humble beginnings.  If you listen to Harry and the Potters or Draco and the Malfoys or The Parselmouths you’ll notice that they have pretty low tech recordings.  You pretty much have to be a hardcore Harry Potter fan to appreciate this kind of Wizard Rock.  Which is fine.  They’re only trying to appeal to Harry Potter fans.  Even some Harry Potter fans don’t really like Wizard Rock because Wizard Rockers aren’t usually classically trained musicians with access to fancy recording studios.  That is also completely understandable.  I don’t care if people don’t like Wizard Rock.  That’s fine.  I still think that Wrock is seriously misunderstood by these people, but I can accept that.  What I can’t accept is people hating on Wizard Rock and calling the people who listen to it stupid just because it’s different.  The majority of people in this world do not know what Wizard Rock is and because of this, they are already likely to be biased against it.  I find it amusing because we live in the age of the “hipsters,” but even hipsters don’t want to be too underground.  There has to be a limit to your nerdiness– and lots of people draw this line at Wizard Rock.

I, myself, found it hard to warm up to Wrock because like everyone else, I’m accustomed to listening to higher quality recordings when I’m listening to music.  I remember listening to Harry and the Potters for the first time and thinking “What is this shit?”  But what I failed to realize at the time was that Harry and the Potters wasn’t trying to be good– it was just trying to be exactly what it was, silly and ridiculous and fun.  And who could hate that?

Okay.  Now if this hasn’t completely scared you away from this blog or from Wrock and you’re interested in getting into Wrock, then I’ll give you some titles of some of the more accessible Wrock songs and bands.

Ministry of Magic is by far my favorite Wrock band.  They switch on and off from having a really fun and upbeat electronic sound and having a slightly serious and occasionally acoustic sound.  My two favorite MoM songs are definitely “This Town” and “Ascendio.” Both fall on the more acoustic side of things.  If you’re more interested in their electronic stuff, I would check out “The Curse.”

Another great Wrock band to check out is The Remus Lupins, which is actually one of the oldest Wrock bands.  Alex Carpenter, the front man of the band, is pretty much the nicest, coolest guy ever and you can tell he tries really really hard to put out good music that he’s proud of.  I actually got to meet Alex Carpenter once and it was one of the best nights of my life.  Anyway, two really great The Remus Lupins songs to listen to are “Skipping Class” and “For All the Hufflepuffs” if you want to get a sense of what they’re like.

These two next suggestions I’m going to make aren’t actual Wrock bands, they’re artists who sometimes record Wrock songs.  Probably more accessible than any of the songs I’ve mentioned so far is “Wizard Love” by Meekakitty and Heyhihello.  I might be a little biased about this since I am madly in love with Heyhihello, but this song is honestly one of the cutest Wrock songs I have ever heard.  And it’s a lot easier on the ears than old school Wrock like Harry and The Potters or Draco and the Malfoys kind of stuff.  I know for sure that I’m extremely biased about this next artist too because I am a nerdfighter, but I happen to love pretty much all of Hank Green’s Wrock songs.  “Accio Deathly Hallows” is the best probably (especially since it’s the song that made the Vlogbrothers YouTube famous!) but I also think “Book Eight” is really fun too.

So those are my Wizard Rock suggestions.  You might find when you listen to these that they really just aren’t your cup of tea and you know what, that’s totally cool.  Like what you like because you like it– not because someone else told you to like it!  This whole blog was actually inspired by the fact that I attended a One Direction concert a little while ago and it happened to be pretty much the best time I have ever had.  You know why it was the best time I’ve ever had?  It was because I went alone and no one was there to judge me or make me feel stupid for liking a silly mainstream boy band.  You know what?  I love One Direction and I don’t care what anyone thinks about that.  I don’t care that their songs are filled with parallels (You don’t know you’re beautiful, That’s what makes you beautiful…I need that one thing, You’ve got that one thing).  You’d probably think that they’re the opposite of Wizard Rock, but to me they’re exactly the same as Wizard Rock in a lot of ways.  Because like with Wrock, everyone is always trying to make me feel bad about liking One Direction because they’re silly and upbeat and not the best singers.  One Direction may be extremely popular and Wizard Rock may extremely unknown, but their fans probably get the same amount of shit for liking them.  And that is wrong.  It’s wrong to tell anyone that their taste in music is wrong because music is inherently good.  It’s supposed to make you happy.  And if a song –whether it’s “Friday” by Rebecca Black, “Born this Way” by Lady Gaga, “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction, or “Skipping Class” by The Remus Lupins– makes just one person happy, then it’s a worthwhile piece of music.

Sorting

“There is no Them.  There are only facets of Us.”

-John Green

I’m reading this book right now.  It’s called Divergent and it’s by Veronica Roth.  It’s about a Dystopian society, which is pretty much my favorite kind book.  Going into it, I had a pretty clear expectation of what it would be.  Dystopian society usually means bad government, oblivious community members, and eventual revolution.  I’m about three hundred pages into the book and so far all of these expectations have been met with the exception of revolution.  I expect that will come in the sequel.  It’s pretty typical as far as Dystopian novels go, but it has got me thinking about something.

It’s got me thinking about Sorting.

In the world of Divergent, at the age of sixteen its residents are allowed to choose between five Factions: Abnegation, Erudite, Candor, Amity, and Dauntless.  These five factions split people based on what virtue they value most.  The narrator, Tris, decides to transfer from Abnegation to Dauntless. But because she is “Divergent” unlike most members of her society, Tris (according to her aptitude tests) could supposedly function well in several of the Factions, not just one.  It’s pretty similar to the idea of Houses in Harry Potter.  Except, in Harry Potter all of the Houses seem pretty cool and in Divergent all the Factions seem pretty sucky.  For instance, the Dauntless are like Gryffindor.  They value bravery and courage and they play host to our main protagonist.  Only, unlike Gryffindor, I don’t root for the Dauntless at all.  They’re twisted and cruel and they have a sick idea of what it means to be brave.  I’ve often scoffed at Gryffindor for their sense of entitlement, but at least they understand what bravery is.  Bravery isn’t taking out your strongest opponents while they sleep to ensure your own place on top.  Bravery is Neville Longbottom standing up to his friends because he doesn’t want the rest of his House to get in trouble.  Another issue I have with the Divergent Factions is that Veronica Roth has gone out of her way to make the Erudite seem like bad guys so far.  The Erudite value intelligence.  They’re the Faction that I would probably choose if I had to.  So it irks me that she’s chosen to mark them as the evil strategists.  Hopefully, that will change eventually, but right now it’s pretty damn annoying.

So Factions aren’t fun like Houses are.  But to be honest, that’s kind of a good thing.  Because it shows that dividing ourselves into groups is stupid.

“Sorting” people always causes problems.  It pits the good guys against each other.  While Gryffindor and Slytherin are busy fighting each other, they’re too distracted to see the bigger picture about the chaos in the Wizarding world.  While Erudite and Abnegation argue over petty differences they fail to recognize it is their corrupt government system that instills this meaningless hatred.  And in Game of Thrones while the Starks and Lannisters are out for power and revenge, they remain oblivious to the threat of their entire species that lurks beyond the Wall. 

 You get my drift, Sorting is bad.  The authors of these books obviously realize that.  That’s the whole point that they’re trying to make.  But at the same time they’re still hypocritical.  Because it is simply in human nature to want to split into “Factions” and “Houses.”  Dumbledore, the wisest character in all of Harry Potter, realizes that sorting is stupid– yet at the end of Deathly Hallows in “The Prince’s Tale,” we hear him say to Snape, “You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon…”  So he STILL believes in the system.  He still believes that Snape is really some kind of Gryffindor in disguise.  He’s still trying to categorize him.  I’ve always hated that part.  Because I think that it’s rather insulting to Snape’s character.  Snape is so much more than just brave.  He’s also bitter and cruel and self-serving.  He has Gryffindor traits, but so does everyone.  Luna Lovegood is brave enough to remain true to herself despite the adversity she faces because of it.  Ernie McMillan shuns the idea of leaving for the safe haven of Hogsmeade when he could be fighting Voldemort side by side with his friends.  Narcissa Malfoy proclaims Harry dead at the risk of being caught to ensure her son’s safety.  Deep down, everyone’s got some Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw in them.  J.K. Rowling knows that.  In book five she has the Sorting Hat sing a freaking song about it:

“And now the Sorting Hat is here

And you all know the score:

I sort you into Houses

Because that is what I’m for,

But this year I’ll go further,

Listen closely to my song:

Though condemned I am to split you

Still I worry that it’s wrong”

And then she STILL has Dumbledore say that thing about Sorting to Snape in Deathly Hallows.  Because she still for no reason at all believes in the system.

Hell, even I believe in the system.  Like the others I see that’s it’s flawed.  I see that it’s bullshit.  But that doesn’t matter.  I still check Pottermore every day to see if it’s finally out of its goddamn Beta stage so I can find out what House I’m in according to Rowling’s standards.  I still want to know if I’m a Hufflepuff like all the other tests tell me and figure out how I really feel about that.  Because I want to feel like I’m a part of something special.  I want that sense of community, even if it is only in this weird abstract fictional way.  That’s probably why I love Nerdfighteria so much actually.  It gives me a sense of belonging and it splits me from the typical college student.  And I want someone else to tell me who I am.  I want someone else to label me so I don’t have to delve any further into myself.  Everyone wants this.  They’ll all deny it.  But secretly it’s what we all want.  We don’t want to imagine people complexly.  We want to be able to summarize them with one word: Gay, Straight, Black, White, Old, Young, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Dauntless, Erudite, Amity, Slytherin, Gryffindor, Lannister, Stark, Decepticon, Nerdfighter.  But truthfully no one falls into just one category.  Truthfully, everyone is Divergent.  We all want the same things and we all want different things.  We’re paradoxical.  We’re all human– that’s the one thing that should matter most.  It’s the one thing that should bind us.  But it never will.  In the human brain, equality is subjective.  It means something different to everyone, even though it shouldn't.  So we’ll keep trying to define ourselves and keep splitting into groups.  Because as much as we all advocate for equality, we’re still advocating for the rights of certain groups.  We’re still Sorting ourselves.  And we’re still not imagining each other complexly.  At this rate, we never will.

Harry Potterrific Names

Now I don’t know if you noticed, but J.K. Rowling gives her characters some pretty goofy sounding names sometimes.  Believe it or not, there’s a reason for that. Rowling has this very Dickens-like style when it comes to naming her characters.  Which makes sense because Dickens was actually one of her inspirations. I don’t think that any author just names their characters without thinking, but Rowling in particular has a pretty clear reasoning behind all of her character names.  As a little kid reading the series, obviously, I didn’t really see a lot of the cool things that Rowling was foreshadowing with these character names, but now that I’m a smarty-pants English major, I’ve come to appreciate the true cleverness behind it all.  So I’ve come up with a list of my seven (because seven is the most magically powerful number!) favorites to show the awesomeness that lies in these characters names.

Remus Lupin: Looking back on it now, dear old Lupin’s name seems to be the most obvious.  “Lupus” means wolf so if you know anything about biology, it’s pretty easy to guess what Lupin’s little secret is.

Sirius Black:  “Sirius” is the name of the brightest star in the sky.  So in that way, it seems a bit strange for the name of an escaped prisoner of Azkaban.  But because we know this little tidbit of information about the meaning of Sirius’s name, we may also question whether or not the rumors about him as a murderer are true since light is often a symbol of goodness and according to this definition, Sirius has about as much light as you can get.  Similarly to Lupin’s name, Sirius’s name also clues us in to his animalistic form as Sirius is known as the “Dog Star” because it is part of the constellation “Canis Major.”

Dolores Umbridge:  Aside from the fact that Umbridge’s name already sounds unpleasant, the word “umbrage” actually means displeasure.  So it’s no surprise that Umbridge is as horrible as she is.

Sybill Trewlaney:  “Sybil” was actually a seer from Greek mythology.  This obviously makes perfect sense based on Trewlaney’s profession, but it also clues the reader into the fact that she may not be just a fraud like Harry, Ron, and Hermione often think.  And of course, in the end she happens to have made one of the most important prophecies of all time, concerning Voldemort and Harry.

Voldemort:  Voldemort’s name is actually taken from a French phrase, "Vol de mort," which means “to flee from death.”  Voldemort’s main goal in the series is to ensure his invincibility, stretching his soul to its very limits all so that he can avoid death.  So really this choice of name is perfect.  According to J.K. Rowling, the “t” is Voldemort is supposed to be silent…but we’ll talk some more about that later…

Argus Filch:  Okay, so this one is actually my favorite because I JUST discovered why it is the way it is.  I mean, I already knew what “filch” meant.  That on its own is brilliant because Filch is always “filching” illegal items from students and making life hell for them because of it.  And then “Argus” it turns out is actually the name of a dude from Greek mythology who had eyes everywhere on his body.  That’s just so perfect.  Because Filch is totally the “eyes” of the castle, always searching for any troublemakers to punish.  I wish I could say that I stumbled upon this one through my intense study of Greek myths, but really I discovered it through Percy Jackson and the Olympians…STILL THOUGH…awesome.

Draco Malfoy:  My interpretation of this one is gonna be a little goofy compared to the rest.  The rest are like indisputable, but I have some kind of weird ideas about what Draco’s name might be referring to.  Now, I know that “Draco” means “dragon” in Latin.  But I also know that the Hogwarts motto is, “Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus,” which of course means, “Never tickle a sleeping dragon.”  Gotta love the whimsy and charm of Harry Potter.  So here’s what I’m thinking; Rowling could have given Draco any name that she wanted…but she chose to give him a name that is actually referenced in the school motto itself.  Now this may seem far-fetched, but I take this to mean that rather than never “tickling” Draco specifically, it means that Draco is not someone to be messed with.  I mean, he turns out to be kind of a pussy, but he definitely puts on this air as if he owns Hogwarts and that if someone messes with him they’ll pay for it…which they most likely will because he’ll tell Luscious Lucius about it and lord knows that Luscious Lucius Malfoy has got mad game with the bitches.  Right, so there’s that rant.  Then there’s the last name.  “Mal” means bad…so there you go.

So those are my interpretations of some HP character names.  Now that I’m on the subject of names, I have some questions to pose about them.  You know how I said before that Rowling says the “t” in Voldemort isn’t supposed to be pronounced?  Well, I’m pretty sure that every time I hear her say Voldemort, she pronounces the “t.”  So I wonder, did she just start saying it to conform to what her fans had interpreted it as?  Because that is very very unusual for her.  Personally, I believe that once an author has published a book, that book now belongs to the public – the author has some credit in the book’s overall meaning, but it is up to the reader to dissect and interpret different aspects and meaning of the text because everybody gets something different out of every reading.  But J.K. Rowling generally seems to disagree with this.  Like, when she told us all that Dumbledore was gay.  I mean, I can see why someone might interpret that from his mannerisms and such, but nowhere does the author specifically say that he is gay and I don’t think that this has to be universally accepted as a truth because of that reason.

Anyway, aside from the Voldemort thing, she seems to be like this with names most of the time too.  For instance, she has said that Lily’s (as in Harry’s child, Lily) middle name is Luna.  Now, I happen to think that is adorable and wonderful and perfect…but it doesn’t say anywhere in the book that her middle name is Luna, so if anything that seems more like a fanfictiony type thing to claim.  I mean, we have to accept that Albus Severus is Harry’s son’s actual name because it’s written in the book.  But the book says nothing about Lily Luna.  There’s also the whole case of the character “John” Dawlish.  Again, nowhere in any of the books is Dawlish ever referred by his first name, but Rowling has said that she eventually named him “John” due to the enthusiastic reaction to the character by The Leaky Cauldron’s site contributor, John Noe.  I think John Noe is a swell guy and that Dawlish is a great character and everything, (I’ll definitely need to write a blog about Dawlish sometime because his joke of a character is sort of awesome) but I’m sort of not sure if J.K. Rowling has the right to give names to these characters after the fact.  I pretty much feel this way about all the futures of characters after the books as well – I mean, in my head Neville and Luna love each other forever and live happily together in a field of nargles, so why does J.K. Rowling get to discount that by saying that Neville marries Hannah Abbott!  If she really wanted that to be a solid fact of the books she would have included it in the books!

I’m a little befuddled here.  Part of me thinks that J.K. Rowling is totally clever and awesome for her character names, but then part of me is also confused about why she would try to name certain characters after the fact.  I mean, I understand that she’s intensely connected to these characters so it only makes sense for her to imagine their lives outside of what is written, but I’m just surprised that this is something she feels like she has to share with the public.  I don’t know.  It’s just puzzling to me because obviously she stopped consulting an editor about size by the time book four came around so if she really wanted these names to exist, why didn’t she just include them in the books?  I happen to be a fan of most of her name choices after the fact, but I just wish she had actually written them in the books so they could be truly validated.

All right, that last bit was kind of a convoluted rant, but oh well.

Comparing Harry Potter and Percy Jackson

About a month ago, my sister forced me to read the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.  Now now, don’t be shocked and appalled that I had to be forced.  I tend to be rather kicking and screaming about reading anything that someone else suggests to me.  I have no idea why I do this.  But I’ve been like this since I was a kid.  Believe it or not, my mom had to force me to read Harry Potter.  I remember that I didn’t want to read it because I had seen a popular girl that I didn’t like reading it on the bus one day.  So naturally my six year old self decided that since that girl was stupid, Harry Potter must also be stupid.  Then of course my mom started reading it to me and I fell instantly in love.  I’ve repeated this process with every single book that I’ve ever loved.  Harry Potter, Ender’s Game, The Hunger Games – I even had my doubts about Looking for Alaska.  But in the end I fell head over heels in love with all of them.  So I guess that I shouldn’t have been surprised that I loved Percy Jackson as much as I did.

A lot of my problem with the idea of the Percy Jackson books was that I had already seen the movie version of The Lightning Thief.  If you’ve seen it, you know that it’s a pretty stupid movie.  My sister HATES that movie with a burning passion, but she told me dozens of times that the book was like “her Harry Potter.”  So I decided to give it a shot.

The funny thing is that while I was reading the books, I wasn’t thinking of Harry Potter at all.  I was so caught up in the clever, modern use of the Greek myths and the endearing, perfect characters that my mind was far from Hogwarts.  But I still know exactly what my sister means by the series being her own Harry Potter– because the Percy Jackson books gave me the same warm fuzzy feeling that Harry Potter has always given me.  No– “warm fuzzy feeling” isn’t really the right way to describe it…it’s more like this heart-wrenching feeling of bittersweet-ness– like you feel so inexplicably full and content but simultaneously distraught that you will never feel the same way again that you feel right at that moment.  You will never feel the effects of that first journey with your favorite characters again.  It’s the best feeling you can get from a work of fiction– this all-encompassing melancholic joy.  That more than anything makes Percy Jackson a worthwhile series.  It makes you feel ALL THE THINGS.

Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on it though, it’s impossible not to see some pretty damn obvious similarities to Harry Potter. 

First of all there’s the whole three companions thing.  It’s pretty easy to label Percy, Grover, and Annabeth as Harry, Ron, and Hermione.  I mean, seriously, Percy even has black hair and green eyes like Harry.  They’re quite a lot alike in personality as well.  They’re both kind of just stupid, adorable derps who happen to be “the chosen one.”  And then Hermione is “the brightest witch of her age” and Annabeth is a daughter of Athena, praised for her strength in wisdom and knowledge.  There really isn’t much of anything alike about Ron and Grover except for their side-kick-like rolls, but with the similarities between the other guys can you blame people for making the connection?

Then there’s the whole prophecy driven plot.  Bear in mind here that I’m not in any way calling Percy a copycat.  It makes perfect sense for a series with heavy reliance on Greek myths to include prophecies and oracles and things of that nature.  Pretty much all fantasy fiction ends up having a “chosen one.”  That’s just the way it is.

And of course there are a bunch of random similarities like the “Mist” and the inability of Muggles to comprehend what’s going on, Annabeth’s invisibility cap and Harry’s invisibility cloak, how people avoid using the gods' names and how people avoid using Voldemort's name, Rachel Elizabeth Dare being that one awful ginger character messing up your main character’s love life that you just want to go away and Ginny being that one awful ginger character messing up your main character’s love life that you just want to go away… I’m sure there’s a bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten, but you get the point.  They’re a lot alike.

Unsurprisingly, I’m not the only one who thinks that Harry and Percy have got a lot in common.   In the back of one of the books (I can’t remember which) a reviewer says to “look no further for the next Harry Potter.”  And then looking at movie reviews for The Lightning Thief one day I came across some pretty brutal ones, all calling the movie a failed HP knock off.   Honestly, pretty much every bad review was like “blah blah blah this is trying to be Harry Potter but it’s not blah blah blah…”

Here’s the thing though, Harry and Percy might be a lot alike, BUT the voice of Percy Jackson is something completely unique to its series.  I often have a problem with first person narrators because they tend to be pretty whiny since I’m stuck inside their heads, but everything about Percy’s internal monologue is likeable.  Knowing exactly what’s going on in Percy’s head makes him all the more lovable because he’s never annoying, he’s always believable, and he’s hilarious.  And I feel like because of this there’s something more attractive about the way Percy Jackson is written. 

Now, I’m not saying that I like Percy better, because obviously nothing is ever gonna replace Harry Potter for me.  But there are just sometimes when I’m reading HP and I’m like, “Okay, what the hell could J.K. Rowling possibly mean when she says that Tom the bartender from The Leaky Cauldron looks like a ‘toothless walnut?’”  And yes, that is a direct quote from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  Every once in a while I’ll come across some weird things like this that irritate me.  I’ve never come across anything that’s really awkwardly worded like that in Percy Jackson and I think that’s probably because it’s told from first person.  I’m sure that first person Harry would never call Tom the bartender a “toothless walnut.”  I understand that a lot of those weirdly described instances are just J.K. Rowling being quirky and whimsical and all that.  And believe me, I love the quirky, whimsical shit– it just annoys me when it doesn’t make sense.

Then there’s the whole issue of the maddening narrative structure of Harry Potter.  Like, I’m reading The Prisoner of Azkaban right now and for the first 80 or so pages every single character refers to the dementors as “the Azkaban guards” just for the point of making things more dramatic when they are finally revealed.  As a first time reader, you probably wouldn’t notice that, but if we’re being honest here it just doesn’t make sense for the characters to avoid calling them dementors.  When you’re rereading the series and you already know that they’re called dementors, it’s definitely distracting.  It takes you out of the magical world and brings you back to the real one, reminding you that this is fiction, that there is a plot going on here and that J.K. Rowling is trying to hide vital facts from you for dramatic effect.  On a similar note, WHY DOESN’T HARRY KNOW THAT VOLDEMORT’S FOLLOWERS ARE CALLED DEATH EATERS UNTIL HALFWAY THROUGH THE SERIES!  Death Eaters are referenced constantly in books 1-3 but they don’t get a name until book four.  That’s so stupid!  Same thing goes for the Dark Mark.  Why doesn’t Harry Goddamn Potter know what the symbol of Voldemort looks like until Goblet of Fire?  Alex Carpenter has a pretty excellent video further explaining my feelings on this subject if you want to hear someone describe it more eloquently.

Percy Jackson is pretty good at keeping up the suspense of what’s going to happen next, and Rick Riordan doesn’t have to keep the overarching plot a secret from us throughout the entire series.  From the very beginning we know that there’s a prophecy.  And I’m pretty sure that by book two we know that Percy’s most likely the “chosen one” who’s gotta put Kronos back in his place.  Granted we don’t know everything the prophecy says but it’s better than in Harry Potter where you have to wait until book five to discover the existence of a prophecy at all.  And honestly, didn’t we kind of already know what the prophecy had to say?  Didn’t we already know that Harry had to kill Voldemort?  WHY DID NO ONE TELL HARRY ABOUT THE PROPHECY BEFORE?!  I doubt that it would have shocked him, even as an eleven or twelve year old that he was the one that had to kill Voldemort.  As Hermione often says in book five, he’s got a “saving people thing.”  Obviously he wanted to be the one to kill Voldemort just like HE wanted to be the one to save the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone and HE wanted find out who the Heir of Slytherin was.

I love love love love love Harry Potter and I love J.K. Rowling, but I honestly feel like a first person narrator and some revision to the narrative structure could have made it something even more amazing.  Harry Potter has one of the most intricate, detailed, and captivating stories of all time…but I just wish that Harry was present in the same way that Percy was throughout all of his series.  

Abby Has Issues with the Oscars

There are a lot of things I do not understand about Hollywood.  I don’t understand why they can’t come up with original blockbusters not based off of bestselling books.  I don’t understand why they think Sandra Bullock is a good actress.  And I don’t understand why they decided the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie was a good idea.

But what I don’t understand more than anything else is the goddamn Oscars.

The Oscars suck.  They’re pretty much Hollywood’s way of patting themselves on the back for being pretentious douchebags.  Every year I expect to see some good movies nominated, but I don’t know why I expect this because every year they pick a bunch of crap I’ve never heard of and maybe one movie that everybody loved.  But the one movie everybody loved never wins.  The pretentious douchebaggy movies win.

So here’s what bugs me the most about the Oscars.  They’re supposed to be rewarding the best films of the year, right?  And from a critic’s standpoint, the best films of the year are supposed to be the ones that got the best reviews.  Personally, I don’t care much for reviews.  I like to make my own opinions about what makes a movie good or bad…BUT THE OSCARS ARE ALL ABOUT THE PRETENTIOUS REVIEWS!  So why why why why why why WHY is Harry Potter not up for some serious Academy Awards this year?

I’ll admit, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is not my favorite film.  It is not even my favorite Harry Potter film.  But the critics freaking loved that movie.  It’s one of the highest reviewed movies of the year and the third highest grossing film of all time.  Obviously it’s doing something right.  So why on earth is it not nominated for some serious awards!  I know it got nominations for like Special Effects and Art Direction and Make-up and stuff…but where the hell is Alan Rickman’s nomination for Best Supporting Actor?  Where the hell is the Best Picture nomination?!  According to the damn critics the movie is “Thrilling, powerfully acted, and visually dazzling” so why isn’t that being recognized?

I’m about to throw some numbers at you here.  Rottentomatoes.com is a website that combines all the reviews a movie gets and gives them a 0-100 percent rating based on how good they are.  Here are the ratings of the movies up for Best Picture:

The Artist:  97%

The Descendants:  90%

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close:  46%

The Help:  76%

Hugo:  94%

Midnight in Paris:  93%

Moneyball:  95%

The Tree of Life:  84%

War Horse:  76%

The rating for HPDH Part 2 is 96%.  You know what that means?  That means that Harry Potter got better overall reviews than EIGHT of the nine nominated films.  

There’s really only one explanation for this.  Only one fantasy film has won Best Picture before and that was Lord of the Rings Return of the King.  But Harry Potter doesn’t even get nominated because not only is it a fantasy film – it’s a young adult fantasy film.  And in case you were wondering, LOTR ROTK has a score of 94%.  So even Return of the King, my favorite movie of all time, Best Picture of 2003 has a lower score than HPDH. This kind of discrimination against young adult fiction just really pisses me off.  The same kind of thing happened with the Harry Potter books.  They were doing so amazingly well on the bestsellers lists that eventually they made a separate list for children’s books just so that Harry Potter wouldn't be hogging up the space.  Not only is that unfair, but it seems pretty cowardly and pathetic to me.  I don’t understand why people discount young people and their passions so easily.  As Oscar Wilde so eloquently said, “It’s absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth.  The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself.  They seem in front of me.  Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.”  

Now I’m not saying that I have anything against any of these other films.  I’ve seen most of them and they’re okay.  But the fact is that the Oscars are supposed to be about the best movies of the year and most of these films did not get the same kind of acclaim that Harry Potter did.  Although I WILL complain about one film…

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE?!?!?!  SERIOUSLY?!  It got mixed reviews at best.  HOW did it get nominated for Best Picture of all things?!  Considering that it was reviewed so poorly it’s hard for me to believe that so many people in the academy thought it was worthy of the title best picture.  Also, one more thing about the movie’s nominations.  The old grandfather dude got nominated for Best Supporting Actor.  THE MOST ACTING HE HAD TO DO WAS LIFT HIS HANDS.  HE DID NOT SPEAK A WORD THE ENTIRE FILM.  I REPEAT, WHERE IS ALAN RICKMAN’S NOMINATION?!?!?!

You know what’s funny?  I’ve read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  It’s one of my favorite books.  And I didn’t hate the movie.  But I don’t think it’s worthy of Best Freakin’ Picture.  Sheesh.

Like I said, HPDH Part 2 is not my favorite movie, but you would think that since it was overall successful and received widespread praise that the academy would at least give the movie some serious nominations to acknowledge the series as a whole.  Over the past ten years the Harry Potter film series has made an enormous contribution to film and the fact that they could just ignore it like this baffles me.  Eight beautiful, well reviewed, culturally impacting movies were made.  Not one of them has gotten an Oscar.  That just seems so wrong to me!  Harry Potter is such a significant piece of literature to our generation!  Even if you don’t like Harry Potter, you can’t deny that much.  These movies may not be as important as the books in the eyes of many fans, but in my opinion they are still hugely important to the kind of Harry Potter culture and fandom that has been created.  I cannot stress the impact Harry Potter has had on our generation enough.  It’s a big deal, people.  Deal with it.  Recognize it.  It deserves to be recognized.  In the words of Hank Green, “It would have been easy for the Harry Potter books to be just, you know, another kids’ book fantasy adventure.  But it is not just another kids’ book fantasy adventure.  There’s something very different going on here.  This is like the biggest thing that’s ever happened in publishing since like…the Bible.”

I may not be an expert on film and I may be completely biased about Harry Potter.  But this much I know for sure – fifty years from now no one is going to remember The Tree of Life, The Descendants, or Moneyball.  But Harry Potter will still be a household name.

Darren or Dan?

Okay, so here's the scoop.  You may not have noticed, but I kind of really really really love Harry Potter.  People tend to get pretty tired of hearing that in real life so that's what this blog is for - for me to talk about Harry Potter.  If you do not like Harry Potter or happiness then I suggest you read something else.  I will even be kind enough to supply you non-Harry Potter lovers with something else if you click that fun little link.


Right.  So let's get to it then.  Today I was walking out of the dining hall and I head the dulcet tones of the lovely Aaron Tveit.  At first, I thought I was making it up because that is exactly the kind of thing my mind would do - decide that Broadway music is playing in a public place and then announce it loudly,looking like a fool.  But today I was not a fool!  Next to Normal was indeed coming from the Philbrook Cafe.  So because of this, I started to engage in a magnificently non-awkward conversation about How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with the cashier.  I don't know how she knew I found this topic interesting.  Either she just assumed that I would be interested in it because I like Next to Normal so naturally I must like all Broadway shows, or I just have OBSESSED WITH HARRY POTTER stamped on my forehead.  ...Or there is the slight possibility that I have met her before.


If your confused as to how HP is related to How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying then I guess I should clarify something.  Daniel Radcliffe just recently finished his stint on Broadway playing J. Pierrepont Finch.  And then Darren Criss replaced him.  So that's just about the coolest thing ever, right?  A Very Potter Musical-Harry Potter replaces Movie-Harry Potter on Broadway.  A situation just full of awesome.


Unfortunately, I was not able to see Dan or Darren perform in this show because I don't have the kind of money to go see Broadway shows all the time.  So I remain an adamant enthusiast from afar.  Anyway, cashier lady and I started discussing who we would prefer to see given the chance - Dan or Darren.  Now, anybody who knows me knows that I pretty much think that Darren Criss walks on water.  He is in every way the perfect man.  He's beautiful, he sings, he writes music,(including the soundtracks to AVPM, AVPS, and my all time favorite musical, Starship) he loves Harry Potter, and he plays Kurt's boyfriend on Glee.  He is inhumanly perfect.  But for some reason when I was asked who I would rather see, my automatic answer was Daniel Radcliffe.


Why?  Why would I say Daniel?  I LOVE DARREN CRISS!  If I could trade lives with any one person it would be Darren Criss.  Darren is a better singer.  Darren is about ten thousand times more attractive.  So WHY would I pick Dan over him?  I really didn't know the answer to this at first.  But after thinking about it for a while I have decided to stand by my quickly given answer.  I would rather see Daniel.  Not just because Daniel is more famous, not just because I've already seen Darren perform live before, but because Daniel, more than any other person in the universe, is a symbol of my childhood - a symbol of everything that I love about Harry Potter.  I definitely associate Darren with Harry, but Daniel really IS Harry in my eyes.  I mean, I'm not delusional, I know he's not REALLY Harry Potter and I know that often times the Harry he portrays on the screen strays from the Harry I know and love in the books, but he is linked to my love for Harry Potter in a way that no other person ever can be.  The Harry Potter in my head will always be Daniel Radcliffe and despite fangirlish claims that the books and movies are completely separate things - they're really not, not to me anyway.  The books are really just one aspect of what I love about Harry Potter.  Harry has really taken on a life of his own outside of the books. Some of Harry's best moments are in the movies or in the consciousness of the fans who have recreated him in their own minds.  So even though Daniel is NOT exactly the Harry from the books, he IS in some way part of what Harry has become.  And because I have known Dan since 2001 when the first film came out, he is so much more of what Harry means to me than Darren is.  And yes, believe it or not, I would base my decision on who to see on Broadway based on who is more Harry Potter.  Because really Harry Potter is why I love them both.  But Daniel is my Harry more than Darren.


So if you had the choice who would it be?  Dan or Darren?