So last weekend I watched A Very Potter Senior Year and it was
fantastic. I loved AVPM and AVPS too or course, but
this one was just really insightful in a way that neither of the others
were. (Starship is still my favorite
Starkid show, but AVPSY was way more awesome than I expected it to be.) Of course the show was sloppily put together
at the last second and full of microphone problems and mistakes, but it was
still perfect somehow. It shed some
light on a lot of things that I’ve been mulling over for a while now. I want to talk about those things, but FIRST I
need to talk about the one scene I had a serious problem with in AVPSY, just so
I can rant and get it out of my system.
There was that one terrible scene. Like, it was just so bad. There’s always that one terrible scene in a
Starkid show that you just wish they’d have thought about for half a second
before sticking it in there and grossing out everyone. And usually it has to do with bathroom humor. In A Very Potter Sequel there were the never
ending Draco diaper jokes. …And then
AVPSY took this to another level of gross in a scene in which Voldemort has
change his own grandfather’s underwear.
Ughhh…Starkid, you do so many things right but then you ALWAYS have to
do something so wrong!
Anyway, now that I’ve expressed my irritation about that, I can
move on to what I really loved about the show. Aside from the awkward and
uncomfortable and WHATTHEHELLISGOINGON Voldemort scene, I pretty much loved the
whole thing from start to finish. I especially
loved all the Gilderoy Lockhart jokes because I LOVE Gilderoy Lockhart. And naturally, I loved all the books that he claimed
to have “written” in the show. I also kind
of loved that one of those books was Percy Jackson, but then I had this really
strange reaction to that moment that made me really think about my relationship
with these books. That little jab at
Percy Jackson– that bugged me a bit. It
wasn’t even a real jab! It was a
hilarious joke! Hermione just said that
Lockhart wrote a bunch of young adult novels.
She listed a bunch of them, Twilight, The Hunger Games then at the end
she tacked on PJ&O saying, “And Percy Jackson– whatever he did.” On the outside I was all like
LOLSQUEEPERCYJACKSONANDHARRYPOTTERCROSSOVER.
But man, was I inwardly
defensive about that comment. Inside I
was all like, “BITCH, PERCY DEFEATED THE EVIL TITAN LORD KRONOS AND WAS SO
AWESOME THAT HE WAS ASKED TO BE A GOD! THAT’S WHAT HE DID!” And then immediately after than inward
outburst I felt self-conscious. Why was
I giving my beloved Hermione Granger a mental smackdown? Why was I a little bit irritated with my
beloved Starkid? Had my allegiance
changed?
I’ve been so obsessed with Percy Jackson and the Heroes of
Olympus lately that I haven’t read Harry Potter in months. I think I might think more about Percy now
than I do about Harry. And although I
was worried that I might be betraying my true self or something ridiculous like
that, I certainly wasn’t thinking that by the end of AVPSY.
When I love something I love it with my entire being. I love it so hard that I feel like I have to
stand on the roof and shout my love so the whole world knows about it. It’s annoying, but it’s who I am. I’ve been posting my undying love for Harry
Potter on the internet for YEARS now and recently I’ve noticed something…the
Harry Potter posts are fewer.
It’s not that I don’t love HP. Of course I still do. But I’ve realized that there are other things
in this world to love besides Harry Potter.
And giving all your love to just one thing is bad. Because it’s bad to let that one thing define
you. As good as Harry Potter is, it’s still bad to be just “that Harry Potter girl” in everyone’s eyes.
This isn’t exactly a recent epiphany. It’s kind of been ongoing for the past six or
seven months. But after watching A Very
Potter Senior Year this weekend, I know now that there’s nothing wrong with the
way I’m feeling. That it’s natural for
me to move on.
Voldemort has this
great monologue in AVSY where he expresses exactly this:
“You know Harry Potter he opened me once, he taught me
something. He taught me that it’s all right, to let go of things that hurt us.
He taught me to open my heart up to what’s new. Harry Potter gave me a new
family; he taught me how to love. And I guess that’s kind of what Harry Potter
is all about. But you know, there comes a time, when you have to move on
Quirrell, a time when we have to let even Harry Potter go. And that’s okay.”
Yes. This. This sums up everything. Harry Potter has been one of the most
important things in my life thus far.
Nothing can ever change what Harry Potter was to me, what it did for me. But we do have to let go of things we love in
order to make room for new things, things that can be just as good. Things like Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games,
and uh…maybe even being a grown up?
Maybe even pursuing your own destiny instead of marveling at the destiny
of a fictional person?
Does this mean that I’m going to stop loving HP? Hell no.
I still love Harry Potter and I still intend to blog about him every
once in a while. But Harry Potter isn’t
the only thing I love. I also love One
Direction and Game of Thrones and Percy Jackson and Nerdfighteria and all other sorts of
fandoms. And more importantly, I love
people. Real people. Sometimes I’m
not so good at expressing my love for people the way I express my love for
fandoms. I’m a bit like my boy (and
second favorite hero of Olympus) Leo Valdez in the way that I’m not so great
with organic life forms. But also like
Leo Valdez, at the end of the day, I know that people are still the most important parts of life even if they’re
not the easiest to deal with.
AVPSY really stressed the fact that everything ends. They even had a song called “Everything Ends.” And to be honest, that song could not have
been any more relevant to me at this time in my life. Everything I’ve ever known is ending quickly
for me. School as I knew it is ending
finally. Childhood is ending. And it’s all terrifying. It always feels like whenever I get comfortable
somewhere, whenever I finally feel like I know how I fit into some place– that’s
when I have to leave. I’ve made so many
wonderful friends this year in my Russian classes and I love my roommate so
gosh darn much. I’m terrified that
moving on and leaving college means that I have to leave my friends forever
too.
But I know I’m not leaving them forever just the same way
that I’m not leaving Harry Potter forever.
Relationships are the one thing in life that never truly need to
end. Even when people fall out of touch
or don’t get to see each other that often– they’re still forever changed by the
experiences they had in those relationships and they’ll carry that with them forever. I just have to remember that though new
things might come into my life, that doesn’t mean the old things are any less
important than they were to me before.
My relationship with Harry Potter, just like my relationships with the
people I know from school, will forever be an important aspect of what shaped
my life.
