And Then I Found $5

I don’t know who first came up with the concept of saying “and then I found $5” at the end of a story to make it interesting, but I feel like I need to use that phrase every single time I say anything. If I had an action figure, it would be my catch phrase (oddly appropriate actually considering I’m a little crazy about money).

It seems like every time I tell an extended story about myself or something interesting I heard from another person, at the end of the story I’m met with blank stares. They’re not always funny stories. Sometimes they’re just something quirky I think people might want to know. Yet constantly when I finish talking people just stare at me.

I don’t understand it! I mean yeah, sure, maybe some of my stories suck, but EVERY SINGLE ONE!? What goes wrong in my delivery?? I absolutely know some of the material is FASCINATING, so what am I doing wrong?!

On numerous occasions, I have been told I’m a funny individual. My friends have commented on my rather unique perspective. How does this not come through when I’m talking, and why do the SAME EXACT stories get lauded when I instead write them out??

There has to be something wrong with the way I talk. I’m not sure what it is, but I suspect my voice is to blame. Despite being a Taurus (the star sign of the throat, known for their voices in case you’re not hip on your astrology) I have the voice of an 8 year old on a sugar high. It’s probably hard to take me seriously. I sound like butterscotch and candy necklaces.

I have to say this issue causes me no end of grief, because I love telling stories. This is somewhat of a weird family habit. It initially started with my father at family dinners. He’d turn to somebody and say “tell me a story,” the idea being you’d tell the story of your day. Then he started doing it to random people visiting our house.

I took that habit and expanded on it in college, so it because almost an initiation rite in our group that when somebody brought somebody new over (whether a potential boyfriend, or an old friend from home), I’d turn to them and say “tell us a story!” And I didn’t make it easy. It couldn’t be a real story about their day. Oh no. It had to be a made up story that we found interesting. And to make it even better, we graded people based on their attempts.

Now this kind of random story I actually used to excel at. When I was young, I used to be very involved in church, and often went to overnights or camp where I was in a car/van/bus with a bunch of other bored young girls for an extended period of time. Clearly not a fun situation normally, but I quickly discovered when I started telling stories about the different worlds I had imagined, not only did the other girls listen and BEG me for new stories, the ADULTS even wanted to hear more.

It got to the point that even once we were at our destination, at night when everyone was winding down and trying to get ready for bed, they would come and ask me for more of my stories. This was actually why I first started writing. I had so many people at the church that wanted more of these stories, and I realized that people were going to miss parts when they weren’t around, and I couldn’t remember the exact same details every single time if I retold the story.

This inconsistency confuses me. I don’t understand how I can be (in theory) good at storytelling, but bad at telling stories. This weekend I was meeting a bunch of my brother’s new friends, and I swear to god every time I stared speaking I felt like I should just hold up my “and then I found $5” sign when I finished. Yet everyone seemed to like me well enough. Apparently nobody holds my inability to be interesting against me. I’d hold it against me, but I guess I don’t get a vote.

One of my fervent wishes is to someday understand what I’m doing WRONG when I tell stories now, so I can fix it. It’s really disheartening to get these weird stares every time I talk.

Neek Pride Day

Today is Nerd or Geek Pride Day, which I have also converted into Neek Pride Day. Happy Pride Day to all my dear nerds, geeks, and neeks!

To celebrate, I’m going to visit my brother, a fellow neek if there ever was one. It’s always interesting when I visit my brother. Sometimes we stay in and do totally awesome neek things like have an anime marathon & drinking game, or play magic cards. Sometimes we go out and party, or go be active and play something like ultimate Frisbee (which I fail at). I’m not sure what we’re doing this time. He promised we’d go play laser tag though, so I’m pretty psyched about that.

On the other hand, I am not at all excited about my layover in Chicago. It seems like my flights ALWAYS go through Chicago. I’m getting sick of their food options. And really, how do they not have a Starbucks in the airport?? Don’t get me wrong I normally appreciate local coffee places, but right now I am desperately craving a mocha cookie crumble frappuccino. How dare you deny me, Chicago!! I don’t want to get one after finally landing… that’ll be way too late in the afternoon. I don’t process caffeine the same way I used to. Curse you, Chicago Midway!

That was a rather large digression. I apologize, those cookie crumble frapps are just sooooo good.

Today I actually want to talk more about pride. I’m very happy there is a holiday devoted to nerd/geek/neek pride. Interestingly enough, I used to think I wasn’t the type of person that had a lot of pride.

I’m not sure why really. I certainly wasn’t the opposite either; it’s not like I was ashamed of myself or anything. Pride just wasn’t a word I really connected with myself.

When I was in college, I took a class where we converted a medieval play into a more modern version. Everyone in the class had different jobs to get it set up, and then most of us also acted in the play. I was part of the crew that actually wrote it. Our medieval play was the Castle of Perseverance, which we turned into Fast Times at Morality High. It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Honestly no idea what I'm doing in this shot.

The Virtues became cheerleaders at the school. The Vices became a gang. I was cast as a Vice, Pride. My friends and I thought it was a bit odd, because again, I don’t identify myself as particularly prideful, but I figured I didn’t really match any of the other roles either. Plus I had a lot of fun with it. We were doing it 80s style, so I threw my hair into crazy curls and got some jellies. I went looking for pictures of us Vices in our full 80s glory, and stumbled upon the website we created for the play. Too bad we don’t have the full video up! You’d be in for a treat.

It really wasn’t until this week that I started to rethink my stance on what it means to have pride. I was reading Divergent (which is super awesome and gets 2 thumbs up from me) and the main character was talking about how she had too much pride. She identified it as the weakness for a group, as their pride kept them acting tough and doing crazy, dangerous things just so they wouldn’t lose face.

Seriously, it was like a light bulb moment. Unbeknownst to myself, I have always been INSANELY prideful. It just blends in so well with some of my other more obvious traits (stubbornness, defiance), that I never realized it was part of the problem.

Take for instance, one of my mother’s favorite examples of an early childhood moment that confirmed I would be a handful. My mother had surgery on her foot, so my grandmother was staying with us for a few weeks to help out. Now I already had my mother trained on how to dress me for kindergarten, but apparently my grandmother missed the memo because she tried to make me wear pants. So what if it was the winter?? I wore fluffy dresses. Everyone wore fluffy dresses. I absolutely refused to put on the pants, and would not go to school in anything except one of my dresses.

Don’t worry, I won the argument. I always thought this situation was just because I wanted to wear a dress, but in reconsidering, the whole reason I wore fluffy dresses (besides liking them) was because I was proud. It was a status symbol in our class. Sure, no one would really care if I went one day without a dress, but I had faaaaaaaaaar too much pride to hold myself to the lower standards of people who dressed according to the weather. I was one of the few girls that sat at the top of the jungle gym damnit, and by God I would not lose face be being relegated to the lower half with the pants wearers!

And this was when I was in kindergarten. Imagine how much worse that pride has been getting without me realizing it.

But pride is not a negative thing. Sometimes it might lead to some extreme reactions, but in general I think it’s important to have pride in yourself.

Now that I think about it, there are several areas where I’ve always had a lot of pride. I’m a proud Steelers fan. I’m proud of my Scottish heritage. And we all know how proud I am of my epic reading abilities.

So let’s all celebrate the fact that what were formerly belittling traits are now cause for pride. Celebrate your neekness! And while you’re at it, celebrate and be proud of all the other things that make you, well, YOU!

I’ll finish with good news as well! I just realized I’m flying through DALLAS on my way there, not Chicago. That’s on the way back. Now as long as Dallas airport has a Starbucks I will be one happy neek!

If Life Gives You Melons

My absolute favorite t-shirt (thanks Kevin!!)

I am convinced I am dyslexic. Because I also happen to be a Taurus, you can’t talk me out of thinking I’m dyslexic, but it annoys me when people (my father) doubt my dyslexia. It’s not like I wanted to be dyslexic. I certainly didn’t choose to be this way. And it’s hardly my fault that just because I have autocorrect and happen to be a super awesome speed reader that my dyslexia is not immediately apparent.

 Most people would assume if you read well, you’re not dyslexic. The thing with my reading, is that I speed read. The thing with speed reading, is that you don’t actually read the full word. You really just take in the beginning and end of the word. The thing with just reading the beginning and end of the word, is that generally it doesn’t matter if you are reordering the middle letters the wrong way (so if you’re reading it as cheif instead of chief it doesn’t matter). The really nice thing about speed reading, is that you are filling in the word based on context. Which is why when I read a word wrong it becomes pretty obvious.

For example, today I was reading an email that had a word that I thought was “entangled.” However once I finished the sentence (they were very entangled and responsive) I realized it sounded pretty weird. They were responsive to being entangled? Is this some kind of Fifty Shades of Grey thing? So I looked at the word again, studied it a moment or two, and realized it was “engaged.” Here right above “engaged” it said “attend,” so I did my usual letter shifting… and ended up with “entangled.”

This kind of thing happens all the time, and I just ignore it. I actually never thought of it as a problem, I assumed it’s normal. I mean doesn’t everyone have that problem of words and letters constantly moving around?

Apparently not.

Really, I first suspected my dyslexia back in school. I HATED math with a passion. I found it almost impossible to memorize all the stupid formulas, and I was always frustrated because no matter how much time I spent looking over quizzes or tests, inevitably there would be a least one question I missed because at some point my 203 turned into a 230. I’d get some credit, because my work was right. I understood the process. Just those stupid numbers kept getting switched.

You’d really think this would have flagged me for my teachers to mention dyslexia, but to be fair it wasn’t every single problem. It was more like 1 or 2 questions every other quiz/test/homework. I guess they thought I was just sloppy. Or couldn’t read my own handwriting, which is a fair possibility considering how crappy my handwriting is.

Nonetheless, since no one ever mentioned anything I assumed it was all in my head, and carried on.

It wasn’t until I was working with my current company that I really became convinced I was dyslexic. I was frequently making calls, and I hate calling people because half the time I end up dialing the wrong number. I was complaining a bit to a coworker, and he mentioned some similar issues, and then said the magic words “I’m dyslexic.” Which got me thinking. If he was dyslexic, couldn’t I be too?

That weekend I happened to be back home with my parents, and during some down time, I decided to look up some common symptoms for dyslexia. I found this questionnaire of 20 common dyslexic symptoms. It then gave some general results (such as most people have no more than 4 “yes” responses) and also said if you have more than 9 “yes” responses it’s a strong indicator of dyslexia. Guess what? I had ***14***!!!

I raced around my house telling my father (who didn’t believe me), my mother (who just kind of listened and nodded), and my grandmother (who was visiting). Now wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I tell my grandmother about the results, she casually said, “Well you know, Jerry was dyslexic.”

Jerry being my grandfather. Dyslexia being genetic. This clearly being something I should have known.

I suspect my father doubts my dyslexia because of how eager I was to accept it. But why not? Do you realize, being dyslexic would explain so many of what I thought were just random quirks? Things I always thought made me stupid (like my severe issues with left/right, and my inability to tell time unless I have a digital watch) are actually common symptoms of dyslexia.

I’ll conclude this post with a list of common dyslexia symptoms THAT I HAVE, because it’s pretty good proof in my court. Not because of how long the list is, just the sheer randomness of things I’ve always been teased about (like how I pronounce words, or the way I hold my pencil) which are apparently somehow linked with dyslexia. Also, I just like lists (as does my friend Erin).

1.     Spells phonetically and inconsistently.

2.     Confusion over left and right.

3.     Seems to "Zone out" or daydream often; gets lost easily or loses track of time.

4.     Leaves sentences incomplete; stutters under stress; mispronounces long words, or transposes phrases, words, and syllables when speaking.

5.     Shows dependence on finger counting, tricks, and gimmicks.

6.     Can do arithmetic, but fails word problems.

7.     Hears things not said or apparent to others; easily distracted by sounds.

8.     Feeling or seeing non-existent movement while reading or writing.

9.     May lack depth perception and peripheral vision.

10. Clumsy, uncoordinated, poor at ball or team sports.

11. Handwriting varies or is illegible.

12. Trouble with writing or copying; pencil grip may be unusual.

13. Prone to motion-sickness.

14. Has difficulty telling time.

15. Can be an extra deep or light sleeper.

16. Strong sense of justice; emotionally sensitive; strives for perfection.

17. Poor memory for sequences.

"Démon Lama!" (why I love my mama)

In honor of Mother’s Day I’m currently watching The Emperor’s New Groove. Fantastic movie, and one my mother loves as well. I initially turned it on because it reminds me of her. We’ve watched it multiple times. Once even in French actually, which is why we now randomly yell DÉMON LAMA at each other. As I’m watching it today though, I realize there are actually a lot of similarities between the movie and my family. Thus I’m going to extol my fabulous mother through a series of quotes from The Emperor’s New Groove.

“Um, what's with the chimp and the bug? Can we get back to *me*?”

-Kuzco

This was a new, shocking realization to me, but I’m basically the Emperor Kuzco of my family. I’m not entirely a tyrant. Certainly my parents were parents and the ones with authority, but otherwise they’ve always been really good about keeping me happy.

My mother once told me she thought in one of my past lives I was an Egyptian princess. Every girl wants to be a princess, so of course I was flattered, but she wasn’t referring to my royal good looks and manners, but more so my expectation that everything is always going to be done my way. For years, my family was stuck with eating at about the same 10 restaurants since I had such limited tastes. I’m always the person in the front seat of the car.  Even now, when I call my mom I expect her to first listen to my stories and problems before giving her a chance to vent. Dear, sweet woman that she is, she has always made her children the priority; I just took the idea to the extreme.

“I'm the Emperor, and as such, I'm born with an innate sense of direction. Okay, where am I?”

-Kuzco

Another one of my many faults (just a side note, I swear I have a lot of really super great awesome traits as well, it just so happens all the bad ones keep getting mentioned) is that I’ve always had a bit of an independent streak. Not sure why exactly, but I cannot stand to ask people to do things for me. I’d rather go off on my own and figure it out. Of course, I don’t always succeed at that.

My mother has spent years bailing me out of situations when my own attempts fail. When I was little, I decided instead of brushing the snarls out of my hair, I’d cut them out. Then there was the time I was viciously attacked by a large spider and sprayed it with some sort of bleach mixture instead of waiting for my mother to get home. Did I mention the spider was on the newly painted red wall? Oh and let’s not forget when I woke up sick and decided to go to work anyway. It took about five minutes for me to collapse, but my mother was quick on the spot to take me home and tuck me in bed.

“Oh, look. A golden-throated small-winged warbler. Just one more for exotic bird bingo. I am loving this!”

-Kronk

Random fun moment: bundling the mother

If I’m Emperor Kuzco, then my mother is a combination of Kronk and Pacha. She’s definitely more Pacha, but I have to throw Kronk in because my mother and Kronk share the same easy going, easily amused personality. My mother can find the fun in any situation. She has a child’s sense of wonder and amusement. Imagine growing up with a woman like that. No wonder I have such a large creative streak!

And just like Kronk, when things go wrong my mother brushes it off with a “yeah, weird.” She accepts the crazy situations my brother and I create. She rolls with my dad’s last minute plans. When confronted with chaos, she shrugs and then finds the silver lining. It makes it easy for anyone to go to her with their problems, knowing she’s not going to judge, just find a way to make it better.

“Our moment of triumph approaches! Ha ha ha ha ha! It's dinner time!”

-Yzma

Yzma actually says this line, but I like thinking of it the same way Kronk does… referring to food (not their plot to murder Kuzco). Just like Kronk, my mother is a terrific cook. Now the poor woman had to limit her culinary exploration for years due to my picky eater habits, but she has always used food as a way to care for the world. She cooks for her family, she takes meals to friends. She volunteers through church to cook for various benefits. When my brother or I used to have friends over, she would stay up late cooking an assortment of treats for a horde of hungry teenagers. When my father works nights, she cooks “lunch” to take in to everyone around midnight.

My mother expresses love through food, and we are very fortunate with the lots of lovin’ coming our way.

Pacha: I knew it.

Kuzco: Knew what?

Pacha: That there is some good in you, after all.

My mother is the Pacha to my Kuzco. She’s the voice of reason, the one that makes things happen. Just like Pacha, she’s also a genuinely good person. She truly believes in the good in everyone. She’s always willing to help, no matter who needs it and what that person might have done to her in the past. She cares about her family, and her village, and always does what’s best for them regardless of what it might mean for her welfare.

And like Pacha, she waves off the credit. She doesn’t think it’s a big deal, and she never expects to be thanked. So this is why I decided to write about my mother using one of our favorite movies.

Do not mistake this for some sort of obligatory mother’s day post. Oh no. My mother has never expected much (or really gotten much) in the way of thanks, but I decided this was my chance to throw a little credit her way. After all, I wouldn’t be the neek I am today without her.

So thank you, Mom! Because as they sing in Emperor’s New Groove, “a perfect world begins and ends with US!”

When Life Gives You Lemons... (a defense of fanfiction)

There’s been a lot of talk recently about fanfiction. Some authors have been saying they don’t approve of it, and why their work is off limits. I respect their opinions, but honestly some of the comments are just a little nasty, and seem to misunderstand the point of fanfiction.

My college roommate and I actually bonded over fanfiction. We had been randomly assigned, and didn’t have much contact before coming to college. Just a few emails that managed to completely freak her out, poor thing, when I mentioned my bird alarm clock. For my part, I had initially thought I’d been assigned a guy which had thrown me in a tizzy. This is what happens when you skim emails. I caught the name “Patrick” without noticing that “Hall” right next to it. 

Roomie & me trying on funny hats

We were pretty typical random roommates the first week. We tried to hang out sometimes but often left to do our own thing. In the room, we were incredibly polite to each other. Although we had some similar interests, we didn’t exactly click initially. There was just too much awareness that we were stuck in a room together and didn’t really know the other person. What was appropriate to share? What would super offend the other? It wasn’t until my roommate came back in earlier than expected one day and caught me reading fanfiction that our barriers came down. Here she loved fanfiction too! It was a guilty pleasure we shared, and from there we found more and more shared interests and habits, until we became inseparable and people started to referring to us as a combo package instead of separate individuals.  

I’m more of what one calls a fanfiction lurker. I read TONS of it. Not constantly. I definitely go through cycles, but when I’m getting my fanfiction fix I’ll read for hours straight. To me, fanfiction is the ultimate expression of fan devotion in writing. It shows that somebody loves the world and characters you’ve created so much, that they want more of them. They want a chance to play in the world. If it’s a series that’s over, they want a chance to envision what comes next for the characters. 

Now some of the comments about fanfiction have implicated that fanfiction authors don’t have enough creativity to write their own material, or that it’s a waste of their time to devote so much effort to working with someone else’s creations.

Again, I disagree. Many great fanfiction authors write their own stories as well, and some are working on novels. And sure, some stories are just as long, if not longer, than a typical book. But fanfiction gives authors the opportunity to practice their craft and have fun with it. Writing should be fun. It also is absolutely an art that must be practiced in order for one to excel. If you’re trying to write frequently, and you have a fandom you love, why not combine those things and write new adventures for your favorite characters? It’s a great exercise.

Writing (good) fanfiction is surprisingly tough. You have to stay true to characters that your audience already knows, but you don’t want to fall in the trap of using just a few main traits to define them. You need to think of new ways to describe places, characters, and situations without using the exact same verbiage of the original creator, or the tons of other fanfic authors. It’s like being given a prompt in a writing class. While you’re following certain conventions, it’s up to you to come up with something unique for your story. Unlike a class though, you have so many more people working with the same prompt. How do you represent the fandom you love so much, without being cliché and writing the same thing as everyone else?

Within any fandom you’ll find certain themes that have been done to death. There are also some themes that pop up across genres that have created a language used for the fanfiction world. Familiar words like lemons take on whole new connotations, while new terms like mary sue and mpreg are created.

There are also trends in the writing style of fanfiction. When I first started reading it, way back around 2000, most fanfiction was written in a style with characters performing *actions* or lines and activities described in a play type format. There was a lot of interaction from the author as well. It was fairly frequent to see the author inserted at some point in the story, describing their control over the characters. At that point in time fanfiction was more lighthearted. It allowed people to write and read, while still making fun of itself.

Now fanfiction is both more serious, and less precise. Good fanfiction has evolved into real stories. The author is more removed from the process, although there is still a tendency to have author notes at the beginning or end. Unfortunately, while fanfiction now takes itself more seriously, there has also been an influx of authors with less writing skills. A whole new generation thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to write stories in txt talk or lack even basic punctuation.

The tone of responses has changed as well. Before, fanfiction was not widely known. At this point, it seems like almost everyone has heard of fanfiction, and unfortunately, they are only acquainted with the bad examples. Thus great fanfic writers start to write less and less as they get few constructive comments and far more flames.

I happen to write fanfiction. Not very often, to be sure. Nothing extraordinary. But I find it very calming. When I write fanfiction for some reason I tend to write fluffy, silly pieces. I don’t do that in my own writing. My stories tend to be far more angsty. Fanfiction provides me with a way to write the type of stories that for whatever reason I can’t write with my own characters.

Additionally, I often find myself loving the side characters of a story, movie, or series. Fanfiction lets me get to further explore and get to know characters that get very little screen time. It lets me rationalize their choices and actions, and sometimes reflect on my own life as I often write about characters I identify with. Fanfiction, like any type of writing, is basically another form of therapy.

So before you judge the world of fanfiction, let me ask you, have you ever discussed a movie, book, or tv series? Have you ever spoken to someone about a fandom you love, analyzing plot or motives? Complained that you should have seen more of Snape’s back-story, that Anakin turned evil too quickly, or that X-Men 3… well basically ruined everything about the series? Then you’ve started on the path to fanfiction. The only difference with fanfiction is that the authors have taken the time to write out their own interpretation instead of just discussing it.

Someday if I’m a famous author, it’s totally cool to write fanfiction about my world. My momma taught me young that imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Quick, While She's Sleeping

Today is Integalactic Star Wars Day! I love random holidays, but I am especially excited about this one.

I love Star Wars. My parents had all of the original movies and we watched them frequently as I grew up. When we lived in Ohio we actually had a projector and a movie theater room in the house, for playing laserdisc. Any younger readers might not be familiar with laserdisc... basically it’s the predecessor of DVD. It’s like a giant, pizza-size DVD. The records of movies, if you will. I still remember the cover for the New Hope laserdisc. It was beautiful. It was epic. It was inspiring. I was in love.

Now, I happen to be one of those fans that actually likes the new movies. Don’t judge. I saw them all in theaters of course. Phantom Menace I believe I might have seen multiple times in theaters, and is also linked in my mind with pizza. Pizza Hut happened to have some kind of promotion tied in with the movie, and our local Pizza Hut was decorated with all kinds of Star Wars paraphernalia. I love Pizza Hut too, so that was a pretty awesome month for me.

When I really love a movie, I watch it multiple times. Just like when I really love food, I eat it a lot. Makes sense, right? Now for me, these interests tend to match up. There’s a slight difference though between my everlasting love for things, and my infatuation stage. I go through a lot of infatuations. Sure, sometimes it leads to true love, but not always.

Star Wars I am happy to say is love, although oddly I don’t own the movies. I’m hoping to rectify that someday but I’m weird about buying things. I’ll watch pretty much any of them any time they’re on tv. I read a few of the books. I have boxers with Luke and Darth Vader facing off. I have a Princess Leia costume that I pretty much rock. But while Phantom Menace makes me think of Pizza Hut because of the timing and promo, this is completely separate from my usual food-movie infatuation links.

When I’m infatuated with a movie or food, that’s all I want. I eat the food as much as possible. I watch the movie constantly. It’s not the re-watching of a favorite movie every so often. Oh no. It’s encompassing. It all ties back in with that idea of neekness being defined by obsession.

I’ve gotten a little better with age. High school was probably the worst time for the habit. I cannot tell you the number of times I watched Tomb Raider for a few weeks. Pretty much every single day after school if I didn’t have work. And if I did, after I got back from work. During this time we happened to have some chocolate chip cookies in the house, so while watching the movie every day I’d eat chocolate chip cookies with gobs of purple icing on them. Both just infatuations (although cookies are a reoccurring infatuation… they’re the on-again off-again ex-boyfriend of my food). Sure maybe if the movie was on or a cookie was in front of me I’d eat/watch it, but no real need.

The same thing happened with Queen of the Damned and beef ramen. Fun dips and the dvd of The Blue Man Group. My movie infatuations weren’t always linked to food. Unfortunately, I think they’re actually worse then. It’s like all my obsessive energy can focus on the movie instead of being divided.

This was especially true with a few movies that we rented. Most of my other infatuations we were lucky enough to own. It didn’t really make a difference when I watched them over and over again. Rentals were a whole different issue. At least we weren’t restricted to the normal movie rental time frame. At that point my parents had one of the Blockbuster deals where you could keep a movie out however long as you want, but you could only have 2 movies out at a time.

I suspect this caused my family to secretly hate me.

One of my other movie infatuations was with Final Fantasy: Advent Children. Oddly enough I wanted nothing to do with the movie initially. My brother and I had been arguing over what to get, and he won. Thus I was determined to dislike the movie no matter what, just so I could remain convinced that my option was better. Advent Children charmed me regardless. I watched it in English, then in Japanese. I watched it again in English when my mother was home as she missed the initial viewing(s). Some days I’d watch both language versions, watching one and then immediately switching it to another.

This actually could have kept up indefinitely, but one day I came home and the movie was gone.

 King Arthur was even more drastic. Having learned what happened when I left a movie in the living room, once I became infatuated I organized a tactical retreat to my room. This was even worse, as now I could watch the movie multiple times and fall asleep to it. 

Mads Mikkelsen in various roles

I’ve watched it so many times that I can identify the actor for my favorite character (Tristan) in any other movie. When my family got sick of being restricted to renting only one other movie, they took action. One night I had a very weird dream with changing lights and the words, “quick, while she’s sleeping.” I didn’t think about it until the next evening, when I tried to play King Arthur again and the screen retorted something about missing discs.

So really, for the sake of having a life, it might be for the best that I don’t own the Star Wars movies.