The Perils Of Being A Fangirl

Here. This post is the raison d’être of my blog. This post is the one in which many of you will share a sense of camaraderie with me. This post will show you that YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE.

And that it’s okay to be obsessed. You know, as long as it’s not drugs, or sex, or underground cults. 

(Note: Does anyone know the gender neutral term for FANGIRL? And please don’t tell me it’s FAN – as far as I am concerned, that word is an umbrella term, not a synonym. And I beg your pardon while I treat this post from the view point of fangirls specifically – it’s a shame I don’t know more fanboys personally.)

1. Risk of Degradation of 20/20 Vision

Due to –

(a) All that late-night reading under your blanket with a torch, because you don’t want your parents to catch you up past your bedtime and risk unleashing their wrath in the corporeal form of THAT’S IT NO MORE BOOKS

(b) TV show marathons as a reward for academic excellence (which is code for surviving through exams avoiding all your guilty pleasures)

(c) Excessive social networking – especially when the other fangirl you’re with over the miracle called the Internet, is in another time-zone, depriving you of sleep

2. Catching Up On Deprived Sleep During The Daytime Especially During Class HoursAnd Zombie-Walking Through The Rest

Due to the above mentioned.

3. Lack of Non-Fictional Romantic Life

Reading too many books starring heroes of the fantastically perfect variety, or watching too many TV shows with the same category of protagonists can affect the average reader to such a degree of romantic sterilization of the mundane sort by raising par of male excellence. (Or if you swing the other way, then female excellence.)

4. Managing All Your Social Network Accounts

I swear. This is a talent that is gifted to a fangirl, upon her baptism into this community. How else do you explain the superhuman memory and multitasking capabilities involved in remembering all your ten thousand usernames and passwords, who you last chatted or tweeted with, and maintaining an unbroken comment thread to avoid any non-civil interactions?

5. Empty Wallets

For those of you out there, whose financial aspects are still governed by a superior authority of the parental sort, then you have limitations (like me) on how much merchandise you can own. You resort to pinning wishlists and loaded virtual carts on your Pinterest boards and bookmarks bar, and just staring at what could have been on your laptop screen. When that happens, you turn to –

6. Your DIY Skills and Photoshop Expertise

However deplorable they may be, we have that shoddy wad of bookmarks made by hands smelling of Fevicol, t-shirts we spent that last batch of fabric paint on, and folders (both digitally and otherwise) filled with our own edits and sketches.

7. The Need to Celebrate Holidays Unknown to Mere Mortals/Mundanes/Muggles

We have reminders on our mobile phones and of course, in case they fail, we also have the ever-reliable power of the online fangirl-hood to remind us when to eat only blue food or randomly scream DEATH TO DEATHEATERS or whatever.

8. Research and Intellectual Debates

We are never happy knowing what we already know. We thirst to read up on all the different versions of backstories of the various characters, the author’s perspective on how (s)he chose all the proper nouns in the book, and then unwittingly become party to raging wars on whether or not a particular character is a hero or a villain or other civil debates. If you’re talking about a TV show, then it goes without saying that unless and until we’ve dug up bloopers and the actors’ Wikipedia pages, we’re never going to attain closure.

9. Shipping Through Choppy Seas

This is mostly self-explanatory. The FEELS fuelling our primal fangirl instincts to keep calm and continue shipping canon and headcanon ships in the face of tempests exacts a heavy toll on our head in the form of acute headaches that only tear-stained pillows can cure. Speaking of which – 

10. Tears Both Shed And Unshed

I have always maintained that a significant percentage of the average global tear-level has been contributed by the tear ducts of fangirls. To cry, clutching the damned book in your arms or after watching that tragic final episode of a Korean drama series, is an occupational hazard.

11. HANGOVERS, MAN. Hangovers.

It’s not enough that we’ve been cursed to harbouring eternal feels for a series (book or TV), but we’ve also been damned with being left to our own devices to deal with that inexplicable limbo stage of our life that follows after the final episode or chapter. We then face the big question – WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

We feel as if we’re trapped in a tunnel, the vision of closure mocking at us in the far-off distance. Comfort Food, Comfort Reading selected passages, and Comfort Replaying selected scenes becomes the norm for some days.

And I will thank Ron Weasley to define what being a fangirl truly means (courtesy of Tumblr) – 

20 Things You May Not Know About Me

Once upon a time, in a pretty large town called Buttlazyville, a babe was born. Before long she was elected Mayor of Buttlazyville. The Mayor happens to be yours truly. The End.

There happens to be a reason for the above anecdote. Skylar @ Life Of A Random tagged me sometime in December LAST YEAR, and it took five months and an Easter weekend to finally inspire me to make a move and bring forth this post unto you, Bloggerverse.

1. How tall are you?

I am a 157cm (approx. 5’2”) high pile of awesomeness. Yes, I know that translates to “short” and if you read this post, you’ll know exactly how I’m dealing with that irrefutable fact.

2. Do you have a hidden talent? If so, what?

There’s something you should know about me. Any and all talents I possess are guaranteed to be known to all mankind (or I make sure of that). And when I say ALL MANKIND I mean people in my Freemasons circle (like I care about the opinion of anyone else). Ooh there’s Talent #1: Dramatic Exaggeration In The Name Of Poetic License. You should read my Twitter (or not).

What else? I can waggle my ears and wiggle my brows. I can say the Periodic Table up to 20 elements in my sleep. I can also tell untrue stories pretty convincingly – the few times I’ve tried to con people, BOY did they fall. (But I also happen to be pretty gullible, so I think it’s safe to say the last one comes at a price.)

3. What is your biggest blog-related pet peeve?

The right to answer this question would demand the prerequisite that you visit other blogs besides your own. I don’t. And that’s not because I have a bigger head than my butt, but because my college ensures I don’t moonlight my way out of the academic shit-pile they’ve dumped on us.

(But if you still want to hear it, I’ll repeat Skylar’s answer – it truly annoys me when people don’t reply to comments. Then again, I have as many followers as there are roses in the Sahara, so I may not understand the logistics of commenting on blogs with legions of followers.)

4. What's your biggest non-blog-related pet peeve?

People judging others. People judging me. Me judging everyone else.

5. What is your favorite song?

I do have a favourite song, but it’s kind of personal so I’ll just go with a small list instead (since I can’t pick one) that’s on loop in my head these days –

Antarctica – Hands Like Houses

Love Me Like You Do – Ellie Goulding (No, I haven’t seen the movie, I just like this lady a lot)

Elastic Heart – Sia

Runaway – Aurora

Beg For It – Iggy Azalea

No Good In Goodbye – The Script

Dark Side – Kelly Clarkson

Good Life – One Republic

…. And the entire OST album from the Korean series The Heirs

6. What is your favorite Etsy shop that isn't yours?

7. What is your favorite way to spend free time when you're not alone?

Movie nights, TV marathons, and Youtube. There, that’s time well spent.

8. What is your favorite junk food?

Oily, MSG-containing potato chips, spicy tapioca chips, jackfruit chips, ghatia – they all work. Fortunately for my heath, the above gif holds good for this question as well and I’m a bigger miser than an eater, which is why I’m still alive and healthy and not at risk of entering the Guinness Book of Records for heaviest person ever.

9. Do you have a pet or pets? If so, what kind, and what are their names?

Oh. You meant non-fictional pets? I have a fish tank in which the population is declining rapidly despite mine and my dad's best efforts. And some potted plants. The End.

10. What are your number one favorite nonfiction and fiction books?

SHUT. UP.

11. What is your favorite beauty product?

My Kajal-stick. That’s because the only cosmetically salvageable physical feature is my eyes and also because I look like I have jaundice (or something) without kohl underlining my eyes.

12. When were you last embarrassed? What happened?

You know, if I actually did keep a list of all the embarrassing things I’ve done – that are known and unknown to me – it could wrap around the earth’s middle THRICE. I’m sadly not even exaggerating.

Fortunately for me, I’m pretty good at supressing bad memories. And fortunately for all ye that seek companionship in misery, if you’re willing to ignore the whole  Most Recent Embarrassment clause, I’ll regale you with an incident that I’ve made my peace with. (Meaning, I no longer feel the irrational need to bury myself alive ten feet underground).

I am undeniably, unequivocally clumsy. It’s like my feet have a mind of their own. So, for most of the time my feet are in contact with the ground, I have subconsciously reserved a portion of my busy brain to JUST CONCENTRATE ON MY LEGWORK. But, obviously Mr. Murphy wasn’t too happy that his law was being ineffective in my life. And, there I was in class one day, bending over to pick up my bag from the bench. I successfully picked it up, and threw it over my shoulders. I may have misjudged its weight and my shoulders weren’t ready to deal with it and somehow my feet tripped on the legs of the bench and suddenly I was falling backwards.

Now this is the craziest part. A sane person would grab on anything and try to pull herself upright before she actually landed on her ass. Not me. There was a bench right behind me so I thought I’ll just fall onto it and try not to look like I’d tripped but that I I’d purposefully sat on it. What I did not realize was that there was a guy already sitting on it.

And then there was this deafening silence while I leaped up from the poor boy’s lap and apologized profusely. He still hadn’t regained his power of speech when I ran from the classroom that had erupted in laughter and catcalls.

13. If you could only drink one beverage (besides water) what would it be?

Coffee, please. I have zero shame in admitting I’m a caffeine-addict.

14. What's your favorite movie?

15. What were you in high school: prom queen, nerd, cheerleader, jock, valedictorian, band geek, loner, artist, prep?

Not applicable to me – I didn’t study in the sort of high school Hollywood propagates. For the sake of, I’ll say nerd. But not a member of the nerd group that wears thick rimmed glasses and lugs around tomes of extra reading material, but the kind that sits around fangirling, pulling pranks on each other and then inexplicably acing through exams. Teachers love us, cheergirls hi-five us, and everyone acknowledges that we’re crazy and smart and aliens undercover.

16. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?

Please. PLEASE TAKE ME TO HOGWARTS. I’M BEGGING YOU.

17. PC or Mac?
Pfft. Utility over fashion statements. PCs over Macs.

18. Last romantic gesture from a crush, date, boy/girlfriend, spouse?

I’m sorry, could you please hold while I refer my secret diary? Hang on – oops, sorry – But Dear Diary informs me I’ve got NON-EXISTENT ROMANTIC HISTORY so that’s that and let’s move on already, alright?

19. Favorite celebrity?

I have a thing for actresses who kick wizard asses, tribute asses and Erudite asses in reel life and regular asses in real life. Read Emma Watson, Jennifer Lawrence and Shailene Woodley. And David Archuleta (that’s another story for another time, folks).

20. What blogger friends do you secretly want to be best friends with?

Hey, this is unfair, alright? First off, there aren’t all that many blogs that I keep track of and the ones I do, we’re already virtual BFFs. And there are others with wonderfully weird, crazily stupid, and bookishly obsessed bloggers that I do want to be besties with, but alas. My academic life ensures I don’t have time for socializing over the internet.

Phew. It's done. OMG THIS POST IS FINALLY DONE. Skylar, you awesome thing, thank you for tagging me and sorry for the delay. And all you amazing people out there - THERE IS NO SHAME IN TAGGING YOURSELF. Go on, do it, and open yourself up a little more.

 I dare you.

Keep Calm and Don't Hate Snape

Last week, was in short, very enlightening. Besides getting to know about the addictive merits of Google Plus (which happened when our college Wi-Fi decided Twitter was also non-academic and blocked it as well) I was deeply embroiled in a word-clash of sorts. Someone had randomly posted something about how Snape was overrated and I (almost carelessly) made a short-and-sweet list of the things Snape had done and then a little while later someone challenged my comment. I decided to ignore it out of the requisite social-network politeness when (s)he asked if I was ignoring it because I couldn’t defend myself. Now I couldn’t let that pass by, could I? I decided to do some research on Snape-hate and then swore colourfully when I realized that I was naïve to think people would accept Snape as a hero.

Then I randomly detained people in the hallways and demanded to know if they thought Snape was a hero or not. The answers fell in both categories with a few undecided. I felt like it was my moral obligation to Snape’s memory to bring a balance in the opinion of The Half-Blood Prince, at least on the Internet and hence this post.

So Snape-haters are asking us to please, please stop calling S a tragic hero because that’s not what he is, since:

1. Snape did not love Lily. Please recognize the difference between Love and Obsession.
2. Which non-Slytherin was left un-tortured? Look at Neville, the poor boy’s boggart in third year was S – even when he had parents turned insane by Bella, a grandmother who regularly send him howlers, and a school to look down on him.
3. And hello, the Queen herself has said that Snape isn’t a hero, so just deal with it.

I shall proceed to deal with these arguments serially.

First, that Snape didn’t love Lily - that it was the sort of relationship that should repulse anyone level-headed to be not carried away by the lure of unrequited love and all that shit. I must applaud you cynics, if you have truly come up with a method to quantify love to decide that when there are no obvious symptoms (like stalking or complusive jealousy bordering on aggression); something even psychologists have failed to do. There is a whole lot of Tumblr marching to the tune of Snape-hate – a notable one being about how his patronus was a doe (Obsession scores!) while James’ was a stag which was a complement of Lily’s. Now, I don’t know what canon has to say about this but this is another way it could be interpreted. The books don’t specify if Snape’s patronus had forever been a doe or if that happened only when he lost her. We also know from Tonks’ story that when she thought that she couldn’t have Remus, hers became that of a wolf.

Why else do I think it was love and not some sick affliction? Because love has the power to transcend spite and even death. I hope everyone will do me the honour of agreeing with me when I say that Snape has protected Harry – from mortal harm, that is. Granted, he was absolutely despicable when it came to having an entire conversation without wounding Harry in some way. But let’s refer back to the Prince’s Tale, wherein we realized that the Marauders weren’t all as glamorous as we’d thought them. Remus admits that even when James had stopped picking on other kids, he didn’t stop with Snape. So that makes it seven years’ worth of public degradation. Maybe the most Christian of you out there wouldn’t do it, but most humans would find it extremely hard to accept your nightmare’s child, especially when he looks so damnably like him. And you definitely wouldn’t pledge to keep saving his ass. Which is what Snape did, because he owes it to his love for Lily. Obsessed Snape would have done something to hurt Lily when she started going out with James, Snape in love suffers through it. (Because on some level, he knows she's too good for him?) Obsessed Snape would have killed himself on hearing the news that the sole purpose of his existence was no more. Snape in love weathers the storm inside. Obsessed Snape would have killed Harry – after all he was the reason why Lily was dead. Snape in love decides to give Harry shit – the spawn of the bully, instead of the alternative and vows to look after Harry – the child of the woman he loved.

Please note: I also came across the sentiment that Lily should have chosen Snape instead of James. The fact that Snape was in bad company and that their personalities diverged as they grew up, is indisputable. Lily was a smart woman and she chose to listen to sense. Plus, oh boy, James did love her – I ship them wholeheartedly.

Now I will say this. Severus Snape was a horrible person. Without doubt. Books One through Six present us with numerous examples to support this statement. He made everyone feel like shit. He made no attempts to hide favouritism between students, openly shamed Hermione for being a good student, made a target out of Neville, and went to extreme lengths to expose Lupin. No doubt he was the boggart of many students. But can we please refer to the Prince’s Tale again? Here, we learn that Snape could have had an abused childhood, at the hands of his father. Then when he’d thought he had earned salvation in the form of the Hogwarts acceptance letter; the one place where he thought he would fit in, the Marauders ruined that plan for him. Extremely. And many of us know at least second hand, how bullying in one’s life during his formative years changes him. Then he went and got himself get caught up with the Dark Arts, because he found acceptance in that circle.

So what good does knowing all this do? I recently saw a Tumblr post that said “Tragic backstories explain bad deeds but do not excuse them.” Couldn’t be truer. But, it helps us empathize with the character. It shows that the so-called villain wasn’t just the sum of his choices, but also the result of the human psyche being pushed over the edge when the going gets tough. Instead of turning in on himself, he lashed outwards, hurting innocent bystanders in the process.

Please note: The above also happens to be my reason as to why I consider Luke Castellan (from the Percy Jackson series) a hero as well.

I will not deny that that video of JKR saying that she doesn’t consider Snape a hero did not astound me. It threw me off balance and made me wonder what’s actually going on inside that woman’s awesome head. But then I mulled over it and I finally decided that maybe, she doesn’t consider him a conventional hero. You know the sort – the holier-than-thou kind that beheads the tyrant and holds up the bloody sword and just when everyone’s thinking that they have been saved, he gets stabbed from the behind. Or the girl he loves is killed. That’s not a tragic hero, that’s a hero who’s met a tragic end.

Google again kindly donned on the knight’s armour as it taught me that there are different kinds of heroes. Since this post is already an epic in terms of blog post units, I will not delve into a thesis about how Snape satisfies the Aristotelian classification of a tragic hero and you can personally decide it for yourself by sifting through the Internet yourself. But even in obscure terms, I will proclaim Snape a hero – on the grounds that heroism isn’t the white against the black; it’s shades of grey. All that bravery earns a lot of brownie points. I also feel that sometimes we can’t accept a person who, for ten years, we’ve established as someone to be burned at the stake when we’re suddenly confronted with his back story. And then we try to rationalize that hate. Heroism will always mean differently to different people, and I guess whether Severus Snape was a hero or not will always be a controversial ground.

Whatever. I didn't even know I felt so strongly about you up until now.