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) – 

Confessions of a K-Dramaholic

Hold your judgements, people. Before you snort in disgust at my apparent two-facedness (since I seemingly can’t stand romantic literature but you’re still seeing this post), allow me to explain.

You might have noticed the disturbing gap between my last post and this one when I promised you in November that my winter break was going to up this space’s tempo. That didn’t happen, because, er, sometimes even after you’ve finished off a TV series marathon, you can’t get closure, so you fast forward through it again – probably by using hostages to explain to your parental authorities that you’re merely stuck in front of your laptop because your hostage made you watch it with her. Definitely not the other way round. Naturally, my TBR pile got bigger (because, I can’t resist buying books with BUY 2 GET 1 FREE stickers) and my e-ARCs are pushing themselves to their expiry date. My roommates were disgusted by what they saw; my parents let their jaws drop when they caught me making soppy eyes at the screen when the actors touched lips for a long time with music playing in the background (HOW IS THAT CALLED KISSING I WANT TO KNOW) and I decided I needed to explain WHY. (To myself, first and foremost.) And I also, uh, needed a post ASAP.

CONS:

• Okay. So the dialogues are cheesy. Extremely. But I am fully prepared to accept that it might be because of the translation problems. In order to fully understand this issue, I thought of translating popular Hindi and Malayalam songs (which are pure poetry) into English in my head and that exercise killed me. Because poetry in Malayalam = Cheesiness in English. Same problems, maybe? But there all lots of little phrases of wisdom peppered throughout and some one-liners that made me roll around laughing, clutching my belly.
• And the drama is extravagantly so. Yes, that’s there. I felt like pulling out my hair every time a new iceberg kept cropping up to drive my ship apart. The money-driven mother, the obsessed fiancé, the random admirer, the jealousy and self-sacrifice involved in all of the above, was just too much on my nerves. I know it’s going to be a happy ending, so can you get there already?

PROS:

• ALL THE GUYS

(Insert a heartbreakingly huge sigh here) I mean. Just look at them. Even the supporting actors. And the villains. They do look … not as manly as I would have liked, but they’re still so. I mean. Uh. Um.

WHERE DO YOU GUYS COME FROM?

HOW DARE YOU SHOW YOUR PRETTY FACE HERE?

• The Badass Heroines

I don’t care if they use stunt-doubles. I really don’t. It’s the character they portray that matters. All of Geum Jan Di’s roundhouse kicks made my eyes bulge out in envy. Her sarcasm and yelling. Who knew walking, talking death threats could be so cute too?

Cha Eun Sang’s altruistic talents. Her penchant for issuing empty threats.

Park Gae In: Weirdness. Obtuseness. Fierce Friend Protector. And her enviable ability to eat anything, anywhere, anytime.

Kim Na Na’s jealousy. Her taking responsibility for her own feelings. Her survival skills, both emotionally and otherwise. And man, can she shoot an outlaw.

• THE MUSIC

The hero and the heroine have a theme song to themselves. The anti-hero or the third corner of the love triangle has one for every time he looks at the girl. One for the girl lost in thought. One for every time the male corners of the triangle fight. One when something ominous is going to happen. And they are all so good, man.

• The Direction and The Camera

Just like how the writing style of a book determines whether or not I like the plot, the director’s abilities clinches it for me. The very strategically inserted flashbacks (yes, sometimes, they do go overboard with it). The nightmares whenever the hero is stuck at a crossroads. How they include the weather elements like the sun, snow and wind for the emotional scenes. The STUNTS, man. And I simply can’t resist making wallpapers out of my screenshots every time.

• The Bloopers

Okay. Yes, I’m cheating with this absolutely unnecessary plus point. It doesn’t hurt at all to watch them, though.

I just needed to use this GIF somewhere