Fangirl: Book Review

Hey Friends!!  How was your week?  Mine was kind of crazy...I taught a class of 27 third through fifth graders the magic of theatre and my mom is here visiting!  I'm very happy that it is Saturday, and I can kick back and blog.

In my last post, I reviewed Grace and the Fever , a book about band fandom and one that I loved more than I even expected to.  Now, if you know me at all, you know that fandom is very important to me! However, you might not know that I have written a novel about it, and I am in the process of trying to get it published.  So even though I really wanted to read Grace because of the subject matter, I also had to make sure I wasn't unknowingly ripping off Zan's work.  Well...as I am want to do, I fell into a rabbithole of fandom books. After reading Grace,  Goodreads told me to read Fangirl and Kill the Boy Band.  I thought to myself, "Might as well make sure I'm not unknowingly stealing anyone's fandom fiction ideas, right??"  So up first...FANGIRL!!

Okay, so to be honest this isn't the first time I have read this novel.  It came out in 2013 and I read it but...that was a time in my life where a lot of stuff was happening and it was really hard for me to focus on anything (especially books), so reading it this time kind of felt like it was new.  I just had a vague recollection of the course of the story and there were some parts I had no memory of at all (the brain is a weird, weird thing).

I think there is something about being a fan that is universal across all fandoms.  I would never say I was in the Harry Potter fandom.  I LOVE Harry Potter.  I have read the books countless times, I own all the movies, and I've been to the theme park.  I dressed up at midnight for releases.  I waited in line for the last book, and stayed up all night finishing it.  There will never be something like Harry Potter for me.  But...HP was not what I made friends through, or wrote fanfiction about, or cried my eyes out over.

That certainly doesn't mean I can't appreciate this story, which is, in my opinion, a love letter to the Harry Potter fandom.  The story follows Cath, a girl who is deeply committed to the Simon Snow fandom (a popular series of books and movies).

"Reading was too quiet - She needed to write."

I love this book's focus on fanfic.  I have a lot of feelings about fanfic, and if you would like to talk to me about it, I would be more than happy to.  To this day, fanfic is still my favorite hobby.  It brings me joy even in the darkest of moments, and it helps me 100% of the time I have writer's block.  I've been writing fanfic since before I can even remember.  Seriously.  I was unknowingly writing fanfiction from the time I learned how to spell.  Cath is a well known fanfic author in the Simon Snow fandom, and has thousands of people reading her stories.  She's grappling with trying to write original fiction while still keeping herself and her readers happy.  The story itself branches out and explores her time at college, relationships with friends and family, and her first love.  But at the core of all this is her deep well of passion for the characters of Simon Snow.

If you love  something so much it hurts, or you love something so much you googled fanfic about it because you didn't want the story to end, or you love something so much you stayed up until the wee hours of the morning talking to your friends on internet forums dedicated to the thing, do yourself a favor and read Fangirl.  Even if you can't necessarily connect to Cath's fandom (which mirrors one of the biggest fandoms in history so maybe that's silly to say), you will definitely connect to the comfort and happiness she finds in it.

"Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can't quite keep up with gravity."

Grace and the Fever: Book Review

Hi, my name is KT, and I will absolutely read, watch, or listen to anything about fandom.  I also love writing about it, so when I finished the book "Grace and the Fever" by Zan Romanoff in only two days, I knew I was going to have to write about it.

A little background on my fannish experiences:  I started young.  Like, really young.  I first heard MmmBop when I was only six.  I went to my first boy band concert when I was only ten.  I saw RENT for the first time when I was only eleven.  I fell deeply in love with Spring Awakening when I was only sixteen.  I dove headfirst into the world of band and musical theatre fandom, and never looked back.  I heard about this book from my good friend Bethany, which is fitting seeing as Bethany and I are friends because of our mutual love of Hanson, and immediately pre-ordered it.  Zan is a self professed Hanson fan, so when I read the description I was...excited to say the least.  Very relevant to my interests, thank you, I'll take ten (just kidding I only ordered one).  And then the book came and I started reading.......

........And I didn't really stop until I was finished.  Except to go to work.  And sleep a little bit.

This book follows Grace, a huge fan of the band Fever Dream, through her last summer at home before heading off to college.  Like many band fics, Grace stumbles upon a member of the band, and the rest of the summer unfolds in camera flashes and music industry parties, with Grace being pulled into a completely new world.

To me, the main conflict of this book is not Grace vs. The Fans or Grace vs. The Band, or even Grace vs. Her Friends (who she often ditches to go hang out with her new pop star acquaintances).  The arc of this story centers around Grace vs. Her Online Persona, aka Gigi.  The story made me ache in all the right ways because I have been both Grace and Gigi. Anyone who knows me knows that I have been deeply entrenched in the Hanson fandom since before I even properly knew how to use the internet. For years I kept that life and passion very separate from my real life, for a lot of different reasons.  The main reason was that I just thought that's kind of how fandom worked. It was a separate world, and one that I could escape to when life got hard, and trust me...it did. I recovered from a disorder that was entirely built on lies and secrets. I used to find worth and meaning in those secrets. But then, I started finding happiness and joy and RELEASE in telling people about what happened to me and why I did it. I became an open book. I unlearned the art of secret keeping and lie telling. And slowly but surely...I realized that I didn't have to separate everything quite so nicely. I could just be myself...unapologetically. My fandom friends could also be my real friends, and vice versa.  So while the merging of my two lives wasn't exactly a wild whirlwind like Grace's experience, it still happened.  It was still something I had to figure out.

SO ANYWAY, not to make this review entirely about myself, but I think that's what is so beautiful about this book. I'm sure we (and by we I mean those of us in band fandom) can all see ourselves SOMEWHERE in this book. The story is definitely NOT a Hanson story, I can see a lot more inspiration from the One Direction narrative than any other real band, but at the same time Fever Dream is still it's own, beautiful entity. Even though there isn't much about fic in the book (except for maybe one slash reference), it reads a lot like a fic, which is probably why I read it so quickly. That being said, there are a lot of familiar fic-like tropes used throughout the book that made me smile knowingly.

"Voices in tight, athletic harmony, singing songs that shoot straight up her spine to fill her to the brim with joy, or longing, or maybe it’s both at the same time.  It’s everything all at once.  It happens too fast to name any particular feeling.  There’s only this, only now unfolding, carrying her on its broad back."

I'm obviously very passionate about fandom.  It's my home, and the place where I feel the most loved and accepted.  It also challenges me and makes me crazy.  I wouldn't change the all encompassing life style of loving something so hard it hurts.  I hope you find something you love as much as Grace loves Fever Dream or as much as I love Hanson.  Because trust me...it's the best feeling in the world.

If I wait for summer to begin...

Holy wow, it's been a while, hasn't it?  I was even joking with my sister, who has a blog she actually updates regularly, that blogging is not my thing.  But writing definitely IS my thing, so I'm going to keep this little website in my back pocket for whenever I need or want it.  It's been with me through a whole heck of a lot.

So it's the end of May, you guys!!  Isn't that...crazy?  I feel like time is always flying by so fast.  I'm getting sick of saying "I can't believe it's *insert month here*", but I can't!  So anyway, SUMMER.  I have always loved the summer months.  Even after I graduated and became an ~adult~ there was just something about this time of year that put a tingle of possibility in my bones.  Growing up, summer meant being in a production, or at musical theatre camp, or going on a fun trip.  It meant new friends and new places and dreams as big as the sky over the arboretum.  My favorite memories are summers. Living in the musical theatre bubble of GSA, spending twelve hours a day at Lexington Children's Theatre, performing Rent or Hair or Once on this Island, moving to St. Pete and doing The Burnt Part Boys.

Around this time of year I get an itch.  It's the feeling that something BIG is about to happen, and I know that it's just my body saying "heyyyyy you're about to do a project or go on a trip"  even when it's not actually the case anymore (adulthood, am I right?).  So I guess my challenge to myself, and to all of you, is to USE that itch.  That summery restless feeling where our fingers and toes tell us that school is out, time to do something that we could write a YA novel about, but our brains know that we're still going to have to get up for work every day.  Use it to pick up an old hobby, or go to the beach, or go on a day trip, or spend a Saturday reading adventure novels.  Or...you know...actually do something crazy. Realize that dream you've been thinking about all winter. It's summer, after all.

Random Thanks

It's that time of year again folks.  Thanksgiving is coming up and before we know it it will be December.  This week my Mom is coming to town to celebrate the holiday with me and I couldn't be more excited.  I definitely need some Mom time, especially since the world is getting more and more like an Onion article every single day.  But before I write a post about the big, obvious things I am grateful for, I want to write one about the little, awesome things.  I think they're just as important.

I am thankful for books shared between friends.

I am thankful for a pair of jeans that fit me and that I like to wear.

I am thankful for finding friends in people who I've known for years, connecting over something we never knew we shared until a few months ago.

I am thankful for the smiles and laughs shared between piano and uke players this weekend.

I am thankful for the feeling of laughing so hard you forget to breathe.

I am thankful for coffee.

I am thankful for the surreal feeling of seeing 50 kids all wearing a shirt you designed for the musical you wrote.

I am thankful for my favorite songs and the buzz they put inside my body.

I am thankful for group text messages.

I am thankful for feeling happy for no reason...okay that's silly.  I have plenty of reasons.

I hope you have a wonderful week, my friends!  I am thankful for all of you.

Peace, Love, and Mega-mixes
KT

The feelings are so real to her....

This evening I got all hunkered down at my neighborhood Starbucks, coffee beside me, writing playlist blasting in my ears, with every intention to knock out about two chapters of the novel I'm working on for NaNoWriMo.  BUT ALAS, sometimes it's hard for me to write fiction when there is stuff happening in my actual life that I need to bleed out onto paper (or computer screen, I suppose).  These past few days I can't even tell you how many times I have been told, both in person and on the internet, both individually and collectively, that I (or we) need to calm down, shut up, and stop being afraid. These statements grate on the very core of my being, and I'll tell you why.

A few years ago, when I was first starting treatment, my therapist paused our conversation to gently direct my attention to the fact that after every painful thing I told her, I would laugh.  Even if tears were streaming down my face, I would chuckle.  I would talk about truly traumatizing things -- mainly losing my father, grandfather, and other grandfather in the span of a month, and how that undoubtedly led to my desperate need for control -- and for whatever reason I would just laugh.  She looked me straight in the eye and told me that this was a safe room, and a place that I didn't need to mask my emotions in order to prove to the world that I was okay.  It took me months to unlearn this behavior. Mainly because, when you're deeply entrenched in anorexia, you lose the ability to feel almost anything.  Sure, I wasn't truly happy, but I also wasn't ever truly sad.  Or angry, or disappointed, or hopeful, or agitated.  I just simply was.  It was during that time that I learned how to feel all of those things again, and let me tell you, it was overwhelming.  Imagine nearly five years of backed up emotions rushing towards the forefront of your being all at once.  It was a LOT to deal with.  I remember one day during this period of time a college friend I wasn't even particularly close with showed up at my work and I literally sobbed my eyes out in the bathroom.

Since then, my emotions have mellowed out.  I still feel things pretty deeply, but it's nothing compared to those first few months that I finally allowed them into my life again.  It was hard work letting myself be angry, letting myself be sad, letting myself be scared.  I am the first to say that I am truly grateful for my time in recovery, and I wouldn't go back and live a life in which I never got sick.  It made me who I am and definitely made me a better person today.  It allowed me to see the importance of allowing yourself to feel every emotion you experience, sit with it, and use it.  Something productive can come from every. single. feeling.  Don't you dare tell another human being how to feel, or to just stop feeling a certain way.  Don't you dare tell me to calm down, or to not be angry because of what is happening in the world.  And if someone has been directing this kind of sentiment towards you, I will fight for you.  I will defend you.  I will fight until I have no more breath in my body.  I am with you every step of the way.

Peace, Love, and Nasty Women,
KT <33

Happy Places

Hi Friends!  How are you all doing?  I know I've gone through a whole range of emotions the past few days. My world has been a tense, confusing place due to...ahem...recent events.  I was lucky enough to spend the night of the election with three of my closest friends, but that doesn't mean I slept more than three hours or that I didn't sob my eyes out the following morning.  But you know me.  I'm a little sensitive.

Which brings me to the point of this post.  These past few days I've been consciously making the effort to put myself in my happy places.  Places where nothing, no bit of news, no political candidate, and no fear can touch me.   I'm not saying that I shut out the world and run away from the problems, quite the opposite actually.  These places I go are less of a fortress and more of a suit of armor.  They allow me to go through life ready to face whatever challenges I, or rather we, face.

My number one happy place is music.  Whether I am playing it, or at a live show, or writing a new song, or just putting in my earbuds while walking to work.  My roommates can probably attest to the fact that there is almost always music coming from my room (sorry girls).  I don't know what I would do without it.  It has gotten me through every single thing in my life.

So what about you?  What is your happy place?  It can be something super broad (like music) or something incredibly specific (like one certain episode of one certain show, and no you cannot prove that I am referencing the Slap Bet episode of HIMYM).  There's a lyric in one of my very favorite songs that says "When you can't get through it, you can listen to it."  But you can also roller-blade through it, or garden through it, or woodwork through it, or dog cuddle through it, or hula hoop through it.  THROUGH it.  Not away from it, not against it, not hiding from it.  We can get through it.  I know we can. 

Peace, love, and thousands of pictures from concerts I've been to

KT 

Why I don't post body transformation pictures.

The other day I was mindlessly scrolling through my "On This Day" feature on Facebook and I came across pictures of me at my very lowest weight.  I actually remember weighing myself that day and I remember the number.  There's a lot during that time of my life that I do not remember, but my weight (and the caloric value of all of my safe foods) is something that is branded into my memory.  Sometimes when I come across these shocking photographs, I make a little transformation picture to keep in my phone just for myself and for people I trust to look at and share the sense of pride I feel when I see the two pictures next to each other.  I never post body transformation pictures because, while I think it's good for me to see the transformation and LOVE the "after" picture way more than the "before", I don't think showing the world the bag of bones I was 4 years ago is productive in any way.

My "after", in the words of Sean Ryan Paris - "Sunshine and Happy and Hanson!" 

I will happily post transformation pictures of my hair, or my hands, or even my face.  But my body is off limits.  One of my worst fears is for someone out there will somehow get a hold of a sick picture and yearn for that body.  That terrifies me.  I would rather someone see the fact that my hair grew back or that my cheeks filled out and I got the life back in my eyes. I would rather someone ask me what the main difference is and see happy tears fill my eyes while I say "well number one I didn't die" (still not really sure how I survived it) "but beyond that I don't have an ever present chill in my bones and I don't have hair growing on my lower back in my body's last ditch effort to stay alive."  I don't need to remind the world how much my body has changed. You learn so much when you recover...definitely more than I ever expected to.  One thing you learn is that beauty has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it at all. 

Peace, love, and in an Mmmbop they're gone,

KT <33