Week Thirty-Eight: Boy Meets Boy

I was poking around on the internet, and I happened to come across some surprising controversy about David Levithan's "Boy Meets Boy". Now, if you haven't read the book, you should be able to gather that yes, it's a gay love story. The people I saw disliking the book were not people who don't support lgbtq people, but instead tended to be lgbtq people themselves. The reasoning seemed to be that it was unrealistic, that a world like Paul's is so removed from what we have now, it felt weird.

You all know me. I have plenty of opinions, a blog, and a penchant for lgbtq books. Of COURSE I have something to say.

Boy Meets Boy is a romantic comedy in a book. It follows the formula that we are all familiar with after watching a few "chick-flicks". Boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy re-unites with boy, we all live happily ever after. For some reason, this doesn't feel trite at all, instead, leaving me feeling like I'm drinking the best hot cocoa ever, surrounded by a pile of kittens.

Is the book realistic? Good question. In the same way that Harry Potter, Eragon, Lord of the Rings, or any other alternate reality is realistic, I would have to say yes. When I look for realism, I look for characters reacting in a way that feels right for their background, people who I actually believe could exist. The bottom line is this: do I believe the writer? Can I look past the words on the page and say "yes, you exist"? In the case of Boy Meets Boy, the answer is a resounding yes.

The world that Paul and Noah live in might not look like your world, or like my world, but that doesn't stop me from trusting the author and going along for the ride. And for the space between those two covers, I live in a town where drag queens are the star quarterbacks, where the local scout group is not the homophobic boy scouts, but instead, the co-ed, diversity-friendly Joy Scouts. On those pages, I stand in Noah's room and paint music, and I eat at Veggie D's.

Do I believe that a world like that could exist? With all my heart. That's the world I look forward to living in one day.

One thing I have to say is this. Do yourself a favor. No matter who you are, or what words you use to identify with, you should read this book. Read it and bask in how wonderful it will make you feel.

~Whimsy

P.S. Happy Banned Book Week! Boy Meets Boy has never been banned, but it's been challenged at a few libraries. Celebrate Banned Book Week with me, read one.

Week Thirty-Six: Spoiler-free thoughts about Pottermore and my own personal Sorting.

Wow. It sure feels like it's been a while since I've posted, but I know it's just because BEDA is over, and I'd been in the habit of blogging every day.

As is usually the case, I've been busy. The show that I'm in is going into our third week of rehearsals, with 2 1/2 hours of rehearsal three times a week. Everyone is hilarious, and I'm having a great time. As is with last winter/early spring, I'll be teaching classes with my family at a homeschool co-op. Last year, we taught 3 classes at one co-op, all day on Tuesday. This fall, we've got proposals in at three different co-ops, and if all the classes we've proposed get the minimum enrollment, we'll be teaching 10 different classes. I have to say, I'd really excited about this. Between proposals for Banned Book Club (something I've already started calling "the BBC" in my head), teaching American Sign Language to two different age groups, and all the other amazing stuff, I really can't wait to get back to teaching. Autumn, here I come!

In other news, I finally got my Pottermore welcome e-mail!
When it appeared in my inbox, I literally jumped out of my chair and went shrieking into the kitchen saying something to the effect of "It's HERE! My Pottermore e-mail! I'm MAGICAL!!!" Seriously. Best e-mail ever.

No spoilers will be in this post, so don't worry. I wouldn't do that to people.

I've completed the first book, and it was amazing. Being a die-hard Potterhead, just having some new HP related things, directly from Jo Rowling herself is amazing. Without saying any more, I just have to say that I can't wait for book two!

Of course, the question that seems to be looming over everyone's head is about the Sorting. I was so nervous and SO excited, so naturally when I reached that part, I was just a tiny bit nerved up. I've self-identified as a Slytherin since the age of 9, (over half my life, and over ten years), so I have some very strongly held attachments to the house of the snake.

I took ages to complete my Sorting test, because I wanted to give the honest answers SO badly without trying to skew the results (either subconsciously or not) in any direction. After agonizing over every question, I pressed the button to get my result, the screen changed over to a bright, brilliant and shining RED.

I was in shock. Gryffindor? The house that I've spent years of my life teasing? The one house that I said that I wouldn't be happy about getting into on Pottermore?

I'll admit it. I started crying.

After a while, I managed to pull myself together and began to come to terms with the fact that being placed in Gryffindor is not, in fact, a bad thing*, and that the fact that I've been sorted into a house that I didn't think I was in does not mean that my whole life was a lie.

Because of my Sorting, I've been taking a new, closer look at Gryffindor, as a house. Some of the stereotypically Gryffindor traits are not things that I hold very dear to my heart, but once I looked past the James Potter-esque contingency, I can see that Gryffindors are just as varied as I've been trying to convince everyone that Slytherins are.

So much of my time has been spent trying to convince people that Slytherins aren't all bad. There's a surprising amount of house prejudice out there, and the misconception of Slytherins as selfish, evil, manipulative, cold-hearted bastards who care for themselves first, foremost and only really bothers me. As soon as people find out that I am a Slytherin, I've had every reaction from people physically backing away from me, to giving me really odd looks and asking why I wanted to be a Slytherin, to telling me I'm "too nice" to be a Slytherin. I think it's absurd that you can be "too nice" to be a Slytherin, just as I think it's absurd that you can be "not nice enough" to be a Hufflepuff. People who are sorted into different houses are still just people, and they come in a variety of personalities.

We need to remember that we see the Harry Potter books from Harry's point of view, and that what he perceives is not going to be 100% accurate (can anyone remember his repeated accusations of Snape or Draco being behind everything that seems just a slight bit off?) and that Harry is a person, with his own experiences coloring his view of the world, including the houses at Hogwarts.

I've been trying to remember that (just like is true with Slytherins) there's not just one kind of Gryffindor. Remus Lupin, one of my favorite characters in the HP series is a Gryffindor. So I have to say that while I'm not exactly happy with where I got Sorted, I'm coming to terms with being a Heart Slytherin and a Pottermore Gryffindor. What a weird mix.

So thank you, J.K.R. Thank you for forcing me to look at myself differently, and for giving us HP fans even more to look forward to. Thank you for writing, and thank you for helping make people into readers.

I'll see you all on Pottermore.

~Whimsy

*Please understand that I have many friends who are Gryffindors, and I love them all dearly, it's just that's not where I saw myself being placed, and after living as a very proud and out-there Slytherin, it can feel not-particularly-fantastic to be told that you're playing quidditch for the other team, as it were.


P.S. If you're on Pottermore, feel free to add SilverSpell70, and if you do, leave me a comment here so I can know who you lovely people are. Cheers!

Week Twenty-Five: A Discussion Of Summer And Why This Blog Post Is So Late

Why hello!

I realize it's been a rather long while, and that, as of now, I am a month behind ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn my project. My plans are to fix this by creating a series of blogs. I will firstly, catch up, and secondly, I will attempt to actually finish this year-long project in a blaze of glory, not a puddle of failure. xD

Currently, this project is in the puddle of failure phase. But never fear, dear readers, THIS BLOG WILL SURVIVE.

So, I've been doing pretty much everything, which is why I haven't had any time to properly blog. Between having the ever-charming Nick over to my house for a whole week, continuing rather large home-improvement projects, having parties and things, going on vacation, and still keeping up with the classes/workshops I participate in, getting ready for HP7 part 2 and writing some new music, I haven't even had any time to sit and READ, which has been a travesty all unto itself.

Just a few days ago, I managed to get to a library, and I subsequently curled up with my books, and haven't let go since. I still have my summer re-read of Taggerung and Pearls of Lutra, which are my two favorite Redwall books. Yes, I know. I'm nineteen, and I read Redwall. I own almost every one of those books, and despite the fact that they're certainly follow a formula, I've read each one numerous times.

I can probably tell you the full history of the vermin hordes in Mossflower, and the chronicles of the Badger Lords in order (not the order the books were released in, the order that the story follows), and more than likely, I could draw up a half-way decent map of the Abbey.

There are some books that I read as comfort food, when life is getting too crazy, when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, when I have no time to breathe, I can set aside a few minites to scan a page or two of a book that I've read over and over again. And every time I read that book, I return to an old friend. I might remember the dialouge, and I might hum the songs when they appear in the text, and I might know who dies in the end, what the end result of a prophecy or a riddle is, but that doesn't matter. In between the pages of that book, I've found a small piece of sanity where I had none before.

Thankfully, there's no disaster in my life that calls for pulling out the Redwall books, but I still like to read them when it's summer.

I can lay back on the grass, begin the story, and just think about living in a tiny stone abbey, eating food made by ottercooks and dreaming of a sword that belonged to a small warrior with a big heart.

~Whimsy