Saturday, April 26, 2014

Dyslexia

In the Percy Jackson series, we learn a few things about dyslexia. In Percy's case, it makes it hard for him to read. He describes the words as swimming on the page, and the letters getting mixed up. In some cases it can affect other stuff too, like for some people it's just hard to read, for others it affects math and reading. Honestly, it must be seriously hard to be dyslexic. I remember one day when I was trying to read something that my eyes would not concentrate on the words. They just wouldn't focus. It was so hard to read, it was giving me a headache. Then I realized it was kind of like how dyslexia is described. If I had to go around like that full-time trying to read but the words wouldn't come together, I would go insane. I have some fandomeer friends who are dyslexic, they just listen to the audio versions of the books instead of read them. I talk to one friend about the Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus books so much that I used to forget that he was dyslexic. So all I really wanted to say is to the dyslexic people out there: you're really awesome. Seriously, the fact that you find a way to read even though your mind doesn't want you to is amazing. As a friend of mine said once, the real heroes are people who make it through school with dyslexia. You guys are true heroes.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Katniss and Finnick

(Spoilers for the Hunger Games Trilogy)
So, you guys know me well enough that you should know that I don't ship this. At all. I am a hardcore Toast shipper. (Katniss and Peeta, bros.) But this is the cutest friendship ever. Almost as cute as the Golden Trio. Almost, that is.
When Katniss meets Finnick, she knows she can't trust this guy. This flirtatious kid isn't worth her time. And it stayed that way for a while. But what Haymitch says, in general, goes, so when he decided that Katniss and Finnick were to be allies, they were to be allies. I'm not totally sure Katniss trusted Finnick at all in Catching Fire. I think she started liking him enough. But you don't want to make a connection like that with someone you know you will have to kill if you want to keep someone else alive, and it didn't help that after she got out of the arena she found out that he was in on the plan to get her out of the arena alive, even if it meant sacrificing Peeta. Honestly, Finnick started to become Katniss's friend in the first place because of the rebellion. If Katniss wasn't going to help the rebellion, then they might have not even formally met.
In Mockingjay, that's when they really started becoming friends. Maybe it was that they could relate to each other. Peeta and Annie were both being tortured in the Capitol. It helped to be able to talk to someone who understood what they were feeling, and it actually helps you forget about your troubles to do something for someone else, so caring about what they other felt and what happened to the other and taking care of the other, that's what helped them get through it. You know it's true friendship when he shares his rope with her! That's so cute!

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Happy Birthday Emma Watson!

So I just saw something about this on Facebook and I decided this was definitely worth celebrating.
Emma Watson is the perfect actress for Hermione Granger. How is she completely capable of portraying Hermione's adorable and sassy nerdiness? She really makes us believe that she wants to go to the library. She makes us believe that she is Hermione Granger. Emma Watson, thank you, thank you for being one of the best actresses in the world. We couldn't have asked for a better person to portray one of the most popular characters in the reading world.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Harry and Ron

(Spoilers for Harry Potter)
Hey, fandomeers! Today I wish to share with you a few words on the best bromance ever: Harry and Ron. Yes indeed, is there any denying that Harry and Ron are the cutest friends? No. No there is not. Harry and Ron are the most adorable friends you'll ever meet. They're always together. They love each other like brothers. Was there a summer (besides the first one) that Harry and Ron weren't together? They did everything together and oh gosh dang it it's just so cute. The worst is when Harry and Ron get in fights and they stop talking to each other. Uggh, can't you guys tell you're best friends forever?!? Here's a quote from The Goblet of Fire when Ron was mad at Harry for putting his name in the goblet without saying anything, also known as jealousy, and Harry was mad at him because he didn't actually ask for any of it:
"The next few days were some of Harry's worst at Hogwarts. The closest he had ever come to feeling like this had been during those months, in his second year, when a large part of the school had suspected him of attacking his fellow students. But Ron had been on his side then. He thought he could have coped with the rest of the school's behavior if he could just have had Ron back as a friend, but he wasn't going to try and persuade Ron to talk to him if Ron didn't want to. Nevertheless, it was lonely with dislike pouring in on him from all sides."
And Harry's so sad! And then later he does say that sure he had Hermione, and he loved her very much, but she just wasn't the same as Ron.
And then Ron runs away in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And I feel like they try not to talk about him because it's just too sad, but then the best part is when he comes back. And he saves Harry and they talk about it then they hug and he's totally welcomed back. (By Harry, that is. Hey, Hermione can say out of this. It isn't about her right now.)
Aw, they are going to be best friends forever. I love it.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Essential Books to Read in Their Essential Order if You Want to be a Writer

(Spoilers for Frankenstein.)
This is for those fandomeers who want to make other fandomeers just as happy as they are someday, by being a writer. Cool! I want to do that too! So now that you have this desire to write, you probably want to learn a lot about your profession. Reading other books is the best way to learn about writing. It helps develop your style, plus you know the ways that you absolutely do not want to write if you didn't like the book. So, in my personal opinion, and as a fandomeer I would trust my opinion, these are the books you should read if you want to be a writer in the order you should read them, and if you're curious as to why, I'll tell you that too.
1. Harry Potter. This is the basis of all fiction literature. Don't believe the haters. It's good stuff and it'll teach you a lot. You need to start with this because it has it all. It has an entertaining story, which is a pretty important part of writing fiction if that is what you desire to write. Do you want a plot that has so many secret things, pieces that make you think, and mind-blowing moments? J.K. Rowling's masterpiece has so many of those things you won't even know what to do with your life. You'll have plenty of experience with surprising the readers. And lastly, Harry Potter is, of course besides the pieces of wizardry and things, the most realistic work of fiction I've ever read. The people act like people. Most people in books act like people, but not to this level. If a teenage boy would do it in real life, then Harry and Ron will certainly be doing it too. So many things you can learn in seven books.
2. Hunger Games. Now that you've learned the so-much-more-than-basic basics of writing, now you can go into something deeper. Suzanne Collins can teach you how to write some seriously intense stuff. Your readers won't even know what to do with their lives until they've read every single page of your book. These books can teach you how to do that probably more than any other book in the world. And this is especially relevant to you if you like to write in first person. Hunger Games can teach you how to narrate. Sure, there's the dialogue, and that alone is amazing. But one of my favorite parts of reading Hunger Games is listening to Katniss's thoughts and monologues. They are seriously well-written paragraphs of Katniss just thinking. And some people cannot achieve that. (Like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I'm reading in school. It was pretty dull listening to Victor being devastated after Justine's trial.) If you want to know how to write some dialogueless narrations, this is the trilogy for you.
3. Percy Jackson and the Olympians. At this point in your writing research you've learned about plot structure, realism, keeping the reader interested and narration, you should learn more about writing elements and how to enhance those plot structures and narrations. These books are a perfect example. If I do say so myself, Percy is a hilarious kid. They way he thinks and how he and his friends talk is so perfect, I just love it. And if you want to know other elements of writing. For example, Rick Riordan is pretty much the kind of similes because of this series. Read the series and you will discover how to write a simile your readers will love. It always adds a little bit of fun and excitement to a story to having some good elements of literature in there.
4. The Chronicles of Narnia. Yay!!! You've learned how to develop not only a story, but your personal writing style! C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia can do two things for you. It can help you review what you know already. These are some seriously good plots, I was so surprised about the ending of the series, I was hooked in the chapter about the magician's book in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the first paragraph in The Magician's Nephew is written so well with so much description I don't even know what to do with my life, not to mention they can be pretty humorous at times. And maybe you like your story to have a moral or a point behind it, or maybe you want them to be symbolic to something. These books can teach you about that. For those of you who don't know, C.S. Lewis was a very religious man and this series is highly based on Christianity. The symbolism is seriously cool. I love it.
5. The Heroes of Olympus. You've learned all the essentials to writing a story! This last series I added to the books everyone should read because they are quite as good as Percy Jackson, plus if you're a Percy Jackson fandomeer and you haven't read these books then everyone is talking about them and you'll be kind of left out. But they can help you with writing, too: If you want to write a successful spinoff, this is how it's done, friends.

Meeting New People, Part Percy Jackson

(Spoilers for Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lost Hero and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.)
Yay! We're on the last part of "Meeting New People"! Percy's a pretty great kid, and the people he meets are furthermore great. So let's go into another analysis of relationships, why don't we?
When Percy meets Annabeth, she's kind of annoying. Since she's been at the camp for a number of years and her mom is the goddess of wisdom, she thinks she's pretty cool. If that's not enough, her mom hates Poseidon, so Percy, who's actually willing to be friends at first, is pretty much being shunned and sometimes bullied by Annabeth because their parents are enemies. Not cool. But as J.K. Rowling said in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, there are a few things that you can't do with someone without becoming their friend. One of those things is fighting a troll, as we learn in Sorcerer's Stone. In The Lightning Thief we learn that another one of those things is going on a quest to recover the god of the sky's missing lightning bolt. Annabeth and Percy start emailing each other, and are pretty good friends and their relationship grows so slowly that suddenly it's The Last Olympian and what do we know? She's his girlfriend. Which is something we all wanted to happen but weren't totally sure that we wanted it to happen until Percy brought up even the vaguest idea of it in The Titan's Curse. But hey, we have to admit we're glad it happened.
Grover and Percy's relationship changes kind of in the same way that Harry's and Neville's did. When we met Percy, he and Grover were already bros. But Percy is a friend who is as loyal as heck and Grover was kind of timid, so Percy thought he had to protect him. Grover was constantly bullied and he was a crip, so it made him appear weaker and might have even made the kids want to bully him more. If bullies find a weak target, they'll go for it. (Random life lesson while we're talking about this: If you are getting bullied, even if you think you're weak, they don't need to know that. They won't bother you if they don't think that they'll get a reaction out of you. Remember you have tons of fandomeers out there who love you. :) ) Percy loves his friends, and he especially loves Grover because at the point in the story we're talking about Grover is the only friend he has and he values that, not to mention Percy gets messed with a lot too and so he doesn't want that to happen to an innocent person like Grover. What Percy learns later is that Grover loves his friends as much as Percy does. Grover devotes his entire young life to protecting his friends, even! And he continues to do that even when he's a searcher, because he still gets into a few adventures with his friends. The only thing that changed was Percy learned that he didn't need to protect Grover alone. Grover was strong, and he and Grover could lean on each other. :)
Thalia! All that Percy heard about before he officially met Thalia was that they were exactly the same person, which they were kind of similar but I don't think they were as much as Annabeth says they were. I feel like Jason from Heroes of Olympus is much more like Percy. Which I guess makes a lot of sense because Jason and Thalia are siblings. But Percy heard that they would either be best friends or worst enemies. (Luckily, it was closer to the first one.) When Percy finally meets Thalia in person instead of just hearing about her, he likes her. They were friends just like they said they were. But like was predicted, they would get pretty mad at each other a lot and get in fights. Percy was also slightly jealous because Annabeth had so much fun with Thalia being with them again. Thalia also knew a number of things that Percy didn't, even stuff that she had learned from Chiron that he hadn't. That's enough to make anyone feel pretty bad. Luckily, all those insecurities and things that Percy felt in the beginning kind of disappeared. Thalia became a Hunter, so she didn't see Percy very often, but when she did they were incredibly glad to see each other. They were even going to go out to get burgers together after the war with Kronos was over. Is that cute or what?
Nico, poor kid. Don't you guys just kind of love nerdy Nico? Everyone talks about how they like how his character developed. Me too. But nerdy Nico in the beginning was just so adorable. Well, Percy didn't exactly think so. Nico was such an annoying ten-year-old kid to him. (Sorry, Percy, I thought he was kind of funny. Although yeah, I would be pretty upset with him too when he asked about Annabeth going over the cliff and if she was your girlfriend. But the thing about you being a good surfer? Dang, that kid is perfect.) Nico obviously changed a lot when his sister died. He relied on himself and blamed Percy, which meant he hated him... a lot. Percy and Nico had some rough times and betrayals all the way into the fifth book. But that didn't mean they weren't friends. They made up about the whole sister thing in The Battle of the Labyrinth.  He even went to Percy's birthday party. And I think they were even bros in the end after the whole war was over.
Well, Luke took Percy in the second he walked into Cabin Eleven. Luke was a really good friend that Percy trusted, and it was great to have someone who understood him. That pretty much all ended when he betrayed him, tried to kill him and ended up working for Kronos. That would end a friendship pretty fast. It doesn't help that Luke kind of had a thing for Annabeth and no matter what Percy said about not being able to trust him Annabeth had a thing for him too. And Percy really  had a thing for Annabeth, so that wasn't exactly cool with him. That kind of went away when Percy realized Luke was under too much pressure, and once he was in he couldn't back out, and he saved Olympus and all of his friends, including Annabeth. He still cared about them all. So in the end, I guess it was okay.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this!

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Happy Birthday Twins!

Happy birthday Weasley twins! When our friends were having a pretty hard time throughout the stories, you came in and made a joke and we all laughed and we were just like "Oh twins, how we love you." My favorite Fred and George quote (in this case Fred) might be when Harry and Ron were having a really intense conversation in the train compartment on the way to the Weasleys' for winter break in The Half-Blood Prince and Fred and George stroll in and make a comment and Ron tells them to leave him alone. To which Fred replies, "What a snappy retort." Ahaha! (Page 326 if you want to look it up. Dang, so funny.)