On Fantasy, A Rant (Day 81: 400 Days of Exile)

More specifically on this: http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/fantasy-forever?utm_term=.chZ40ldMw5#.vdOZ3er1Y

I don't know if I've made it clear. But I utterly adore fantasy novels. It has been my genre of choice since I read Mistborn: The Final Empire, by Brandon Sanderson (number 12 on this list) when I was 15. (In fact I could write an entire post about how profoundly Mistborn changed my life. But I won't. At least not now. I have 319 days to go and a 40 day hiatus to make up for. It could happen)

I am not perfect, due to the nature of length of these books, as well as an unintentional reading dry spell through college, I haven't read all or even most of the books on this list. However, per the lists order, these are the ones I have read:

#2 The Stormlight Archives, by Brandon Sanderson (2 books)
#3 A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin (5 books)
#4 The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkein (4 books)
#12 Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson (3 books, 1 novella)
#16 Harry Potter, by J. K. Rowling (7 books)
#18 The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis (well, I've read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe)
#25 The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan (14 books)
#34 Redwall, by Brian Jacques (well, PART of the first one)
#36 Inheritence Cycle, by Christopher Paolini (the first 2. I got about a chapter into the third and had to stop when they started talking about dragon jock itch)
#47 The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb (the first 1)

And while I'm happy to see that my favorite fantasy authors are getting some love (Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan), I have to rant for a minute about The Wheel of Time's placement.

It should be in the Top 5.

I can't base my opinions on the ones I haven't read. But, of the Top 5 series on this list, I have fully read 3 of them and the #1 pick, The Kingkiller Chronicles, has been sitting on my bookshelf for at least a couple of months now patiently awaiting me to finish my power reread of Wheel of Time.

And as a lover of all the other series, I would put The Wheel of Time above them all except for maybe The Lord of the Rings.

So, in reverse order, this is why I feel that Wheel is better than each of the books before it as well as a brief discussion on LOTR (I've decided to exclude Narnia too. I've only read the first one and its not fair to judge the series as a whole based on one book)

Harry Potter

Okay, let's get this straight. I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. You don't accidentally memorize the first paragraph of Harry Potter and throw the most AWESOME themed party for the release of the final movie without being a huge fan of Harry Potter.
But, it's ultimately, a children's book series. It's lovely and magical and fantastical - but it lacks the scope of epic fantasy targeted at adult audiences. As such, WOT > Harry Potter. Don't hurt me.

Mistborn

As previously stated, Mistborn changed my life. And if this were a list of greatest STANDALONE fantasy novels, Mistborn:The Final Empire could trump many of them. But as a series, it's not my favorite. The loss of a pivotal character drastically changes the tone of Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages, which I feel that that the cool world building that was added didn't make up for the tone change enough. Plus, Elend went from interesting to dull in 10 seconds flat.

LOTR

Should be #1. This entire topic would be either non existent or very different without LOTR.

ASOIAF

Where do I even begin? I commend Martin for his prose and his ability to build a world that is rich with back story and legend. And, I remind you, I've read the whole fricken thing, which I can't say about all of the ones I've tried to read on this list. But ASOIAF, while brilliant in its own right, is riddled with issues that other people commend it for and because of the TV series I believe it's disproportionately more popular than it should be. All of my complaints with ASOIAF could fill a post that I will more than likely do at some point, but not now. But, I believe that WOT trumps ASOIAF any day. And not just because WOT uses plot devices other than death and rape to keep the story moving (though you could argue that WOT doesn't use death enough). Both series can be accused of being a bit slow moving, but even Winter's Heart is more entertaining and fast paced than A Feast for Crows. And you are a dirty, dirty liar if you disagree with me.

(ALSO: I may remind you that the first few covers of Game of Thrones featured a cover quote from the late Jordan - whose name was much better known at the time and carried a lot of weight. So, I'm not hating on ASOIAF - Jordan liked it too. Click picture for more info - there's a really cool letter from Jordan to his editor about Game of Thrones)

Stormlight Chronicles

Love me some Stormlight Chronicles. But we're only two books in. The Wheel of Time at two books in is very different from the series as whole. Stormlight very much has the possibility of trumping Wheel, but, as it stands, we just can't know that yet

Anyway.

There's my rant.

Take it as you will.

Did I mention I'm going to JordanCon next April?

Little Tornado

Wouldn't It Be Nice (400 Days of Exile: Day 6)

I miss sleeping with my boyfriend.

Literally sleeping with him.

I sleep much better when I can hold his hand.




Little Tornado

Prickly (400 Days of Exile: Day 5)

It has yet to erupt fully, but I can already feel myself getting prickly with my parents.

Nothing major has happened: a pointed comment here, an unwanted lecture there.

It is a familiar feeling that I remember from high school, though it is now coupled with something else: guilt.

Perhaps it took going away and meeting new people and learning about their family dynamics, but I've been feeling incredibly blessed about how wonderful my parents are. They are so helpful and willing to support me financially. They feed me, they clothe me. They are even granting me a remarkable amount of freedom.

Of course, I am going to feel like they are harshing my mellow when they ask me if I am studying enough or getting enough sleep. It would be easy to get mad at them - but I am trying my best not to. They do so much for me, they don't deserve my anger.

It will be tough to hold my anger - I can already feel it seeping into my tone sometimes. I will undoubtedly have to find some sort of way to communicate the negative things effectively.

The challenge is particularly strong with my mother. In many ways, we are remarkably similar. That causes us to butt heads almost as much as our differences.

Much like everything else I have mentioned, I will have to keep you posted.

So many challenges, so little time.

Little Tornado

Exhaustion (400 Days of Exile: Day 4)

It seems my packing highlighter from Saturday and the constant studying has caught up with me. After I got home from my class... I napped.

It was glorious.

I'll be back at it tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've been really digging The Mountain Goats lately.

This song is better than any blog post I could ever write.



Until I wake,

Little Tornado

The Little Things (400 Days of Exile: Day 3)

Juice made with spinach, bananas, and ambiguous fruits prepared by my super star of a dad

I approach this new adventure cautiously. It will be very easy to tip over the edge into an abyss of reliving my post-adolescence. Being stranded from a city, I adore, is hardly ideal.

However, the "comforts of home" are not to be discounted. In fact, focusing on these trifles will be vital to my survival in this suburban tundra of death. I have highlighted 3 in particular that I do not discount as insignificant.

Firstly, oh my god, the space! I had been living in a studio for the past two years, which maybe had three rooms if you counted my closet. Here, I have a room that might be the size of what my studio was. I can cook, eat, watch TV, study, and sleep all in a different room. It's INSANE! I can't believe I used to live like this.

In fact, I remember when I came back from college that first summer after my freshman year (which was nothing like this, by the way, because it was temporary. This is somewhat permanent in the matter that I don't have a set in stone end date other than the self chosen August 1, 2016), I felt like it had shrunk, and that I was so large. It felt like a place I had never been to before. I was still happy about the space, but I had been away for a measly 9 months - my small dorm hadn't tainted me yet.

I haven't managed to fully unpack yet, but the sheer amount of options of where I can put all my stuff... mindboggling.

Secondly, my bed.

Okay, so its not my bed. I had taken my bed - my super comfortable, amazing bed - to school with me. During that time, my parents had decided that there even more comfortable king-sized bed wasn't groovy enough for them so they got themselves a sleep number and moved their old bed into my room. MY bed, as of now, resides in the garage until it is driven up to its new home in the house my parents bought up in Michigan whose furniture, up until now, has consisted of two folding chairs and an air mattress.

And I swear I google searched this until my fingers bled, because there is a children's book that explains exactly how I feel, and I cannot remember the name. Anyway, it's about a little girl who has a small crib with all of her stuffed animals when she gets upgraded to a huge bed. She feels alone in it so she stuffs it with stuffed animals until its so full, there is no room for her! (If you know the name of this book, please let me know).

This bed is huge and soft and daunting and thrilling. I'm still kind of scared of it, but I'll keep you posted.


I saved the best for last, but easily the best thing about being home is THE FOOD.

Every morning my dad juices and makes my mom and me oatmeal. And every dinner is fully balanced and delicious. It's way better than my sporadic healthy food prep interspersed with lazy mac and cheese and Chinese food.

If I can continue to find advantages to being home, perhaps I can make it through the next 397 days.

That's all for now,

Little Tornado

400 Days of Exile: Day 1

This is it.

It's over.

I'm actually back here.

After 4 years, 7 months, 5 days, and give or take a few hours... I am back in the suburbs.

[picture to come as soon as I am able to remember to take a picture while the sun is still up]

I'll admit, this doesn't look like any form of hell pictured on traditional or even nontraditional media and I would be exaggerating for dramatic effect by describing it as my own personal hell. If anything, that's grossly unfair to my mother and father who have worked very hard to build a beautiful home and they really have done a wonderful job in doing it.

However, I do not want to be here.

There are layers upon layers of reasons that fall behind that statement - various explanations for why it feels so strange and odd to be back somewhere I had spent eight years living, Some are very particular to me, but some I'm sure any returning college student can relate to.

I have 400 days to explore the ebbs and flows of the struggle of feeling like an adult and sleeping in my childhood bedroom again; feeling pathetically similar to my former high school classmates who never left our hometown and never made a new life; feeling like I'm being thrust into a high school relationship with my boyfriend of almost three years who had basically been living with me up to this point; and, most excruciatingly, feeling the pang of longing to be back in the city.

Chicago is where I built myself up after so many people here tried to pull me down in my youth. It was where I became who I am today, where I tried and failed to be the person I thought I was or wanted to be, demolished her, and started learning who was really hiding inside.

The person I found is strong and incredible and I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit obsessed with her. And she's facing her biggest challenge yet: trying to translate the woman she's become into a context of her life that was never particularly kind to her.

Being back here brings back the memories of old boyfriends and old friends - my old mix CDs are still littered in the various crevices of the car I hadn't needed in Chicago and their songs play like the soundtrack of my adolescence - they are even marked, so kindly, with the month and years my teenage self compiled them - so self assured as to the importance of the music she listened to.

But, maybe it won't be so bad. None of those memories hurt anymore - almost none of them even make me angry. But, only time will tell.

Until tomorrow,

Little Tornado

Random Meandering 3: Hookup Culture - Give it a break already **

http://elitedaily.com/dating/sex/get-rid-hookup-culture-bring-love-back/680826/

I get it. I really do. You meet a guy/girl. You hit it off. You take a couple shots, exchange a kiss or two, and wam, bam, skidoosh, you wake up the next morning next to them.

You skip out (or they do, depending on the location of the fornication) but you still hope for the call that, often, never comes.

I get the disappointment. And I get the blaming. You blame yourself, you blame the guy/girl, and, above all else, you blame hook up culture.

Well fear not! I have cited an article above that explains to you the steps you need to take in order to counter act hookup culture!

Keep in mind, this article is by no means a groundbreaking article. There are many just like it littered across the internet amongst the pages of TSM, Upworthy, and Thought Catalog. But, among its sage and well researched advice, this article gives you the keys to your future relationships and happiness…

Unless, of course, you know, it doesn’t.

I’m going to get crazy radical on the internet here and say maybe the problem isn’t hook up culture. Maybe, now stay with me here because I’m about to say something completely unheard of, there isn’t actually a problem at all.

You don’t have to hook up with people to get a relationship. But you don’t have to abstain from hooking up with people to get a relationship either. Relationships are not that black and white. What works for some people, won’t work for others. Giving a blanket list of rules of what you should do to fight a nonexistent problem is ludicrous.

Sure, I suppose, in general, if you really like someone, you probably shouldn’t sleep with them immediately… but, shit, sometimes it works out with that person anyway. Life is weird like that.

One of my favorite lines in movie history is from the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You.”:

“All my friends used to tell me about how things might work out with these dipshits because they knew someone, who knew someone, who dated a dipshit just like mine and that girl ended up getting married and living happily ever after. But, that’s the exception and we're not the exception. We're the rule.”

And I fully agree with that statement… as a rule.

But, in life, there are always exceptions. And the exceptions are the ones you wait around for.

So you can continue following all the rules you want to, as long as you remember that they are rules not guarantees. And rules are meant to be broken especially when following them doesn't promise you anything.

Use your judgment and do the things that make you happy. Yeah, you’re going to meet some dipshits who you should have avoided in the first place but you typically don’t figure that out until it’s too late anyway, so don’t beat yourself up over it. Keep doing you, and you’ll meet a good one or two.

And let’s be honest: if someone is really going to write you off because you didn’t wait the socially acceptable amount of time to sleep with them (which is different for everyone, by the way), that person probably sucks anyway and you’re better off without them. ON TO THE NEXT ONE!

Keep Keeping It Real,

Little Tornado

** This is advice coming from some random 22 year old that typed this up during her lunch break at her internship and forgot to run it through spell check. If you want to take it as scripture, that’s your prerogative. But, this same random 22 year old wouldn’t recommend it strongly. The only thing this random 22 year old would recommend strongly is finding yourself a delicious slice of macaroni and cheese pizza, pictured above. Because, out of everything in this post, that is the only thing scientifically proven to be delicious.