Why It Sucks to be A Whovian

With the fiftieth anniversary of the British Sci-fi show Doctor Who coming up, I thought I would do a bit on it.

     I started watching Doctor Who over the summer and quickly realized that is the epitome of nerd. Advanced alien technology? Got it. Robot trees? Season five. Dinosaurs on a spaceship? Yup. Egyptian Queen Nefertiti? In the same episode.
     Fezzes and bowties? Of course.
     If you have never seen an episode of Doctor Who, here's a breakdown: A quirky British alien (who looks just like a human) named The Doctor has a police box that can travel anywhere in time and space (not just a time machine, it's also a spaceship!) He hops around the universe in this trusty blue box solving mysteries and saving worlds with the help of his human companions, who travel with him. It pretty much has everything: humor, adventure, mystery, and unbelievably confusing season finales.
     In the world of infinite fictions, Doctor Who is king. In the show, the Doctor can take on new forms by regenerating, it basically makes him immortal. In real life this means that if the actor playing the Doctor dies or wants to leave the show, they can be replaced no problem, there's still a Doctor, the show continues.
     But the human companions are not immortal. Everytime the actor who plays the companion wants to leave the show, it gets written in as a tragic death, or a mistake that results in them never being able to be seen again.
     You have to understand, Doctor Who fans are crazy. It's like a cult, but nerdier and with less sacrifice. We get dangerously and irrationally attached to the characters, especially the companions. Every time one of them dies, which is about every two seasons, the writers tell the fans in advance so we don't start some sort of uprising. We get a 6 month warning that our favorite characters are about to die, and that we better come to terms with it before the episode premiers so that we can keep the sobbing to a minimum and actually understand the plot when we watch it.
    So, in some ways, being a Whovian really sucks. Like how you get your heart broken every two years. Or how you have to wait three seasons to find the answer to one little question. But in the end, it's totally worth it. There's no other show like Doctor Who out there, with so much history and support backing it. Whenever you find out someone watches Doctor Who, they're instantly your friend, there's something to be said for that.
     Also, Doctor Who has bowties. Bowties are cool.


    

Book Snobbery

Recently, I read the first two books in Kimberly Derting's The Pledge series.

Here's the blurb from Goodreads.com: "In the violent country of Ludania, the classes are strictly divided by the language they speak. The smallest transgression, like looking a member of a higher class in the eye while they are speaking their native tongue, results in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina has always been able to understand the languages of all classes, and she's spent her life trying to hide her secret. The only place she can really be free is the drug-fueled underground clubs where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in. It's there that she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy named Max who speaks a language she's never heard before . . . and her secret is almost exposed.

Charlie is intensely attracted to Max, even though she can't be sure where his real loyalties lie. As the emergency drills give way to real crisis and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that Charlie is the key to something much bigger: her country's only chance for freedom from the terrible power of a deadly regime."

       I would never have picked up something like this for myself (I got the book as a gift.) Even just from the blurb, I could tell that the book would mostly be about the relationship between Charlie and Max, which would undoubtedly be romantic. It's not that I don't like romance in books, I do, I just don't like the book to be ALL romance- I would prefer some action. Also, I know they say you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but I do. I usually shy away from books with pictures of girls making pouty faces on the cover. Just from a first impression, The Pledge was the type of book I tried to avoid.
        But I started to read the book anyway, just to see what it was like. It was weird at first- it's set in the future, but seems like it's trying to be in the past. The writing at times gets overly formal, and the dialouge is corny and generally unrealistic. I kept reading though, because the world the characters live in is really cool, and it was kind of like a guilted pleasure. However, whenever I explained the book to one of my friends, I would preface it with "It's so bad." So why did I keep reading it?
         I think sometimes we can forget what reading is supposed to be. A lot of times, I get so caught up in the quality of the writing, I completely forget about the quality of the story, and isn't that what books are supposed to be about? The truth is, the writing in The Pledge is mediocre at best, but the stroy and the world is so unbelievably imaginative, it kept me reading bated breath into the early hours of the morning. There is so much more to it than what's in the blurb, and I'm really glad I read it.
         I guess what I'm saying is that book snobbery will only make reading boring. If we only ever read the most intelligent, well- written, sophisticated books, we would never discover books like this. Some books can have all those traits, and that's great, but not all books have to be like that. Sometimes, the best books are lacking, but we love them anyway. Reading is supposed to be fun, so we should just pick whichever books interest us.

        

Why Frodo is a Little Punk

Hi, sorry I haven't posted in a while. Movies to see, books to be read :)
So about a year ago, in an effort to increase my "nerd levels" I watched all of the Lord Of The Rings movies. Extended cut. You know how long that takes?
     12 hours.
This is my thought process through out:
The Fellowship of the Ring: Okay I guess this is cool. I mean, Logolas is a boss. Aragorn seems like he's pretty cool. Frodo is kinda stupid but he has pretty eyes. The other hobbits are really cute.
The Two Towers: Okay Frodo is really stupid. He doesn't do anything. And for the record, I don't even care about any of the other characters, this movie should be called "Legolas the Awesome and his Posse of Annoying People"
Return of the King: FORGET LEGOLAS, SAM JUST HAULED FRODO'S BUTT UP TO MORDOR AND FRODO DIDN'T EVEN SAY "Hey, thanks buddy. You know, I really appreciate you." HE JUST COMPLAINED ABOUT HAVING TO GO BACK TO THE SHIRE!

    As soon as the last movie ands, I turn to my friend and say "Frodo is a little punk" and she just goes "No no, he was so brave! He did this and this and then Legolas had to do this, but he did this and this and blah blah blah blah." I finally just stopped listening, because Peter Jackson had clearly brainwashed her into thinking that Frodo was actually helpful, and everyone knows you can't argue with brainwashed people.
    But this morning, a year after the initial watching of Frodo being a useless lard, she came up to me and goes "Frodo is a little punk."
    Which only proves that my reasoning is irrefutable.
    This is supposed to be a review blog, so consider this my review of LOTR
    Sure, Frodo is brave and all for agreeing to take the ring to Mordor, but lets be honest, he never really embraced the important position he held. Mostly what he does is whine and complain and be generally unhelpful. It would be one think if he grew into his leadership, but he doesn't. At all. Even in the climax of the entire series, it wasn't him doing the work, it was Sam.
    That's what really gets me about Lord of The Rings, Sam is so underrated. He is more devoted to Frodo than Frodo is to the ring. I mean, who is gonna haul you up the side of a volcanoe when you pass out, and then not ask for any form of thanks? Who is going to stand over your nearly dead body and say "do not go where I can't follow"? Sam. That's who. But he doesn't get any credit for it. Legolas is this awesome elf guy, Aragorn is a long lost king, Frodo is Frodo, even Mary and Pippin get to be the funny guys. But Sam is just Sam. The garden boy. He wasn't "destined for greatness" or "born to be a hero", he's just a good friend. In my opinion, he's the best character in the entire series.

What if they had like an e-harmony for underrated characters? Luna Lovegood could date Finnick, and Isaac from The Fault in Our Stars could go out with Molly from Sherlock. Oh, and Sam and Bombur would have their own little Tolkien bromance. It would be great.