beatriceeagle

“The books you loved when you were in fourth grade and read them to tatters, you’ll never love another book like that.”
Daniel Handler, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events

Harry Potter was such a large part of my life for so long that I don’t even know what it’s given me. Apart from a few things—one very close friend, a moral compass in one moment of dire need, and a detailed knowledge of how to make a cloak out of a bedsheet—it’s really impossible for me to pick out the things that Harry Potter gave me from the things that I would have had anyway.

Maybe if I had picked up the books for the first time when I was eighteen, I could tell you, without bias, whether they were well-written or not, what their strengths and weaknesses were. But I can’t. For good or for ill, I loved them and love them still. They’re a part of me.

So thank you, Harry Potter. Thank you, J.K. Rowling. Thank you, fandom. Thank you, Sugar Quill, SQ87, and Arya. I like who I am. Thank you for the parts of me that you gave me.

Thank you, Farscape, for getting me through my finals.

(Two down. Last one in two and a half hours!)

I have joined CMU's improv club! It's called No Parking Players (no, no one knows why) and it's really awesome. It's like summer camp, only some of the people are actually good at improv, and they always teach you how to get better.

I've actually been going for a month or so now (two meetings a week, in my copious spare time) and it's been really awesome. I'm terrible at improv, is the thing. I freeze way too easily. I can do games like Questions, which are about wordplay, but having to create a scene--a funny scene--out of nothing is almost impossible for me. See, I think too much. (Or, as one of the officers says, I'm "a cerebral player.") Part of it is that the comedy I tend towards is very dry and sarcastic, which is not conducive to improv, but a lot of it is getting stuck wondering what I should do next.

The funny thing is, when I stop wondering so much, I sometimes make a scene that really works.

So I've been working on not overthinking. And I'm getting better, a little bit. I can put aside the constant worry sometimes. I can look for situations in which I can react, instead of creating something out of nothing. And sometimes, when I say the first thing that pops into my head...it's actually funny.

Of course, there's a metaphor in there somewhere. But don't think about it too hard. *g*

My friend Jack turned his room into a giant pinhole camera. You can stand in it and watch the projected image materialize on paper (not photograph paper, yet). It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

It's also one of the best arguments I've heard for singles being better than doubles.

And in other news, I'm sick. I'm coughing, my nose is stuffed, and my ear wants to pop. It's a good thing that I have a billion school-dollars left on my student ID to buy Kleenex.

( Or, how Bea failed to go to her first goth club )

And that is the story of how I didn't go to my first goth club! Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention the best part. Most of what I just told you? We have it on film. *g*

Harry Potter post, huh? It's been a while.

Well, dressing up is always fun, especially when it involves really curly hair and an enormous amount of cleavage and pointy boots. (I was Madam Rosmerta, a character I chose solely for those three attributes.) And being fannish again was fun, as I haven't done anything remotely like it since...going to see Andrew Wilder in junior year, I think, and even that's not really the same feeling. It was just fun.

That said, the movie? Awesome. I absolutely hated the book, and I think the movie's my favorite. Go figure.

(Drop me a line on AIM and I'll gush in person. I'll be happy to gush in lj comments tomorrow.)

Conversation between my mother and me in the car:*

MOM: Want to hear what I got Kiera for her kindergarten graduation?

ME: Sure.

MOM: One of those stuffed animals with a code on the tag, and then if you go online and enter the code, they name a star after you.

ME: A real star?

MOM: Yeah. Isn't that cool?

ME: What if, in a thousand years, when humans are colonizing other planets, the first habitable one we find is around "Kiera"?

MOM: [laughs] There would be Kiera-rises and Kiera-sets.

ME: "You are my Kiera-shine, my only Kiera-shine..."

MOM: You'd better wear some Kiera-block, or you'll get Kiera-burned.

ME: And instead of naming their kids "Sunny," people will just name them "Kiera."


*Conversation may be edited for cutting out of digressions.