Okay, the title is slightly melodramatic, but I couldn’t
find a term which would work better on a smaller scale.
I keep mentioning in my articles about how life changes your
point of view on things. It is definitely a good thing because you allow
yourself to evolve based on situations and life experiences you’ve gone through
and so on. At the same time, your opinion about many issues change.
When I was in junior college, my criteria for dating was that the
person should be able to keep up with my Harry Potter trivia. They should also
be okay with the fact that my best friends then were boys and that I would
probably put them first over the person I was dating.
In engineering, Harry Potter was still the main point. However, proper English and non-text speak came
into the picture. Very ironic considering the fact that I used text speak in
tenth grade like it was going out of fashion.
Last year, I came to the conclusion that the person I date
should be able to understand fangirling, fandoms and the like. Considering the
fact that I am 60% fandom, 35% nerd and 5% lame jokes, being into fandoms or just
getting fandoms would mean the world to me. (Applause here that I didn’t give
into my dirty mind and type 69% fandom.)
However, thinking about some things makes me wonder, not if
I set the bar too high, but if the bar should be based on something more relevant.
Story 1:
About three years back, two of my friends met each other
through Glee, continued on to watch Doctor Who, and went from being friends to
more. They were so much more that all of their mutual friends shipped them. If not
for the distance problem, they might have actually been married by now.
However, there was an ego clash with respect to one person’s career, and the
relationship ended.
Story 2:
About two years back, two friends of mine got together due
to their mutual love of Doctor Who. Same thing about many of their friends
shipping them together and the like. About 18 months later, personal problems
caused them to break up.
This made me realize that being in fandoms would not
necessarily mean that it would be a picture perfect relationship. Fandoms would
be just one more thing in life I share with that person. Yes, it would make
life easier for when I’m crying because of feels and don’t have to explain what
feels is and so on. But at the same time, is it something absolutely necessary?
Right now, I still feel yes. Maybe, in two years from now, I’ll
be in a different place, dating someone who doesn’t know shit about fandoms but
is willing to learn stuff for me. Maybe I’ll find someone who fanpersons over
stuff, gets all my references and cracks puns back at me. Maybe.
Was there a point to this? Probably not.
Please do tell me if there’s a condition people need to meet
before you would date them in the comments! Love you guys!
P.S. This was the first time I couldn't find a proper song to end the article with. Maybe I'll edit this in the future. Too disorganized, I feel.
In 1999, a small girl pestered her father because she had
nothing else to do. The father did not get irritated as she pulled on his hand,
forcing him to pay attention to her. He put on some Yanni as he knew that would
calm her down. As he scrolled through websites on Internet Explorer, he found a
site called baazee.com. It was selling some book that had to do with magic. He
thought to himself, ‘This might be a good addition to our collection’, and
bought it immediately.
When it reached their residence, the girl pounced upon the
package, not bothering to keep the bubble wrap. A mistake, as she would realize
later in life. She picked up the book and read the title.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Intrigued probably wasn’t the right word. She was barely six
years old, but still excited at the idea of new books. She started reading the
book, and the rest was history.
The little girl’s name was Varshini Ramaraj.
(Duh! I mean I wouldn’t talk about another random person now,
would I?)
Honestly though, Harry Potter has always been an integral
part of my childhood. Once I was done with the first book, it was natural for
me to go asking for the next book, and the one after that, and so on.
When the first movie came out, I was obviously irritated
with the change in name, but still decided to drag my family to the movie.
Thankfully, my parents are the cool kind who loved the books and movies
themselves as well. I still remember a school friend of mine sat with his
family two rows behind ours. We spent the whole intermission complaining about
the lack of Peeves and so much more.
I had moved from playing Age of Empires to playing Harry
Potter PC games. The first three are still my favorite out of all of them.
I still remember crying over the fact that we couldn’t see
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in the theatre due to my sister having
exams. And when hers were done, they were out of the movies.
Now, I can catch
it whenever I want to, but back then, it was almost a travesty.
Fast-forward to the time Preeti and I were reading Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince together (Don’t read ahead if you haven’t read
the book yet! :P)
We were taking turns to read it on the computer. She was
talking to someone, which meant I got more than the scheduled time to read the
book. This also meant that I reached the scene on the Tower before Preeti did.
I was scared as Harry was paralyzed, invisible under his cloak. As Dumbledore
tried to reason with Draco about how he wasn’t a murderer, how he could still
come to the Light side. As Draco almost put down his wand. As Snape came in and
shattered all those possibilities. As Snape killed the person who had put his
full trust in him.
I literally (kid you
not, literally) fell off my chair and started bawling. My parents thought
something really bad had happened and came rushing in, and so did my sister. I,
then, made the biggest blunder that I would come to regret.
“SNAPE KILLED DUMBLEDOOOOREEEEEEEEE!”
My parents realized I wasn’t talking about people in my real
life and walked away. Preeti, however, had a shocked look on her face. She
later told me she was still in the cave and Dumbledore was drinking the cursed
liquid.
Part 2) Hinny Fanfiction
In my eight standard, I found this site called
mugglenet.com. I think I had gone searching for a Wizarding recipe and found
myself there. There was some link pertaining to fan stuff and I clicked on the
link to find that it was a portal to something called ‘fanfiction’.
Of course, Harry/Ginny was life to me right then. I saw
multiple links with different pairings written down.
I literally went ‘eww’ at Draco/Hermione back then (Ironic,
considering how much I love them now). There was ‘Harry/Luna’ which I was
vaguely interested in. I, obviously, went to the Harry/Ginny link. I found 97
stories based on the nineteen years in between, extra stories during the books,
stories written after the epilogue.
I found a random author mention SIYE, from where I went to
Sink Into Your Eyes. (It still exists and is cute as ever.) This was a
Harry/Ginny fanfiction site only and did not have more than R-rated
fanfictions.I still remember some of
those fanfictions were so well-written.
Part 3) Everything under the sun
Everyone knows I’m a huge nerd. In my tenth grade, I was
actually unbearable. I stopped reading fanfiction so that I could study (Don’t
ask.) So when I got back to it in my eleventh grade, I found a few changes in
my own mind regarding ships.
(For those who don’t know, ships are a certain pairing you
like together. Like Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, Draco/Apple, you know?)
I realized that there was so much more than canon, and went
to the dark side, so to speak. Draco/Hermione, Draco/Ginny, Harry/Hermione and
so on. I don’t remember when it was that I started reading slash. But
Harry/Draco was definitely my first slash ship.
I was in this group which discussed a lot of Harry Potter,
and I found my first nemesis there. She was the reason I was fighting for my
friendship with my dear friend Sue, and I didn’t know what to do.
Six months later, we were best friends. This is the person I
tell everyone about, my dearest Maria.
Part 4) Me right now
I love saying that the gateway fandom for every person is
Harry Potter. It’s the one fandom that everyone likes, has discussions about
and finding new head canons every day. A song I know applies to this so well:
All of me loves all of you
All your curves and all your edges
All your perfect imperfections
This is because everyone knows that the books aren’t that
perfect. The movies definitely aren’t. I am sure of the fact that every time it
comes on TV, I shall watch it. I will always complain about Dumbledore being an
ass in the Goblet of Fire (movie). I will always regret that Harry didn’t
contact Sirius through the mirror in the Order of the Phoenix. I will always
hate what a mess they made of Ginny in the Half Blood Prince movie. And the
ending of the Deathly Hallows movie never happened.
Despite all of this, I love Harry Potter enough to still
write fanfiction about it, read loads of it and write roughly 1200 words on the
subject right now.
I leave you with the theme that everyone recognizes. Listen to it and revel in all the memories.Speaking of memories, do you have any specific HP-themed once? Leave them in the comments below!!
I’ve made up notes, I know what to write, I have some witty
one-liners I want to put into the article, but my hands will not type. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I prefer to retain these memories in my head instead of
on (proverbial) paper. Maybe it’s because I don’t know how to convey the
emotions I felt when I saw him come up on stage. It’s a mix of pride and
happiness and please let me stay in this moment forever because his voice is so
good.
It’s been ten days since I went for the Ed Sheeran Concert,
and damn, but that night was one of the best ones of my life.
Okay, now that I’ve started writing, I might as well finish
everything up.
This concert is the third one I’ve been to. The first one
was Yanni, which was a sit-down concert and absolutely ethereal. The second was
David Guetta, which could have gone much better. I had some concerns due to
this, but I was going with friends, so it was bound to be fun. Right?
I actually got so much into it that I painted a t-shirt for
me. My friend asked if I would do it for him too, and thus, we stand, with the
chorus of “The City” and “I See Fire” respectively:
No one tells you how much your legs kill to stand up for five
hours straight. I wonder how they stand outside the Buckingham Palace, when I
had to stretch my legs every five minutes while scream-singing at the top of my voice. I had to sit
down at one point because I just couldn’t do it anymore. But then I stood up,
because I couldn’t miss him singing the dulcet tunes of “Thinking Out Loud” now, could I?
He wore a blue kurta, and looked adorable in it while
strumming his guitar. This was the tour for his X (Multiply) album, but he sang
songs from his previous album as well. He knew how to engage the audience very
well.
There was this moment when he spoke about how people raising
their hands up and down during hip-hop concerts made him feel awkward if he
didn’t play along with them. Saying that, he told us to do the same when the
beat dropped during “Bloodstream”. My hand goes up and down subconsciously every
time I listen to it now. (Whoops, I had put Ed Sheeran’s songs on shuffle and
Bloodstream just came on. What a coincidence... honestly).
During "Give Me Love", there’s this part in the middle that
goes Amamaya amamaya amamaya gimme love
love. The whole audience sang it with him, and that feeling of
togetherness, the harmonies being formed without even realizing is something you don't find every day.
(Smau, if you’re reading this, I hate you for what you sang
about this song. It’s stuck in my head now.)
"Lego House" had lego versions of Ed Sheeran and Roonil Wazlib
displayed on the screen, which were the cutest ever. Tenerife Sea had Ed’s blue
blue eyes on the screen when the line “The
way it brings out the blue in your eyes” played. Sadly, he didn’t play Small Bump, but there were so many other favorites of mine that I was happy.
Especially with “You Need Me”, when I happily screamed out the last line
despite the fact that the tween in front of me was giving me major side-eye. (If
you want to know, it’s the They say I’m
up and coming line.)
But, man, the best one ever was… I see Fire. That song just
gives me chills and when he played it, I just died. Bonus points was Smaug
appearing on screen since the song was on the Hobbit soundtrack.
I am a sucker for covers of songs, especially by artists I
know. I do not feel guilty to say that I went searching for his, and found a
lot! He makes them sound so brilliant. (That article of MTV that showed 10
songs that he covered? I knew all of them and more... :D) I have heard them
enough times to know when the lilt of his voice goes up while singing “Feeling Good”.
Listening to it on YouTube and having him sing it live is
another thing though. There’s this part where he goes very high-pitched,
singing “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life, and it’s alllll for
me.” (Comes at 2:23 in the link above) He did that during the concert and I sang my heart out, high-pitched,
probably screechy, and I didn’t care.
Other bonus covers were Superstitious by Stevie Wonder, No
Diggity by Blackstreet and Fancy by Iggy Azalea.
I must mention that he sang In Da Club in the middle of “You
Need Me”, but that part is there in the EP version of the song, so not sure if
it counts separately (Yes, I know different versions of the same song – there’s
three versions of this one)
We got in at 5 pm, came out at 10, and now I know I can look at
this article if I want to remember. I don’t think it’ll be necessary though –
all these memories play in my mind every time one of the songs plays on.
Leaving you with this song, because it describes my feelings perfectly about this concert
