The Cool Girl

I have never had a boyfriend. Okay, I had one, but I don’t really count that guy. Although it’s true that I don’t really want a boyfriend and probably never will want one, a guy has still never asked me out. Sometimes guys even tell me the reasons why. The most common one is this, “you’re too smart for me.” Once I was labeled, “undateable”. That guy never told me why, but I can guess why. Most guys think I’m boring because I’d rather watch a documentary on The Higgs Boson instead of a football game. Other guys don’t want to “ruin” me because they think I’m so innocent and pure.

 

In other words, I am not “the cool girl”. What is “the cool girl”? Why, I have a list for you right here:

 

1.      Sexy physique.

2.      Eats pizza and hamburgers (anyone else think this is a contradiction?!) and likes to drink beer.

3.      Loves to watch football and play video games.

4.      “Cool” enough to hang out with “the guys”.

5.      Loves “South Park” and crude jokes.

6.      Not emotional. Calm, down-to-earth, and not jealous.

7.      I think you get the picture and let me tell you, finding a girl with all of these qualities is highly improbable.

 

Now, I’m not saying that being a “cool girl” is bad! If you are a woman who likes video games, South Park, and McDonalds hamburgers, good for you! I am just saying that it’s wrong for men to expect this of women, and it’s not good for a woman to try to fit these expectations instead of just being the person she is. I guarantee you; a woman is much better being the person she is born to be than being a pretend “cool girl”.

 

I am not sexy. I’m short, overweight, muscular, and my long hair is never combed. I love pizza and hamburgers, but I also have to worry about my expanding waistline. I don’t drink alcohol as I am underage, and when I turn 21, I still won’t drink alcohol. I hate football and “Call of Duty.” I hate “South Park” and crude jokes (don’t get me started on rape jokes). I am a very emotional person with a deep inner life that people think is strange.

 

But I am also adventurous. I like to try new things and meet different people. I work hard, and people often mistake that for obsession, but the people who work with me excel. I love very deeply and if I consider you my friend, then I am loyal and understanding. I like philosophy and I enjoy having philosophical conversations that amount to absolutely nothing. I am intelligent and I love to learn.

 

Of course I have my insecurities, but they don’t consume me, and I don’t try to be someone I’m not because that is the worst thing you can do to yourself. You’ll never be happy and when you look back on your life ten years from now, you’ll regret it or become someone you hate. Once upon a time, I wanted to be the “cool girl”, but that was a path that spiraled down into depression and tears.

 

One of my role models is Taylor Swift, and she is also not a “cool girl”. She writes sappy love songs, wears high heels and dresses, and is a strong woman who is fine being who she is. People accuse her of having too many boyfriends, being jealous and bashing guys, and for her “slutty” wardrobe. I want to scream at them that she has only had six or so boyfriends from the time her first album was released to now, that she has the right to bash her boyfriends that were jerks, and that she can wear what she wants, thank you, thank you very much!

 

Also, some guys prefer their women to be insecure and not strong, which is why they throw all these labels at them. They do it to break them. Check out this piece-of-crap article: http://mattforney.com/2013/09/16/the-case-against-female-self-esteem/ I seriously want to punch this dude! He will never be able to have a meaningful relationship with a woman because he is oppressing all of the meaningful parts of his partner.

 

So women, I am asking you to please stop trying to conform to men’s expectations of you. If you are not a “cool girl”, that’s okay because YOU are probably much better than your idea of what a “cool girl” is. If you are naturally a “cool girl”, well, then that’s cool! J Men, the qualities of your perfect woman cannot be listed like quite a few of you assume. You may think you want a “cool girl” with a low self-esteem, but if you expect that from a woman, then the relationship will most likely be shallow and meaningless. There’s a saying that you don’t get to choose who you love, and I think there’s some truth in it. The person you end up loving the most usually does not match the qualities you listed on your Facebook status—and that’s probably the reason you love that person.

Ruminations on Life

Hey, it's me again, and I'm still alive. My family just moved to a new house and so I needed to take a blogging break. In fact, I think my blogging is going to drop off from three times a week to two times a month now that I'm prepping for the new school year and everything.

What a school year it will be too! I have a 19 credit load, swim team (2 hr practices everyday with 16 swim meets), a national reading conference to prep for, a potential TED talk, and I need to work on some personal projects too. I am very scared. Oh yeah, I might also have to be the manager of Bison With Attitude again.

Oh and my personal projects: a theology paper that I want to publish in a theology journal, my stuttering in ASL project with my professor, a potential music album, and my novels/stories. The TED talk and NRA conference were completely voluntary so I'll need to find time for those too. I am going to kill myself fosho.

It's very scary, but it's also very amazing too. I often wonder what life would be like if I hadn't made the choices I did. What if I had taken the road not taken? What if I had gone to Kenyon, where my favorite author John Green went to school? I would have a great English degree, but no education degree and I would be drowning in debt. Graduate school would be an impossibility. Now, I'm making plans to get into one of the best graduate programs for Creative Writing in the country. I have opportunities that I would never have had at Kenyon, and I live in Washington DC, one of the coolest places on Earth. I also have my sights set on a fellowship the Kenyon Review offers. That way, I would be able to teach at Kenyon, which makes up for the loss of my awesome English degree (sort of). I'm thankful for the opportunities Gallaudet has given me. I would never have been able to participate in a TED talk or do a project with my professor on stuttering in ASL.

The "what ifs" always catch up to me though. I could have become a doctor, and I would have never had to worry about paying the bills, and I would have time for writing. What if I took the road not taken? I want to do so much, but there's never enough time. I have to do what I choose to do or I'll waste my life reflecting and worrying whether the decision I made was the right one. I have to make it the right decision though.

That's the part I hate about life sometimes: how it's limited. I'm jealous of people that know that what they're doing is what they were meant to do. Stephen King says that he is meant to write his horror stories, but sometimes I'm not so sure if I'm meant to write my people stories. I stick with it though, and I hope I'm making the right decision.

I know I'm meant to mean something though. Someday, I want to be famous, but I'm just not sure what I'll be famous for, and whether I'll ever be famous enough.

Bookwormy Wednesdays: High Fantasy

Sorry for the Thursday blog post. :-( I forgot to blog on Wednesday, but hey! At least I remembered. ;-)

Anyways...Let me say that I was never a big fan of High Fantasy until I read "A Song of Ice and Fire". I always though Lord of the Rings stuff was kind of boring. I couldn't care less about Frodo and Modor.

However, I read the first two books of "A Song of Ice and Fire" in my GSR 240 class and I fell in love with it. George R.R. Martin has such talent, and it really took him a lot of time and effort to give us this series.

First of all, there's about...900 something characters in his books. That is insane. Could you create 900 characters and stick to you story well? My office/dorm room would be covered with post-it notes!

I think creating such an immense amount of characters made Martin exceptionally good at character development. I can identify each narrator's voice within a paragraph.

Also, his descriptions are great, but I have to warn you that it is kind of dense. If you don't read carefully, you miss out on important details.

Whatever. Read the books yourself and you'll see why I'm praising them. Sorry if I seem kind of distracted. I want to be working on my music album. Yes, you heard that right. I'm working on an album. :-) I'm trying to think of an artist name sort of like "Owl City" or something...Right now, all I've got is "Autumn Fall." Right now, I'm working on a song about Alzheimer's disease called "Nothing to Remember" and I think it's going to be great. Sad, but great. :-) Can't wait to share with everyone!

Paige's Pages: Education and Ruminations on Life

Sorry…I haven’t been a very good blogger recently. Things have been kind of hectic, but I’m back on track!

 

There are times when I wish that eternal life was possible because then I would be able to learn and be whatever I wanted. Before I went to Gallaudet, I was torn between three colleges: RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology), Kenyon College, and Gallaudet University. RIT offered me a partial scholarship so I could afford it, Kenyon offered me nothing but it was the college I desperately wanted to go to, and Gallaudet offered me a full scholarship.

 

So guess which college I chose? Gallaudet University. A free education is better than a $200,000 debt at Kenyon. If I went to RIT, I would have gotten a degree in premedical studies, and I would have been broke by the time I went to medical school. If I went to Gallaudet, I would be able to get two degrees and a minor for free, which allows me to be able to go to grad school debt-free. That. Is. Awesome. A lot of work, but awesome.

 

My dream grad school is Boston University and I want to get two degrees there: deaf education and Creative Writing. Plus, there’s a deaf school a ½ hour away from the college that I could work at while getting my degrees. If I don’t get at least some financial help though, I won’t be able to get my Ph.D. At least not right away, but a lot of people find that it’s hard to go back to school one you’ve been away from it for awhile.

 

I don’t want to have to choose though. I wish I could have gone to RIT and got that degree in Pre-Med so I could go on to medical school and become a pediatrician. I wish I could have gone to Kenyon to get that ridiculously expensive English degree. I wish I could do everything and learn everything, but I can’t and that makes me feel kind of hopeless.

 

However, I am fulfilling the requirements for medical school by taking free courses with MIT. Right now I’m taking Single Variable Calculus. I just found out about this awesome resource for independent learners: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm. I plan to take classes during breaks so I don’t feel like my brain is rotting away.

 

I can get my unofficial pre-medical and possibly my unofficial M.D. I love this resource! However, I reflect on the past and I feel stabs of regret because I never did a lot with my free time before. I write, but I never wrote prolifically. One reason for this is because my own brain prevents me from doing so, but only to a certain level. I just have to tell myself it’s not over yet, that I’m not dead. I still have a lot of time left to live and learn.

 

That’s another thing I’m tentative about. Is it worth learning all this stuff? Shouldn’t I be doing? If so, what should I be doing with my time? It’s an impossible question to ask when you’re me.

Bookwormy Wednesdays: FanFiction

There isn’t a ton of “officially published” FanFiction out there because of copyright issues and all of that jazz. I will list some of what I’ve seen, and give you guys some resources on where to find good FanFiction.

 

In the YA/MG category, I’ve noticed that Disney Hyperion publishes a lot of FanFiction-esque stuff. Percy Jackson is a FF of the Greek myths, there are several fairy tale/children’s classics spin-offs. For example, they published one on Peter Pan and one Snow White tale is coming out soon.

 

I’ve noticed that fairy tale spin-offs are very popular in YA. Here are a few examples: Cinder, Beastly, and Ella Enchanted. There are tons more out there though. Right now, Alice in Wonderland spin-offs are pretty common too. Splintered and The Looking Glass Wars are a couple.

 

And of course, there are parodies such as Nightlight (a parody of Twilight) and The Hunger Pains (a parody of The Hunger Games).

 

Shakespeare spin-offs are common too. Warm Bodies is a spin-off of Romeo and Juliet, and lord knows how many other spin-offs of that story are out there.

 

These authors might not be aware of this, but these examples are all FF. Heck, Fifty Shades of Grey started out as a FF of Twilight. However, people accuse FF of being a lesser art because it supposedly takes less work and it steals someone else’s story. A lot of FF writers say that their writing is NOT FF because they don’t want to be stigmatized.

 

Excuse me, but I beg to differ. FF takes a lot of time and skill. Right now, I’m writing a FF of The Vampire Diaries that is set in Machu Picchu during the Spanish Conquest. I did a bit of research on a single line said by a character in the show and voila, my idea was born. A love rectangle between two brother vampire Emperors and the Original vampire Klaus over the human girl they all love. It’s pretty hardcore, and it takes just as much work (if not more) than an original story because of all the research involved and the new characters I’ve created. I’m quite proud of it, and the response to the story so far has been pretty good.

 

I kind of get why some authors hate FF though…Maybe they’re jealous. My FF has been getting a little more attention than my original works, but I’ve gotten over it. FF is more a practice tool and a writer’s block filler (how I kill time when I am having trouble with my original stories). It’s a nice way to get feedback on your writing and it’s a self-esteem booster when you feel crappy about your writing skills (Whaa! I got rejected by an agent AGAIN!).

 

But seriously, don’t be a snob about FF. It’s not a lesser art form. Some of the stuff people come up with of FF.net is incredible. Publishing companies should seriously think about picking up some of this stuff. Just look at how successful Fifty Shades of Grey was! The Kindle Store has got the memo and now you can self-publish FF on TVD, Pretty Little Liars, and several other stories. I might get into self-publishing if it means I can publish my TVD FF. The site is called “Kindle Worlds.” Go ahead and check it out!

Paige's Pages: On Writing FanFiction

Hey guys, sorry I was AWOL last week…I went to San Diego to visit my Grandmother and some of my family. It was tons of fun: I went boogie boarding, ocean swimming, and I spent some quality time with my little second cousins.

 

Anyways, onto the theme this week: FanFiction. What is FanFiction? It’s basically twisting an original work (like Harry Potter or Doctor Who) to make your own version of the story. There are three kinds of FF: Oneshots, Multi-chaptered stories, and collaborations. Oneshots are basically just expanding or re-writing a scene. They’re just one chapter. Multi-chaptered stories usually start from a specific scene and the author of the FF twists the story completely. For example: Bella dies when she jumps off the cliff and Edward meets a new girl…The author expands on that change in scenery. Collaborations are just when two or more authors create a FF together.

 

What is really cool about this is that you know that FF writers are just writing for the heck of it. They’ll never get published, but they don’t care. That is true loyalty to a story. If I ever get published, I can’t wait to see the crazy stuff my fans come up with.

 

However, FF isn’t really filtered out for vulgarity, inappropriateness, or just flat-out BAD writing, so it’s sometimes annoying trying to pick through what you want to read. Sometimes I’ll be trying to find a good quality piece on a scene I really like, but it’s so damn hard. It’s like rummaging through junk mail.

 

So you know what I do when I can’t find anything I want to read? I open my word processor and write it myself. ‘Cause you know, the best way to get anything done is to do it yerself! I really enjoy it too. Right now, I’m writing a ton of Ed Sheeran/Vampire Diaries FF, and I love it! I love the challenge of it, and I like talking to people who enjoy TVD too. It’s also great practice for me. Why? I’ll tell you.

 

Character consistency is important for any medium of writing, but especially in FF because they’re not your characters. If the characters are not consistent, readers will automatically stop reading the FF because it doesn’t feel real to them. In one TVD FanFic, Elena punched her best friend (and she would never do that) so I scoffed and left a review for the author telling them about character consistency. It’s really good practice for those who struggle with character consistency.

 

If there are a lot of people who are willing to read your FF, they will leave reviews, which will help you with your writing. Some of these people are very good writers so they leave good-quality constructive criticism , which helps me a lot (but unfortunately, I’m not insanely popular so I don’t get a ton of reviews). Some people are dorks and just say “Great job, update soon.” -eyeroll-

 

Do you think writing FanFiction helps you with your writing skills?

Bookwormy Wednesdays: Good Vampire Books

I know, I know, I know. “There’s no such thing as a good vampire book! Twilight ruined all of them! Whaaa!” I am here to tell you that you are wrong. There is such a thing as a good vampire book, and Twilight isn’t nearly as bad as you think. Here are some examples, and I’ll talk about what we can learn about them.

 

Twilight isn’t as bad as you think. I mean, think about it. It has everything the average girl would want: eternity with a cute guy, a strong-ish female lead, weddings and babies, a love triangle, and seriously badass vampires and werewolves. The plot is great and it hooks readers. Pick up Twilight again to read it and ask yourself why it is so successful. It’s: alluring to female readers, has a good mix of romance and adventure, and is easy to read. There are lots of reasons. Meyer isn’t a fantastic writer and she doesn’t need to be. The story did it for her. You don’t have to agree with the message in the story, which is basically preaching Mormon beliefs. I don’t. I just like to analyze it.

 

I am also in love with the TV show, The Vampire Diaries. It rocks, seriously. I haven’t read the books yet, but I’ve ordered them from the library and can’t wait to start reading as I am going through serious VD withdrawl because I watched the whole series on Netflix and season 5 doesn’t come out until October. L The plot is even better than Twilight, the characters are interesting and complex, and there’s several love triangles going on. Plus, there are more magical creatures: vampires, werewolves, witches, doppelgangers, and hybrids, and they actually stick to the legends (vampires burn instead of sparkle!).

 

Dracula is not so much a vampire story as it is a piece of gothic literature. I personally don’t think Count Dracula is a vampire. My paper on the book had this title: Dracula: The Fault in His Fangs? I got a B+, just in case the grade is important for you to know. Really, the narrators (Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker, Van Helsing, Quincy) saw their own faults and projected them onto Dracula because he was a stranger and could be easily blamed. Agoraphobia and his “vampiristic (is this even a word?) traits” is what made Dracula a vampire in symbolic terms. If you want an MG version of this book, check out Bunnicula. It tells the story of Chester the cat and Harold the Dog and their fear of the vampire bunny, Bunnicula. Is Bunnicula really a vampire though? Who knows?

 

During the vampire book craze, I was reading mostly dystopia among other things so I haven’t read a lot of vampire stories. I have a reading list though: The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, Vampire Academy by Rachelle (sp?) Mead, Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, and Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice. Wish me luck! Do you know any well-done vampire books?