I am not Obligated to like Game of Thrones (and neither are you)

In the summer of 2012 after a break up with my boyfriend and still remaining friends with him he gave me copies of books from the series A Song of Ice and Fire since his best friend liked them and wanted Game of Thrones to be a wonderful surprise to me. He also wanted to talk about something else besides Doctor Who and Big Brother.

So I read the first ten percent of the book and watched the first episode of Game of Thrones and I gave him my honest thought on the franchise. I was bored out of my mind. He was a little heart broken because he really hoped I would like it and out of guilt I continued to read the series.

I read up to the end of A Storm of Swords and stopped reading the series because a close friend of mine had passed away from lupus and I couldn’t bear to continue reading about so much violence and bloodshed at the time.

Spoilers concerning A Song of Ice and Fire and the first season of Game of Thrones from this point on. Sort of. Oh and lots of bitching.

I get why people like Game of Thrones because it’s HBO, surely they are the perfection of creating awesome television shows (and porn). Granted I am kind of biased against HBO since I’m not one for raunchy tv. But I do have to admit I liked that they were fairly accurate to the first book and because it airs on a cable network they can get away with more.

I tried to like the series, I really did. I even made an awesome friend because she was reading A Clash of Kings and I literally had no friends in that class during that semester. I DO NOT HATE THE SERIES, but if I had the option of choosing between A Song of Ice and Fire and Harry Potter, I’d go for Harry Potter.

I’d say my complaints from the subject is from friends of mine and the internet. The internet isn’t so bad since I follow my own advice that I give people when they don’t like something. If you don’t like or care for it, then leave it alone. However, it’s not the easiest thing to do with people and friends.

As mentioned above I actually met an awesome friend of mine through the series and we have fun exchanging and suggesting fandoms with each other. Our friendship started because of A Song of Ice and Fire and became solidified because of Doctor Who and mutual hatred of an English professor at our school. But I also have normal friends who have frequently suggested the series over, and over, and over again because, “you like Harry Potter, Doctor Who, and Kill Bill. You will love this!”And I will admit that since most of these friends don’t read books (those poor unfortunate souls…) I had fun teasing them with the knowledge of who will live and who will die and how long they had to wait for Joffrey to die (the joke was on all of us when book three was split into two seasons).

I won’t bash on the series and say it’s a steaming pile of crap, or as my mother would say “it’s just legal porn,” because it’s not a steaming pile of crap. It’s not the most amazing thing I’ve ever read or seen, but it’s not a steaming pile of crap (George RR Martin sure can write some kinky shit though).

One day I will finish the books (unless George RR Martin croaks), mainly because the plot of Lady Stone Heart interests me significantly. I probably won’t finish the tv show for one reason alone. They diverted from the books; yeah I’m an elitist book nazi who believes if a book is being adapted to a movie or tv show it should be done to every exact detail. I can understand the diversion from movies since you have three hours at best to cram a whole story in, but it’s a fucking tv show, you have plenty of time to get things into exact detail! There was the issue of running out of stuff from the source material at the end of season five, but that wouldn’t have happened if they had stuck closer tot he source material.

I could go on about the flaws I see in the show, but then that’s just bashing the show (which I technically already did), and I don’t want to be that person on the internet who bashes stuff he just doesn’t like. If you like Game of Thrones, that’s fine, If you haven’t read the books that’s not fine, you need to read them, don’t talk to me until you’ve read them.

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Tagged for an Award (again)

Thanks @samslittlecorner for nominating me

THe rules:

• thank and link the blogger that nominated you
• Answer the seven questions that the nomination has provided you
• create seven questions for your nominees.

What is your favorite genre to read?

It’s hard to say, I like a bit of everything, but I find myself enjoying the science fiction genre alot.

Currently, what is your favorite series?

My most recently published favorite series would be THe Lunar Chronicles, but I also really enjoy the Harry Potter series and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

What series do you love to hate (that isn’t Twilight)?

It’s hard for me to hate a series, even Twilight had some stuff I didn’t hate (ironically it was the cars), I guess the Awoken series by Serra Elinsen, mainly because of how it was created and who was the actual author to it.

Who is your fictional crush?

The Doctor 🙂

If you could give one book suggestion, what would it be and why?

Oh another hard one, maybe A Child Called ‘it’ since it was recommended to me by multiple friends who don’t read who thought it was really good. Traumatic, but good.

What is your favorite place to read?

A quiet place, usually on a chair or sofa.

What do you enjoy doing, besides reading in your free time?

I like to paint and draw, I’m very fond of watching YouTube and spending time with my dog 🙂

My Questions for you

1. What was the first book that you loved?
2. What series do you feel is overrated?
3. What’s your favorite snack to eat?
4. What book has changed how you viewed a topic the most?
5. What do you do besides reading?
6. Favorite author?
7. If you had to choose between a gold box, a silver box, or a copper box to find a diamond ring, which box would you pick and why?

I tag whoever is following this blog and bothers to read this.

Me Before You Review

Some Spoilers with this post that I’d like to concentrate on concerning the topic of suicide.
I realize this is a work of fiction and it is just one story of one person’s life, but as someone who has had a loved one commit suicide I feel it could have been handled better in this book. I too have read most of the book, I’d like to caution readers who have these thoughts and feelings about reading this book and not to take the end result as seriously.

Sam's Little Corner

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Published: January 5, 2012

Left is the original cover and the right is the movie adaptation, that was released April 26, 2016. As much as I love original covers, I bought the new one because it was cheaper.

Goodreads Summary:

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than…

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Shifting Genres

There is a humorous show on YouTube called FiftyShadesofGreen/BoozeYourOwnAdventure where I learned quite a bit more about the writing and publishing world than I expected to hear from a video sharing website. I also learned quite a bit about my own reading habits, so today we are going to talk about how sometimes it’s good to shift genres among books.

Signs You Need to Shift

There’s nothing wrong with reading YA, I’ve been reading it since I was eleven and now I’m getting ready to start pushing thirty. However I do have periods of “I’m bored with this,” the first time this happened was the summer of 2013 where I decided I’d read Divergent based off the suggestion that “it’s like The Hunger Games” and that was the problem, it’s like The Hunger Games. I had read dystopian novels such as the Uglies series, The Hunger Games, 1984, Logan’s Run, and some of the Ender’s Game series (until I discovered Orson Scott Card is a hypocrite concerning religion and a homophobic jerk).

I began to just predict things like who our main female protagonist will fall for, who she unwillingly/unknowingly betray, who she loves dearly will be killed, what happens to her family, how her decision alone turned the whole fictional universe on it’s head, etc. It wasn’t with the dystopia genre, it was also with the paranormal genre (we DID have countless Twilight clones for a while), and while I did fully enjoy some of them (the first half of Beastly and Bewitching by Alex Flinn are actually pretty good).

I’m not saying you need to abandon the genre completely, another example was when I started reading The Lunar Chronicles and discovered I liked it alot and things weren’t so predictable (I caught on to what was happening when I discovered Merissa Meyer is quite the Sailor Moon fangirl,) and it was a nice breather from the books I’ve mentioned above and I plan to reread it when I get the opportunity.

I’m also not saying you constantly need to be switching things up, but if one finds themselves bored with reading and have the following symptoms along with it, then you may want to consider something new.

Well Then What do you Mean Shift?

I mean take a break, read something new, shortly after finishing Cress I didn’t know what to read, my friend constantly told me to read The Fault in Our Stars and after three months of nagging, I read it. I actually enjoyed it; despite the subject matter of the book it is very light hearted and brought up new views. Same couldn’t be said for John Green’s other books when I read them, but I did enjoy the shift of genre.

Recently I’ve been reading books from the Doctor Who and Star Wars franchises, mainly because I wanted to discover the fate of Asajj Ventress and because I really like Doctor Who. I’m currently reading two books, Dorothy Must Die and I just started the Longmire series because my dad is a fan.

It’s very relieving to switch between the two books. If I’m not feeling it with one universe, I jump to the other. A third book may be thrown in just incase though.

This is alot shorter than your usual ranting

It’s not a rant, rather a suggestion for people who suffer from what I suffer from at times. It can be applied to tv and music too.

 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I’m not as big a gamer as I use to be, but I’ve always loved The Legend of Zelda games since my first time dipping into the universe through The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask back in 2000 on the Nintendo 64. Since then I have tried my best and hardest to explore the land of Hyrule and other words (and timelines) to restore peace to the land.

I love the Legend of Zelda games, to the point where when I dropped 300$ for a Nintendo 3ds without a second thought just for the special Triforce edition. I love the art from each game, I love the lands created, I love the characters created for each world and era. I even think Hyrule Warriars is okay to play. Two years ago we were given a small glimpse into the Legend of Zelda title for the Wii U and for two years that was all we had (we even plainly called it Zelda U). And no the constant postponing of the game didn’t shock me, I went through it twice with Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword.

Once again because of priorities towards higher education I put my passions on a backseat so my gaming habits were also in the backseat (except for shockingly Disney Infinity). Yesterday at E3 Nintendo released news concerning their Zelda game for the Wii U called Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. It looks AMAZING!

Gamers were shown previews and clips from the game and new abilities Link has in this new journey. Then there’s the actual trailer to the game itself; I can’t fully describe the feeling I get from the game. It makes me want to grab all my art supplies and try to recreate the universe presented to those who play the game.

It also reminds me of things I’ve longed for and have heard my dad long for. A world primarily ran by nature with countless areas of unknown to explore and see. And more than likely that’s what I’ll be doing in this new Zelda game is looking around and exploring the world since that’s my favorite thing to do in video games. To finish things off here is the trailer to The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.

Orlando Shooting

I didn’t want to write about this, I wanted to keep as best a poker face as I could on the internet, but it’s not something I can fully ignore. Not with seeing so many victims fully identified on facebook and other forms of social media. On my personal facebook I chose not to give a definite opinion outside of this is a tragic event and wondering why assault weapons are so easily sold to the public.

The thing that makes me sad and on the verge of crying seeing the photos on facebook is the knowledge that they were a “Ben” to someone else. They were sons and daughters to over protective dads like I am, they had a mother who enjoys shopping, they have siblings. Then there’s the knowledge that there were couples who for whatever reason were not together physically that night. People killed who had someone they loved deeply and heavily.

Of Orlando and the Virtue of Embrace

God in the Midst of the City

Early yesterday morning, a twenty-nine-year-old man, full of hatred and armed to the teeth, walked into the Pulse night club in Orlando, Florida, and proceeded to murder fifty people and wound scores more.  It is the most devastating mass shooting in American history.  It specifically targeted the LGBT community.

In April of 1999, when two young men entered Columbine High School and began their massacre, I was twenty-five years old.  I was young enough to remember vividly the experience of being in high school: in the library working on some project, in the cafeteria with friends.  The familiarity of those spaces and my ability to imagine myself as a student at Columbine High School rendered that shooting intimately personal for me.  It was a long time before I was able to think of Columbine without being overcome by emotion.

My life-long friends Elizabeth Bridges and Audra Hamilton, one gay and…

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Gay and Christian

Trey Pearson, Christian rock singer for the band Every Day Sunday recently came out as gay. I haven’t ever listened to the band and probably won’t care to (I think my Jesus freak days are done,) but hearing the news that a member of a successful group was gay just caught my attention.

We’re a minority, lgbt christians, I can’t speak for all the other stories because I didn’t experience them first hand and I have no right to say what others have gone through. I don’t know what Trey Pearson went through growing up, I only have my own experiences.

These are also personal experiences that I have mostly chosen to keep off the internet, but I will post a little blog about it. I won’t talk about my actual upbringing or how my parents reacted concerning it and my religion (shockingly nothing negative though), I won’t talk about any actual religious stuff. If you want a blog post about homosexuality and the Bible you can go google another blog with that topic. My own spiritual experiences are also off limits.

Wait, Gay and Christian?

These are the usual questions that arose when I revealed I was gay and catholic; wait, aren’t you scared you’re going to hell for being gay? Are you ever going to get married? Are you ever going to have sex? Don’t you know you’ll be happier if you just leave the church? My usual answers are no, not sure (as of June 2015 I hope to though), that’s none of your business, and you don’t seem to be thrilled with life either.

In real life I choose to be fairly subtle about my sexuality because 1. I desire to be judged based on the kind of person I am and 2. It’s kind of fun to screw with the heads of people who don’t realize it off the bat. However in the days that I was more religious I chose not to speak of my sexuality too much because I wanted to keep my love life private, a right every person has. It wasn’t out of shame, but because I feel some things in life should be private.

Concerning that period of time and when I think about it it’s pretty obvious who would have stayed my friend had I been open about what I am and who would have been ready to throw stones at me. I keep in contact with the former and prefer not to be in contact with the later.

I also never chose to come out to any religious group because I never wanted to be the token gay, or the face of Christians who happen to be gay. I wanted to be treated as equally as everyone else. The thought of being the face of something terrifies the shit out of me; it means I have to constantly be on good behavior, constantly be the bigger person,  and any time I fucked up it looks bad on a whole group of people. It’s a cowardly decision I’m aware, but becoming the face of something would have meant losing something I very much desire to keep private in my life.

As of this current time (2016) my religious beliefs have been moved over to my private life too. Also not out of shame (yes there has been struggle the past few years because life is never easy), but out of the same reason I keep my love life private, because I want it to be private and I have the right to that privacy. Yes there are alot of things I don’t agree with the church about and many people will say I don’t deserve to say I’m catholic based on it. My usual response to that is “k thanks, bye.”

The C and A

The  first and sole relationship I’ve ever had was with an atheist. I’m still friends with him, I still love him. I’ve looked up to him since I was sixteen hoping I would grow up to be like him as an adult as someone as confident and comfortable with his sexuality as he was. He is also a very loving individual, very stressed, but very loving.

I chose to keep my relationship with him private because it was long distance and based of that readers should be able to gather enough. There were a few friends I told of it, some of them were shocked that I talked to atheists and were convinced I’d be led away from God. Other said I needed to convert him to the love of God so he wouldn’t go to hell.

When the subject of God came up, they weren’t always pleasant and I was defensive about the situation and said things I really regret now as an older adult. However, from this man that I probably admire a little too much I feel I learned to be a more loving person and gained the ability to love a little more unconditionally (ok maybe not completely unconditionally, there’s alot of idiots in my life).

The reason he’s my sole relationship so far is because a relationship just isn’t on my priority list right now. I also date based off intuition and chemistry and I don’t have much of my type available at this time.

Other lgbtq Christians?

I haven’t met too many, I’ve met a few, they’re nice people, but there’s never a balance I feel comfortable with concerning religious life and sexuality. My gaydar detects who’s gay in a group fairly accurately. I never act on it because in most of those situations the individual has/is in the closet. There is nothing wrong with being in the closet if you are scared/desire not to come out (so long as you don’t bash anyone out of the closet).

I’ve gone to gay christian dating sites, I had a good laugh after thirty minutes of going through profiles and deleted mine. Nothing against those gentlemen, but I can’t see myself with any of them.

Has it Ever Been a Problem? (Just End the Damn Blog Post Already)

I can understand if someone were concerned for my mental health concerning this topic. As I said before I can’t speak for anyone else’s experiences, but I can understand resentment or a dislike of the religion. Even for those who are open about their religion and sexuality there are still some delicate places. For one thing it’s a little hard to date and be abstinent since it’s nearly always a deal breaker from my own experience. No idea why straight couples don’t get shamed as much concerning the topic (unless one of them ends up pregnant…).

I never really did ever think I was going to hell or feared what God would think of me since God is omnipresent. I was raised in a very loving family and I’m grateful for it. Do I feel like I’m getting the short end of alot of sticks? HELL YEAH! But I can be very hopeful for a nice future. To finish things up, here’s a song I could always relate to and always shared without revealing that it’s a christian song (seriously why do we always have to label things these days?)