I am not afraid to stand up and say I am possibly the biggest hypocrite on the planet. I have no shame in admitting I'm wrong- there's nothing bad about it. All it means is I'm learning to see things from other perspectives and not being judgmental. It doesn't stop me looking like a big old goofy fan girl on most days though. I can't even begin to count the amount of times I have dismissed a book, a series, a comic or anything because it's "too dark", "too cheesy" or "not my thing". They say don't judge a book by its cover but the amount of times I have glanced across the book store shelves and immediately ignored those with the boring covers. Which is totally ridiculous- some of my favorite books have covers that make watching paint dry an extreme adrenaline rush. So now I'm trying everything new all the time. There's so much stuff out there! Who cares if it's super popular (or not), if it's eastern (or western), old or new. Life is one big fruity bowl of deliciousness and every bite tastes difference. I'm a nerd of many fandoms, a woman of different interests. I refuse to force myself to only be a comic nerd, only watch American TV, never read anything that isn't supernatural romance.
So to persuade you all to take up the call of exploration with me, I've compiled a list (oh how I love lists) of the top
Believe it or not Game of Thrones was not something I liked on a first glance. I still shake my head at the thought of how little invested I was at first. Like many of you, I began my love affair with the fantasy great when the television series first aired. I'd heard of it vaguely beforehand- I knew it had been in the works for a while and had a lot of hype behind it. I watched the first episode with a bowl of gummies and a blankie in cold April weather. I wasn't too impressed. See, I used to be a complete sex-o-phobe. Anything with sexual content freaked me out. I grew up in a Catholic environment- sex was a bit of a taboo subject and even in school, not handled so great by my teachers. I had grown up with this warped view that sex was a bad thing. Hah, how wrong was I. Anyway, the explicitly of the first episode, with its boobs and balls galore, made me wrinkle my nose a little. I forced myself to see through the lust though and stick with it. A couple of episodes later I was ignoring the innuendos and hooked. A few months later I borrowed the entire True Blood box set from a friend and desensitized myself. Now it doesn't bother me at all.
Talk to me a few months ago and I'd be a hard core DC Comics supporter. It's got Batman. Everyone likes Batman right? You can't go wrong with a bit of Batman. I loved Image to bits too but they're kind of a separate tree from the mainstream I believe. There's a different kind of quirk to their indie style than the classic superhero line up. Marvel and I were not on speaking terms, which was ironic because I'd grown up on X-men cartoons and Spiderman. Spiderman Loves Mary Jane was like the first comic I actually bought. I read Runaways which was a big favorite too- maybe it was their absence that made me hiss and boo at Marvel over recent months. Yet everyone was going gaga for the current story lines and I wondered what all the fuss was about. So one day I sat down with my brother (Panels and Pixels) and he spent over an hour getting me up to speed with the entire goings on of the X-men world. There were so many questions in the process. "Where is [insert character name]?" "Is Jean Grey dead?" Pfft, when is Jean not dead? After long discussions he handed me a volume of Uncanny X-men and I was never the same. I saw the error of my ways and chose to never again condemn and entire publishing company based on some bad reading experiences. Now I love Cyclops and Emma Frost- the characters I used to hate. It's amazing what a good bit of writing and some optimism can do.
No list would be complete without an anime section. I could go on for hours about the things I have shunned- Death Note, Attack on Titan, Loveless to name just a few. I've learnt recently I have a bit of a superiority complex about my Japanese culture hobbies. Because I'm not sat watching all the perverted horrible stuff I felt I was better than others because I had feminist morals or something. I figured out thought that the thing is at the end of the day is that people should be allowed to like whatever the hell they want as long as it's healthy and doesn't hurt anyone else. I'm done with the elitist attitude. Life's too short to be negative like that. So when I tried to watch Attack on Titan for the third time, I said to myself that I would watch up to episode three or four before finally giving p. The reason I had tried so hard in the first place was of all the hype. Everyone I knew and the rest would not shut up about this fantastic series. Both hilarious and heart-breaking, I couldn't understand how the two could mix. I even spent an hour with a friend of mine discussing it's major flaws only on episode one. I watched it all night and regret my pessimism greatly. The way I'd explain it is this- Attack on Titan is like a really ugly sweater your grandma gets you for Christmas. It's hideous and a completely joke to modern clothing but the most comfortable thing you own. It keeps you warm and never wears out. So you wear it when you're lazing about or feeling ill and it just makes everything better.
Don't shoot down things, even if you've tried them. Try again and again to love more things in your life. Because at the end of the day love is pretty much all there is when it boils down to it.
@gee4arika and gee4arika tumblr coming soon!
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