Hanorah Words

By   Julie de Waroquie r One of my favorite things in books and movies and TV shows and anything is when you're left with a sort of mystery. Was it magic or wasn't it? Could the psychic really predict what was going to happen or was she just a really good fraud? Are there little hints of the supernatural that I overlook, or am I just overly imaginative? It leaves things open-ended, room for more imagination to get it. I love it! So, when I was living in Connecticut, I went to a writing conference .  I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot about writing and publishing. While I was there, I stumbled upon something called "Magical Realism".   I wasn't sure what it was. It was in a list of Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror books and along with some other strange and wacky things (Steam Punk and Diesel Punk anyone?), but it caught my eye a bit more.  I mean, I like to write my stories in what people like to think of as "The Real World", but I always like ...

The alternate title was "Pot Destroys Humanity. We Deserve It". So, my friend Cyn has been harassing me for a while now to watch the movie The Cabin in the Woods .  I actually didn't mind because I wanted  to see it, but I either didn't have a chance or I'd start to watch the movie and I'd get confused. This is mostly because of my usual movie-watching habit. See, I don't just watch a movie. I watch a movie, play on my IPod, make lunch, dance around my bedroom naked and read the plot of the movie covertly so that I know what's going to happen ahead of time. However, I didn't want to do that with The Cabin in the Woods . It's a Joss Whedon film and I would prefer to watch it while doing nothing  else with no knowledge whatsoever of what's going to happen in the movie ahead of time. I do this for certain movies and TV shows only. I also do the same things with anime and manga depending on what other people have told me.  I like to spoi...

If anyone smiles, they'll think we're American! Downton Abbey is a British TV series that airs on PBS's Masterpiece Classic. It is a British period drama created by Julian Fellowes and originally released in the UK in 2010. The episodes were... edited and released in the US in January 2011. It's basically the story of a Yorkshire estate and everyone that lives there from the aristocratic Crawley family to the servants, even the lowly kitchen maid, Daisy.  The series begins with the sinking of the Titanic and the death of the two known male heirs and season three is stated to cover the Interwar period and the beginning of the Irish Free State and the birth of the newest Downton heir. So... basically it's a show about a bunch of poncy British people running around and being British. How fantastic can that be? Actually, I really enjoy it. The costumes are to die for. Whenever Maggie Smith is on screen, I'm prepared to laugh or roll my eyes. Every character...

The giant suit of armor is the little  brother. Remember that. It'll save your life. So, I've talked about my introduction to anime before and one of the components of it was this anime series called Fullmetal Alchemist . I did pick up the manga in mortuary school, but I haven't kept up with it and I probably won't pick it up in the future unless someone I know already has them. If not, well, I know there's another anime called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood  which follows the manga very well and I'll just watch it because apparently they're the same story, different medium. However, I'm not talking about either of those. I'm talking about the anime television series that originally on Adult Swim beginning in November 2004 where I caught a few episodes here and there, but I never really got into  it until after I'd started mortuary school in 2008 and began hanging out with a crowd of people who all watched and read that sort of thing.  ...

I'm not a gamer. I just never really saw a point in sitting and staring at a screen for hours with a controller that didn't even have the full alphabet on it or at least a number pad.  These days I understand why  people like it, but I've missed all those introductory years of getting used to using controllers and building those fine motor skills. So, those controllers are basically just a pain for my hand. I'd take a pen and paper or a keyboard that wasn't ergonomic any day. Actually, I do take those every had so, there's no problem there. However, I do like watching  video games. It's like watching a movie, but your friend is participating in it while you offer or root for the other side if your friend recently pissed you off. It's the best of both worlds really. I get to watch TV like a normal person while my gamer friends get to play their video games like the weird people they are. If I get bored, I pull out a book and join a different reality....

Once upon a time, I was a little girl who loved movies based on fairy tales. This was a long, long time ago. Twenty years, in fact... or maybe it was yesterday?  Anyhow, if someone asked me if I liked Cinderella , I would look at them with my big, bluish-green-gray eyes and say, "Which one?" Most people would look at me, quite baffled at that little girl wouldn't know  what they were talking about or that she knew there were multiple  Cinderella movies. Either way, I'd continue, "There's the Disney one, the Muppets one, Rodgers and Hammerstein's   Cinderella , and  Cinderfella . So... which one?" They usually walked away at that point or my grandmother would start laughing at them and explain to them that I really  liked fairytales or something like that. She still likes to tell me the story of how I was with fairytale movies. They're just lucky they never asked me about Snow White or Peter Pan! I just liked movies based on fairytales. W...

According to Fantasy enthusiasts... So, last time I wrote about how fantasy and science fiction were coming out of the basement and into the mainstream where, admittedly, they belong in my not-so-humble opinion. Being a huge nerd that I am, I love the fact that the things I love are now appreciated by everyone. It makes me feel less unusual. Even more important, most people only enjoy the lesser works so I still get to feel superior to them when they talk about how much they love Twilight  and Eragon . I can even sympathize with them when they complain about not being able to get through Lord of the Rings , while snorting when they complain about Dune . I have the best of all worlds! Even better, I'm one of those people who really doesn't like High Fantasy while I can't really relate to most science fiction unless I find it on my own. Yes, you read that correctly. I. Don't. LIKE. High. Fantasy. It's the real problem behind my dislike of Lord of the Ri...

When you think of science fiction and fantasy, most people think of the same type of person initially. That fat, man-child with pimples all over his face who lives in his parents basement and probably obsesses over Doctor Who , Star Wars  or Star Trek . He probably plays games like World of Warcraft  and the Final Fantasy Series . Oh, and the person interested in science fiction and fantasy probably also doesn't shower often. I know you get that picture in your head. You can't help it. You hear Lord of the Rings  or any comic book title and the same thing happens: the ugly basement monster appears in your head and one of his pimples gets just a little bit larger. Oh, and look, he wiped his runny nose on his sleeve. How quaint! Why do we have this image in our heads? Well, it started with a bit of a contradiction. You see, most people in the past have agreed that most science fiction and fantasy is too complex for most people (the quintessential "mainstream" aud...

With 50% less penis jokes occurring with 150% more frequency! So, my friend Cyn and I got together last week and we watched John Dies at the End , the movie starring Paul Giamatti, Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes. If anyone has seen the book review   I posted a while back, you'll know I really liked the book. I mean, I really, really, really loved  the book. So, the good news is that the movie keeps the tone of the book and the basic plot of the book. It's like if Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban  actually managed to parse down the plot in a way that made the movie make sense instead of having several adults trying to explain those holes with eyebrow movements.  There is a whole chunk of the book's plot missing and one whole character is taken out to give a different character more screen time. However, the creators do it in a way that doesn't take away  from the story too much. It's still a cohesive story, but things have defin...

Mawwiage is what bwings us togethwa today! So, New Years Eve, my cousin got married. He's like a little brother to me (okay, not little so much as younger, but you know what I'm saying) and I love him to bits. This got me thinking about marriage and how it appears in most of the books I read versus the movies I watch verses what I actually see in real life. Now, I should note that my real life views of marriage are a little... off because my mom didn't actually get married until I was sixteen-going-on-seventeen. I watched my aunts, uncles, and grandparents in their married lives, but I didn't live with it everyday like most children. Then again, I spent some time with my grandparents every day so that's actually a little bit of a lie. I just didn't live  with it. As far as I could tell, marriage was a lot of arguing and compromise followed by uncomfortable jokes and yelling at kids. With just my mother and I, in the household of no marriage, it was a lot ...

So, when I first found out about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows  (not the movie, the title of the book before it came out), I remember doing everything I could to research everything about what a "Deathly Hallow" was, because it's actually a real thing. There are Hallows; four of them actually, alternatively called "The Four Treasures". If you know anything about Tarot or legends or Wicca or any New Age religion, you might be surprised by how familiar they are: 1.) The Spear of Lugh 2.) The Stone of Fal 3.) The Sword of Light of Nuada 4.) The Cauldron of Dagda Yup, turn "Cauldron" into "Cup" and you've got the four Tarot card suits... which then connects the four hallows to the four elements... and just makes everything AWESOME. I was super-excited. I mean, J.K. Rowling had connected a lot of mythology already and she'd introduced some ideas of her own. I mean, how many people looked at House Elves and thought...

Nearly a year ago, I was very, very, very bored. Incredibly bored, in fact. Amazingly bored, in point of fact. I was so bored that I was visiting TVTropes.org ... again. While there, I was exploring and I came across some fanfiction that intrigued me and I decided to read it. I really don't remember what trope or article I was on. I don't even remember if the first one really was Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality  or if it was actually a different fanfiction first. I had never read fanfiction before and most times I heard about fanfiction, it was something to scoff about derisively. Only the crazy fans read and wrote fanfiction. Serious writers wrote original thing. Duh. I was incredibly stupid and closed-minded. Sue me. I have to feel elitist about myself in some way, you see. Either way, I somehow ran across Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality  and I learned several things. 1.) Not all fanfiction is complete and utter drivel. 2.) You re...

So, I recently read a review which ripped Harry Potter apart because the main character of the series spent so much time trying to be an "ordinary, everyday student" that he didn't become a proper hero. In fact, the whole character of Harry Potter was compared unfavorably to Buffy Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer . This got me thinking about the "ordinary, everyday... whatever" and it's role in fiction. Ostensibly, it's there so that they reader/viewer can better relate to the main character. Everyone wants to be Superman or Batman, but relating to them on a personal basis is quite hard as our lives don't match up well to theirs. Hell, Disney has a whole franchise of TV Shows which have a plot that can be described as "ordinary, everyday high school student who's actually a... (superspy/psychic/lives in a hotel/runs their own super-successful webshow/etc.)". Everyone loved Smallville  because it was about... and ordinary, ever...