Snowflake Challenge, Day 1

[ermingarden]

Day 1: Talk about your Happy Place—the things that give you joy, calm you or keep you sane.
(Jumped in on Day 2, going back and doing this now.)

My first fannish Happy Place was the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I was an odd kid and frequently teased, but when an elementary school classmate gave me a copy of Showdown at Centerpoint it was my gateway into a world that made sense, that was clearly laid out and consistent, in a way that social interactions at school didn't and weren't. When my parents got divorced and so much in my life changed, Star Wars - specifically Star Wars novels - remained a constant. The local used bookstore had a couple of shelves of Star Wars novels in the sci-fi/fantasy section, and I would go every so often and buy another beat-up paperback that I would devour in an afternoon.

This particular Happy Place I valued because of its stability, but when the sequels were greenlit and the universe rebooted, so that the Expanded Universe I knew and loved became Legends, Star Wars couldn't be for me what it had been. It had been a safe place for me because of its constancy, but that was gone. That's not to say that I think the sequels are bad, or that the change was necessarily for the worse - but the very fact that Star Wars had changed meant I couldn't rely on it in the same way anymore.

However, what Star Wars had been to me, the Lord of the Rings became, and much more besides. I had read the Lord of the Rings as a kid, but hadn't fallen in love. In high school, though, when I read it again, I fell completely head over heels into Middle-earth. Today, the feel of the paper in my edition of the Lord of the Rings - a long-ago gift from my great-aunt to my mother, who doesn't really like fantasy, and then passed on to me -, the look of the typeface, the familiar cadence of Tolkien's prose, all give me that sense of stability that has been characteristic of my fannish interactions as long as I have been a fan. Although I do engage with other fandoms, that constancy, as today's prompt put it, both calms me and brings me joy.

Comments

[oldtoadwoman]

I had read the Lord of the Rings as a kid, but hadn't fallen in love. In high school, though, when I read it again, I fell completely head over heels into Middle-earth.

Same for me. I first tried to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when I was too young and just couldn't get into it. I've heard people talk about The Hobbit as a children's book and it's really not (unless you're a super-advanced kid maybe which I wasn't). I think I was about 16 or so when I read it again and actually enjoyed it.

I think I'm overdue for a reread. Enough time has passed that I've forgotten lots of details so it would be almost new again.

[ermingarden]

Definitely - I enjoyed it when I read it as a kid, but a lot of it really went over my head. I just didn't have the life experience necessary to grasp the kind of melancholy threads woven through the story.

The Hobbit

[oldtoadwoman]

Yeah, I didn't have the vocabulary or attention span to begin with and it was so much darker than I was prepared for. It seems weird to say that it was the first time I read a story where war was bad... because I'm sure the theme of a lot of stories is that war is bad... but The Hobbit was the first story I can remember reading where the heroes we'd been rooting for are the ones to make things worse and turn on each other. Every other story I had read up until that point (I was nine or ten, I think), a battle scene was clearly good guys vs bad guys. And I just remember being very freaked out when things went sideways after the dragon was killed, when all my experience told me that was our happy ending.

[shirebound]

Although I do engage with other fandoms, that constancy, as today's prompt put it, both calms me and brings me joy.

I feel the same way. :)

[baranduin]

What edition do you have? I started with the glorious Ballantine edition with the emus. Still have them.

[ermingarden]

Mine is the Houghton Mifflin second edition, with the sort of smoky-looking dust jackets.

What do you mean by emus?!

[baranduin]

A thousand and one jokes have been made at their goofiness but I love them and always have a set. I might still have an original of one volume from when I read first them, in high school.

[ermingarden]

Those are fun covers for sure!

[independence1776]

The Star Wars EU... so many happy memories. (And then NJO happened and I gave up on anything involving the OT, and even most of the PT to be honest.)

But yes, Tolkien is constant in a way few other things are.

[ermingarden]

Yeah, I am...not a fan of NJO. The latest series - "Fate of the Jedi" - was pretty good, the novel after that - Crucible - felt like it could have been something from Bantam Spectra, and I heard that Jaina Solo was set to get her own, well, solo novel when the sequels were greenlit and that was scrapped. That only added to my resentment at the change, since it had happened just when I felt like things were getting back on track!

[independence1776]

I quit with NJO with Vector Prime. I knew then and there that the EU had suddenly become Not My Star Wars. I've tried the new EU and keep bouncing off it, though I do eventually plan on trying Bloodline and the upcoming Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan book. Beyond that, I'm not reading the new EU because TLJ was also Not My SW.

You will pry Mara Jade from my cold, dead hands.

[ermingarden]

100% with you on Mara! To be quite honest, I haven't even tried the new EU, nor have I seen Last Jedi or Rogue One. After Force Awakens I stopped really keeping up with things.

[independence1776]

I loved TFA and Rogue One, but the rest of it? Nope. I'm seeing the last movie because I want to know how it ends, but the new trilogy has left me in an uncomfortable place where I'm both a SW fan and not a SW fan.