Yes, I'm a fangirl!
I got an email from the university today. It was an online survey from some of the language teachers who are working on a research project about informal learning environments on the internet - what people learn in online fan communities.
The survey was short and simple, but I thought it was interesting that they are thinking about this. Most people I know have no idea what for example fanfiction even is, but here on LJ, I’m surrounded by fangirls and I get the impression that it is perfectly normal, but in the real world, it’s not! (Sort of when my flatmate went to study in Finland for a few months, and my lesbian friend moved in with me. We hung out with other gay people and when we were watching TV, comments like “wow, she’s hot!” and “look, she’s your type, isn’t she?” were perfectly normal. Then when my straight flatmate came back, I remembered the world had not changed even though we had been watching it from our point of view as if that was the “normal” one…)
Anyway, most surveys from the university are so boring, but this time, I signed up for a longer interview. It’s true, actually, that from a learning point of view, being a crazy fangirl has been helpful. It started some six or seven years ago because of a blog about Fanny Ardant, and I wanted to be able to communicate with other fangirls in French, so I tried to remember what I learned in school, and I began watching lots of French movies. What really prompted me to re-learn and actually make an effort, though, was that I discovered Mireille Mathieu on YouTube a couple years later. I desperately needed to understand the songs, and also, most of the people I got to know didn’t speak English. (Also, I’ve met her in person twice!! :D But the first time, I can’t say that I really “spoke” to her, because I was too starstruck to say more than “bonjour… merci, merci beaucoup…” like a complete idiot… but the second time, I did speak in full sentences!) So yeah, this was definitely a big reason why I decided to study French!
And I have learned a lot these last few years from reading and writing fanfiction and just from being active on LiveJournal. The English language is all around us every day but I suppose many people don’t have a reason to use it actively, unless they communicate with people in other countries. And it wouldn’t have to be fan culture, it could be sports or dogs or whatever… but in my case, it’s a fact that being active in online fan communities has helped me learn to express myself more fluently. (But of course, having an American [online]girlfriend made me realize how many mistakes I still make and how far from fluent I really am. These days it’s easy to forget about that, because no one corrects me anymore.)
As for Japanese, it’s a little bit different, I suppose. Of course, I do pick up a few words here and there when I’m watching things (this week’s vocabulary list is full of adjectives that I’ve been trying to learn [I already knew kawaii *lol*] and last night when I watched a couple of episodes of a drama series, I grinned like a fool every time I heard a word from that list…), but it’s not the same. Online fan communities in Japanese is obviously a closed world to me! Of course, wishing that I could understand things I hear/see is a motivation to keep learning, even though my first reason to learn was simple curiosity! (And… NGL, when I was right in the middle of that “Akio Ootsuka’s voice is sooo sexy” phase, I really wished I could understand more, because most of the [few] things I found on YouTube didn’t have subtitles, so yes, I wished I could be a fangirl in Japanese *lol*. But as a fangirl, I take it in through English. Or even French, like the drama series I’m watching now.)
Right now I’m doing something that I haven’t done in a long time: I’m reading more than one book. (I used to do that all the time, but I spend too much time on the computer these days; too little time left to read…) And, of course, I’m reading fanfic…
* Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse. I only read it because I saw it in the kitchen and I needed something to read the other day as I ate my breakfast. (We don’t have a newspaper anymore.) It’s a ghost story/ a story about loss and moving on. It’s mostly… I don’t know, mildly interesting, but here and there there’s a beautiful phrase.
* Homofamiljer, a Swedish book about homosexual families. The first part consists of interviews with 12 families about how… well, how they managed to create a family. All the stories are different: one lesbian couple went to Denmark for insemination, others decided to have kids together with a friend or another gay couple, one woman had sex with men and didn’t even know at first who the father was, another couple lied and said they were single and both of them were allowed to adopt… The second part of the book explains exactly how to do these things (how to inseminate at home or at a clinic, why it’s legal but impossible to adopt a child from another country if you’re openly gay, what the law says about parenthood, etc). Maybe this doesn’t sound terribly interesting to most people, but it is to me!
* Queerkids, another Swedish book on sort of the same topic, but it’s more like an essay or a book giving rise to debate, while the first one is more like a practical guide.
* Masquerade (Blue Bloods #2) by Melissa de la Cruz. I’ve only read the first two chapters yet, to be honest… but I’m reading it! :)
* Secrets of the Mind Reader by Corinne Tate. Twilight. It was recommended to me because it gives an explanation to Edward’s behaviour. Isn’t it sad that I like this better than the original story?! Normally I look for fanfic because I like something….
* The Little Moments by BlackArticFox. It’s a KKM fic, and it starts with Yuuri asking Günter why the three so different brothers aren’t acting more like the family they are (only when one of them is in danger can the other ones show that they care) and if they were closer (like he and Shouri) when they were younger. And then different people (starting with Günter) tell him their memories of Cecilie’s three sons… I like it, because I agree with the author that the relationships between the brothers are very interesting.
What are you reading at the moment? And what are you watching?
Some of my classmates are very much into Japanese drama, and they talk about what they’re watching on our forum, the “Student Bulletin Board”… The other day, I decided to try something three girls are completely in love with: Rich Man Poor Woman. (I didn’t know where to watch it, but I managed to find streaming of the episodes. I only found this site where the subtitles are French but I’m relieved to say that it works for me.) I think you can tell already by the title what kind of story this is… Now that I’ve watched five episodes, I really like it. Although this story is made of a lot of ingredients that we’ve seen a thousand times before and in this respect not the least bit surprising, I think something about it is charming and even captivating - to be honest, I catch myself smiling, and even exclaiming “oh, no..!” from time to time…
Last night I watched a movie: Snow White and the Huntsman. I thought it was… okay, I guess. Pretty much what I had expected, no more and no less. It’s not something I’m going to watch again, probably. (For this kind of story - the “come on, let’s kill the evil witch!” kind of story, I still think Willow is the best one!)
A couple of days ago, I also watched Norwegian Wood. I haven’t read the book (but I’ve read others by Murakami). I don’t really know what to say about it. It was beautiful, visually, but for some reason I didn’t really care about any of the characters. (Except possibly, for some reason I can’t put my finger on, the womanizer with the long name I’ve forgotten? I don’t know why I found him sort of interesting.)
Speaking of Snow White… Yesterday, mom’s old friend’s 18 year old son came to get a massage. (He’s learning to become a chef, and it’s hard work for such a skinny boy.) He came because his back really hurt and he knew that the massage would make him feel better, but he was embarrassed about it and couldn’t get out of the house fast enough when it was done. Some of the people who come really talk a lot, but this boy only answers yes or no to questions.
When he was little, he was different. He talked all the time, and he talked in full sentences before he was three years old. It was fun to play with him. He also liked to play horse with my younger sister Maria, and when she was tired he begged for more so enthusiastically that she couldn’t resist him… And when he was a little bit older, and had a two years younger sister, he wanted to watch The Land Before Time (he was crazy about dinosaurs), and Snow White. But both of these movies were scary at times (especially Snow White’s evil stepmother) so the kids wanted me to be there with them so they could sit in my lap when they were scared…
Then, as he grew up, he became very shy and withdrawn. These last couple of years, I haven’t seen him very often because he and his sister rarely go with their parents anymore to visit us. The girl is mostly just grumpy and angry all the time; she’s sixteen now.
The youngest boy in the family is only ten, and he still comes with his parents. Unlike his older brother, he didn’t learn to speak properly until he was like five - before then, it was hard for me to understand him sometimes - and he’s not very shy even at this age. Nowadays, he’s too old to want to sit in my lap when he watches movies (like his older siblings, he loved The Land Before Time, but he was too afraid of the witch to want to watch Snow White). Now he has his own laptop loaded with games and movies to keep him from getting bored when his parents come to hang out with my mom.
It’s so strange to think that these kids have all been playing with me, that I carried them around when they were toddlers and they needed me when they were watching movies…
…Oh, funny… Just now, these kids’ dad stopped by and he’s talking to mom right now. One of the “little toddlers”, the now sixteen-year-old has a boyfriend now. It makes me wonder what's wrong with me
Edit: *sighs* Everytime I say things like "that phase...", there's a little voice in my head wispering that maybe I'm still in it. Or something happens... Like now, I realized that someone has uploaded (parts of) Kyou Kara Maou drama CDs on YouTube. They have been playing as background noise while I've been writing this. It has mostly Yuuri, Conrad, Shouri, Murata and Wolfram talking. Or Günter. I've not even been trying to understand anything, it's pointless when I only catch words like "what?", "I", "but", "good morning" and their names, but perhaps it's good to listen to it anyway... :) And then, suddenly, I was like "Ha! There! I hear Gwendal!!" ... *shakes head* Maybe it's just a reflex by now?! ...Anyway, I just heard the "tanjoubi" repeated several times, so I was proud to understand that the sequence was about Yuuri's birthday! Sadly, just one word doesn't mean that I really understand...
The survey was short and simple, but I thought it was interesting that they are thinking about this. Most people I know have no idea what for example fanfiction even is, but here on LJ, I’m surrounded by fangirls and I get the impression that it is perfectly normal, but in the real world, it’s not! (Sort of when my flatmate went to study in Finland for a few months, and my lesbian friend moved in with me. We hung out with other gay people and when we were watching TV, comments like “wow, she’s hot!” and “look, she’s your type, isn’t she?” were perfectly normal. Then when my straight flatmate came back, I remembered the world had not changed even though we had been watching it from our point of view as if that was the “normal” one…)
Anyway, most surveys from the university are so boring, but this time, I signed up for a longer interview. It’s true, actually, that from a learning point of view, being a crazy fangirl has been helpful. It started some six or seven years ago because of a blog about Fanny Ardant, and I wanted to be able to communicate with other fangirls in French, so I tried to remember what I learned in school, and I began watching lots of French movies. What really prompted me to re-learn and actually make an effort, though, was that I discovered Mireille Mathieu on YouTube a couple years later. I desperately needed to understand the songs, and also, most of the people I got to know didn’t speak English. (Also, I’ve met her in person twice!! :D But the first time, I can’t say that I really “spoke” to her, because I was too starstruck to say more than “bonjour… merci, merci beaucoup…” like a complete idiot… but the second time, I did speak in full sentences!) So yeah, this was definitely a big reason why I decided to study French!
And I have learned a lot these last few years from reading and writing fanfiction and just from being active on LiveJournal. The English language is all around us every day but I suppose many people don’t have a reason to use it actively, unless they communicate with people in other countries. And it wouldn’t have to be fan culture, it could be sports or dogs or whatever… but in my case, it’s a fact that being active in online fan communities has helped me learn to express myself more fluently. (But of course, having an American [online]girlfriend made me realize how many mistakes I still make and how far from fluent I really am. These days it’s easy to forget about that, because no one corrects me anymore.)
As for Japanese, it’s a little bit different, I suppose. Of course, I do pick up a few words here and there when I’m watching things (this week’s vocabulary list is full of adjectives that I’ve been trying to learn [I already knew kawaii *lol*] and last night when I watched a couple of episodes of a drama series, I grinned like a fool every time I heard a word from that list…), but it’s not the same. Online fan communities in Japanese is obviously a closed world to me! Of course, wishing that I could understand things I hear/see is a motivation to keep learning, even though my first reason to learn was simple curiosity! (And… NGL, when I was right in the middle of that “Akio Ootsuka’s voice is sooo sexy” phase, I really wished I could understand more, because most of the [few] things I found on YouTube didn’t have subtitles, so yes, I wished I could be a fangirl in Japanese *lol*. But as a fangirl, I take it in through English. Or even French, like the drama series I’m watching now.)
Right now I’m doing something that I haven’t done in a long time: I’m reading more than one book. (I used to do that all the time, but I spend too much time on the computer these days; too little time left to read…) And, of course, I’m reading fanfic…
* Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse. I only read it because I saw it in the kitchen and I needed something to read the other day as I ate my breakfast. (We don’t have a newspaper anymore.) It’s a ghost story/ a story about loss and moving on. It’s mostly… I don’t know, mildly interesting, but here and there there’s a beautiful phrase.
* Homofamiljer, a Swedish book about homosexual families. The first part consists of interviews with 12 families about how… well, how they managed to create a family. All the stories are different: one lesbian couple went to Denmark for insemination, others decided to have kids together with a friend or another gay couple, one woman had sex with men and didn’t even know at first who the father was, another couple lied and said they were single and both of them were allowed to adopt… The second part of the book explains exactly how to do these things (how to inseminate at home or at a clinic, why it’s legal but impossible to adopt a child from another country if you’re openly gay, what the law says about parenthood, etc). Maybe this doesn’t sound terribly interesting to most people, but it is to me!
* Queerkids, another Swedish book on sort of the same topic, but it’s more like an essay or a book giving rise to debate, while the first one is more like a practical guide.
* Masquerade (Blue Bloods #2) by Melissa de la Cruz. I’ve only read the first two chapters yet, to be honest… but I’m reading it! :)
* Secrets of the Mind Reader by Corinne Tate. Twilight. It was recommended to me because it gives an explanation to Edward’s behaviour. Isn’t it sad that I like this better than the original story?! Normally I look for fanfic because I like something….
* The Little Moments by BlackArticFox. It’s a KKM fic, and it starts with Yuuri asking Günter why the three so different brothers aren’t acting more like the family they are (only when one of them is in danger can the other ones show that they care) and if they were closer (like he and Shouri) when they were younger. And then different people (starting with Günter) tell him their memories of Cecilie’s three sons… I like it, because I agree with the author that the relationships between the brothers are very interesting.
What are you reading at the moment? And what are you watching?
Some of my classmates are very much into Japanese drama, and they talk about what they’re watching on our forum, the “Student Bulletin Board”… The other day, I decided to try something three girls are completely in love with: Rich Man Poor Woman. (I didn’t know where to watch it, but I managed to find streaming of the episodes. I only found this site where the subtitles are French but I’m relieved to say that it works for me.) I think you can tell already by the title what kind of story this is… Now that I’ve watched five episodes, I really like it. Although this story is made of a lot of ingredients that we’ve seen a thousand times before and in this respect not the least bit surprising, I think something about it is charming and even captivating - to be honest, I catch myself smiling, and even exclaiming “oh, no..!” from time to time…
Last night I watched a movie: Snow White and the Huntsman. I thought it was… okay, I guess. Pretty much what I had expected, no more and no less. It’s not something I’m going to watch again, probably. (For this kind of story - the “come on, let’s kill the evil witch!” kind of story, I still think Willow is the best one!)
A couple of days ago, I also watched Norwegian Wood. I haven’t read the book (but I’ve read others by Murakami). I don’t really know what to say about it. It was beautiful, visually, but for some reason I didn’t really care about any of the characters. (Except possibly, for some reason I can’t put my finger on, the womanizer with the long name I’ve forgotten? I don’t know why I found him sort of interesting.)
Speaking of Snow White… Yesterday, mom’s old friend’s 18 year old son came to get a massage. (He’s learning to become a chef, and it’s hard work for such a skinny boy.) He came because his back really hurt and he knew that the massage would make him feel better, but he was embarrassed about it and couldn’t get out of the house fast enough when it was done. Some of the people who come really talk a lot, but this boy only answers yes or no to questions.
When he was little, he was different. He talked all the time, and he talked in full sentences before he was three years old. It was fun to play with him. He also liked to play horse with my younger sister Maria, and when she was tired he begged for more so enthusiastically that she couldn’t resist him… And when he was a little bit older, and had a two years younger sister, he wanted to watch The Land Before Time (he was crazy about dinosaurs), and Snow White. But both of these movies were scary at times (especially Snow White’s evil stepmother) so the kids wanted me to be there with them so they could sit in my lap when they were scared…
Then, as he grew up, he became very shy and withdrawn. These last couple of years, I haven’t seen him very often because he and his sister rarely go with their parents anymore to visit us. The girl is mostly just grumpy and angry all the time; she’s sixteen now.
The youngest boy in the family is only ten, and he still comes with his parents. Unlike his older brother, he didn’t learn to speak properly until he was like five - before then, it was hard for me to understand him sometimes - and he’s not very shy even at this age. Nowadays, he’s too old to want to sit in my lap when he watches movies (like his older siblings, he loved The Land Before Time, but he was too afraid of the witch to want to watch Snow White). Now he has his own laptop loaded with games and movies to keep him from getting bored when his parents come to hang out with my mom.
It’s so strange to think that these kids have all been playing with me, that I carried them around when they were toddlers and they needed me when they were watching movies…
…Oh, funny… Just now, these kids’ dad stopped by and he’s talking to mom right now. One of the “little toddlers”, the now sixteen-year-old has a boyfriend now. It makes me wonder what's wrong with me
Edit: *sighs* Everytime I say things like "that phase...", there's a little voice in my head wispering that maybe I'm still in it. Or something happens... Like now, I realized that someone has uploaded (parts of) Kyou Kara Maou drama CDs on YouTube. They have been playing as background noise while I've been writing this. It has mostly Yuuri, Conrad, Shouri, Murata and Wolfram talking. Or Günter. I've not even been trying to understand anything, it's pointless when I only catch words like "what?", "I", "but", "good morning" and their names, but perhaps it's good to listen to it anyway... :) And then, suddenly, I was like "Ha! There! I hear Gwendal!!" ... *shakes head* Maybe it's just a reflex by now?! ...Anyway, I just heard the "tanjoubi" repeated several times, so I was proud to understand that the sequence was about Yuuri's birthday! Sadly, just one word doesn't mean that I really understand...