I'm Eating an Apple

The Seems by John Hulme and Michael Wexler is a trilogy detailing the work of Becker Drane, a Fixer. In the book, there are two realms: The World and The Seems. The World is the place ordinary people live in, and The Seems is an alternate dimension that controls what goes on in The World. Every job in The Seems is dedicated to keeping The World running properly, from packaging and dispensing Thought, to regulating Emotion, to spreading one side of pillows with Warm and the other side with Cool. Of course, things are bound to go wrong--whether a machine functions or someone purposely sabotages something, issues crop up every day. This is where Fixers come in. They are the most prestigious workers, 37 in total, having gone through a rigorous selection and training process. However, I’m not here to talk about the story. If you want to hear about Becker’s adventures, you can go read the books yourself (or wait for me to write another post about them, as I love this series). Instead, I’m go...

Character tropes, referring “ to a common motif or pattern in a work of art” according to www.masterclass.com , can be a valuable asset to a story when used in refreshing, ironic, or criticizing ways. However, when written incorrectly, these motifs can be cliché or even boring.  Tropes aren’t exclusive to books and can be applied to other media like TV shows or movies. Some of the tropes I will be covering today might not strictly fit into the definition of a “character trope”, but they all have the ability to leave an unpleasant taste in your mouth.  Perished Parent(s) After reading a modest selection of children/young adult books, you start to notice some patterns in the set-ups, like the fact that ap- parent -ly every children/young adult book has to contain an orphaned protagonist or a single guardian working 14 hours a day to support their kiddo. It’s a staple at this point. I suppose it adds some sympathy for the main character, but after a while you can start to wonder ...

  You guys seemed to enjoy my Percy Jackson book to movie comparison last month, so I have decided to do another installment in the series- but this time, an adaptation gone right. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Of course, it still follows the rule that the book is almost always better than the movie. There are a few things they left out that I wish they hadn’t, but for the most part, I found both very good and enjoyed both the book and the movie. Here are some of the things the movie added, removed, and changed. Warning: spoilers ahead. Though if you haven’t read Harry Potter at this point, are you ever going to do it? Added- The Shrunken Head There wasn’t a whole lot that the movies added onto the books, but this was one of the few things. It was just a little touch that added all the more chaos to the Knight Bus scene. Reverse Aging This isn’t really a point about how the movie adapted from the book, but I thought it was worth mentioning. How did Professor Flitwick...

       Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is one of my Favorite Books I have read. So naturally, I was very excited about the film adaptation released in 2018. After watching it though, I was disappointed in the film as it just rewrote or removed parts of the plot.     The Major Spoiler-free plot of Ready Player One revolves around Wade Watts a teenager inside the OASIS. The OASIS is an open-world virtual reality game where you can do whatever you want. Wade however is taking school inside the OASIS so he is stuck on the school planet with no money to travel anywhere else. When suddenly the creator of the game James Halliday dies and he launches a massive challenge inside the OASIS for anybody to complete to win the OASIS. The challenge is to find three different keys, the Copper Key, the Jade key, and finally the Cyrstal Key. To find these you must complete smaller challenges each time to grab ahold of the Keys. These Keys then unlock a corresponding ga...

Often, fanfiction is looked down upon as a form of writing not worthy of approval or recognition. People have a mental image of a fanfic writer as an 11-year-old banging away at a keyboard about My Little Pony or some other “childish” fandom. Now, I’m not saying that’s bad, because it does fall under fanfic. However, there is so much more than that--there’s a huge range of creators, from aforementioned 11-year-old to people in their 30s and 40s writing about the characters they’ve grown to love. That being said, I’m going to leave the arguments for another time and simply introduce you directly to some terms you need to know if you ever decide to venture into the gold mine of the fanfic community. Headcanon and canon (not to be confused with cannon) are used to differentiate between things from the source material and fan-created content. Anything canon is explicitly stated in the source material. For example, it is shown that Ron and Hermione date and eventually get married, therefore...

  What is death of the author? According to tvtropes.org, death of the author “is a concept from mid-20th Century literary criticism; it holds that an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing.” The theory stems from Roland Barthes, a French literary theorist.  To be clear, it is not the author actually perishing, but instead, a theory. While the creator of a piece of literature is technically the author of it, death of the author argues otherwise, saying that the intent of the author should be ripped away from their work. The theory suggests that the reader, not the creator, is the ultimate interpreter of the work. Death of the author isn’t a theory stuck in writing, even though that is what this blog will be primarily discussing, it can also be applied to many different types of media, like philosophy, art, dance, etc.  Many English teachers, students,...

    A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle follows Meg Murry's journey throughout space and time to rescue her father. Accompanying her in her travels is her younger brother Charles Wallace and her friend Calvin O'Keefe. Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which lead the kids on their adventure. The planet Mr. Murry is being held on is being taken over by a dark force called the Dark Thing. This Dark Thing takes the form of a giant brain called IT conforming everything in its control to its rhythmic sensation. The gang has to overcome this being and rescue Meg and Charles's father. I won't spoil the rest of the book as you should consider reading it soon.         I enjoyed this book and reading it was a pleasure. The ending was great and showed how powerful love is and I think that's a great message for a book as popular as this one to give out. Meg as a character develops a lot from the beginning to the end. She has to look into herself to be able to def...