How the Green Brothers, the Mountain Goats, and Nerdfighteria Changed My Life

I was introduced to John Green through a video in late 2013.  The video in question was him discussing the American healthcare system and why it’s incredibly...well, screwed up.  This video, on a topic I find in no way interesting, kept me chuckling.  I realized maybe this guy was worth looking into.

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And then I realized how late to the game I was.

John Green and his brother Hank Green had started making videos years ago, and had amassed a cult (a really cool one) following.  I started at the beginning and watched through all the videos from their Brotherhood 2.0 project.  I started watching Hank play video games with his wife and friends (Mario is the best).  I watched their side projects (Lizzie Bennet Diaries).  I read John’s books (OMG FEELS).  I listened to Hank’s music (Accio Deathly Hallows, incendio book sales embargoes).  Which I then memorized (A quark is a fundamental constituent of matter).

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I was a woman hooked.

When one of them recommended something, I would look into it.  Which is how I got addicted to the Mountain Goats.  I bought their album The Sunset Tree because it featured the only Mountain Goats song I knew at the moment, which was “This Year.”  Little did I know at the time, that the song I had come to enjoy would end up being my anthem through one of the most difficult transitions in my life.

So all this is going on in the fall of 2013.  I was working two jobs, spending time with my friends and S.O. at the time, and basically just trying to make life count.  And I thought I was doing a pretty good job at that.  Disaster struck when my living situation turned sour.  I’ve written a whole post about that here so I won’t delve into it, but I’ll just say that my world was rocked and not in a good way.

Things became unbearable for me.  I did my best to shrug things off, but it got worse and worse, and harder and harder for me to be positive.  Then my relationship ended as well, so around the 1st of the year of 2014, I was in a really dark place.  I stopped coping with my problems and tried to drink them away instead.  Side note, that doesn’t work.  So while I was working on not using alcohol as a coping mechanism, “This Year” became my anthem.   I made it my alarm so I woke up to it every morning.  I listened to it whenever I felt overwhelming stress.  I didn’t completely stop abusing alcohol, which I wouldn’t end up doing until I moved away, but that song...that one song made things better.  “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.”  I would repeat that line to myself so many times that I lost count.

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And once I admitted to myself that I was a nerdfighter, I joined a few communities.  The beautiful thing about being a nerdfighter is that anyone can be one and true nerdfighters won’t judge you for being different.  We all just want to make the world suck less, and that means accepting people for who they are.  So in all my struggling, I found a community willing to accept me for who I was, completely and without hesitation.  And that’s a warm feeling to have in a dark and lonely place.

I was going to do whatever it took to survive, and I did.  I moved home out of that toxic environment.  I found new nerdfighter friends in Michigan.  I came back to my old job and started volunteering at a new place.  And I’m pleased to say that apart from a couple things, life is really great right now.  John and Hank Green, the Mountain Goats, and nerdfighteria became my foundation in that time of turmoil.  They all saved me from a dark place and I’ll never be the same without them.  DFTBA!

The Fault in Our Stars: Movie Review #71

This is one of the most faithful adaptations of a book I’ve seen.  It was important to me to see the book represented because of my close relationship with Nerdfighteria and especially John Green’s works.  His books are one of the main inspirations when I’m writing.  There were three main things missing from book to movie translation and two small things, however the lack of main plot points did not detract from the story in any way, and I suspect one of the small things is in a deleted scene.  And the second small thing actually added well to character development.  Warning: this is gonna be spoilerific. So if you don’t want anything to be spoiled, run away now!  First with the missing parts...

Missing Item 1:

Augustus’s Previous Relationship

Part of his intrigue when he first meets Hazel is because she looks and reminds him of his previous girlfriend Caroline Mathers who passed away from cancer.  Hazel spends some time Facebook stalking (as any normal person would) and is interested about his past.  He eventually reveals more about their relationship, but tells her he genuinely likes her now not just because she looks like Caroline.  Since the central theme of the story is the relationship between Hazel and Gus, it’s allowable that the previous relationship is omitted.  Bringing up her story would mean at least several minutes discussing it which would detract from the story.

Missing Item 2:

Augustus’s Sisters

When Augustus has his decline in health, his half-sisters and their families come out to see him and help care for him.  Ultimately, the additional family (especially the small children) is more of a burden on him and he appreciates Hazel being there so much more, as do his parents.  But the additional family was lacking from the movie, and it didn’t detract as much as I thought it would.  It’s possible they could appear in a deleted scene, as his parents did have a few girls sitting next to them in the funeral scene.

Missing Item 3:

Augustus and Hazel taking care of each other while sick

Both characters deal with the inevitable health decline that comes from cancer.  While Hazel bounces back enough to go on the trip to Amsterdam, Gus declines until the end.  In the books, they each take turns taking care of each other.  Gus reads to Hazel.  Hazel plays video games with Gus.  These small moments were extracted from the film.  I wish it could have been added a little bit because while you do see Hazel taking care of Gus in a few key moments, you miss a lot of them just being together.  And that to me is what relationships are: being there for each even without doing anything.

Small Item Missing: the online ad for the swing set

Augustus comes over in the film and they sit and discuss things on the dilapidated swing set.  Later in the film, Hazel and Isaac sit in the same place but the swing set is gone.  In the book, they create an ad online for someone to get the swing set, so I’m guessing this will be a deleted scene since obviously it is gone later in the film.  I also want to see the deleted John Green scene.

Small item added: the limo

In the book, Gus does not arrive in a limo.  Hazel and her mother pick him up from his house, where you catch a snippet of an argument between him and his parents.  In the film, he rides up in a limo with a cigarette dangling from his lips.  This scene adds to the development of the character, because Augustus is cocky and needs to make a statement.  He hates that he’s facing oblivion and won’t be remembered forever.  Everything he does is to leave a story behind, and the limo scene does just that.

Overall, I would give the movie 10 out of 10.  Not only is it the truest adaptation I’ve seen, it’s heartbreakingly beautiful.  The characters are amazing, and portrayed well with their flaws, especially Augustus.  The soundtrack is one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard too.  Any cd that has multiple Birdy songs on it wins my vote.  The tracks vary from cutesy to melancholy, and all along that emotional spectrum.  I’ve been unable to stop listening to it.  Too amazing.  I encourage anyone to read this novel and see the film.  It may be young adult fiction, but in it you find so much more, including gratitude for your health.

April BC BBC: Looking for Alaska

A few months ago I came around to the wonder that is Nerdfighteria and the Green brothers, and when I read the Fault in Our Stars, I had more of an emotional reaction to that book than I’ve ever had before.  So when I heard that Looking for Alaska had been challenged by high schools to keep it out of their YA curriculum, I really needed to know what the fuss was about.

 

From Goodreads

Looking for Alaska follows the story of Miles Halter, later nicknames Pudge, as he leaves his Floridian home for boarding school in Alabama.  He quickly gathers a group of friends and begins a romantic obsession with a young girl named Alaska.  The book is in two parts, before and after an event, which I will not discuss as to not divulge anything.  But you see their emotional and physical relationship develop throughout the novel.

This book has been controversial for a few reasons: smoking, drinking, and sexual content.  Parents have been quoted saying it is inappropriate for teens and encourages those behaviors.  Even going so far as to say it is pornographic.  I have to wonder, having read the book, if these parents know what porn is?  Because while the book features some sexual elements, it is far from porn.  What it is instead is the story of youth.  Shockingly enough, kids experiment with drugs, alcohol, and sex.  Society most of the time has no problem bitching about “kids these days” so why are they so shocked that Green’s novel happens to encapsulate teens?  Another annoying part about attempting to ban a book from a curriculum is that you’re giving the book a “Forbidden Fruit” status.  So by saying the book is bad and not acceptable to read, they will probably find a way to read it on their own time.  So instead of banning the book from the curriculum, include the book and allow open discussion with teens about it.  There you go.

Quotes (note: there will be A LOT)

“‘I’s a-gonna learn how t’talk right Southern.’ [...] ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ my dad said.” pg.7

“[...] between when I asked about the labyrinth and when she answered me, that I realized the importance of curves, of the thousand places here girls’ bodies ease from one place to another, from arc of the foot to ankle to calf, from calf to hip to waist to breast to neck to ski-slope nose to forehead to shoulder to the concave arch of the back to the butt to the etc. I’d noticed curves before, of course, but I had never quite apprehended their significance.” pg. 19

“I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails.” pg.49

“Imaging the future is a kind of nostalgia.” pg.54

“You live for pretentious metaphors.” pg.59

“I wasn’t sure whether I liked her, and I doubted whether I could trust her, but I cared at least enough to try and find out.” pg.75

“‘God, ‘I love you’ really is the gateway drug of breaking up.’” pg.78

“‘I just did some calculations, and I’ve been able to determine that you’re full of shit.’” pg.78

“‘Because no one can catch the motherfucking fox.’” pg.104

“She taught me everything I knew about crawfish and kissing and pink wine and poetry.  She made me different.” pg.173

And obviously included in this lengthy list would be the obvious Great Perhaps and Hurricane/Drizzle metaphor.  While I would say I prefer the Fault in Our Stars, I did really enjoy this book and think that his style of writing is fantastic and this novel is something youth should read.  Young adults could easily identify with the thematic elements and maybe not feel so alone in the world.