A Fangirl-y Kind Of Love

I have a little problem.

No, I don't mean my book or sparkly makeup or yarn-buying habits (though those are problems, too.)

My problem is that I have a bad habit of falling so hard for books and their characters that I kind-of want to be them. Or I'll start taking aspects of their clothing or hobbies and try to imitate them. Or just want to steal an aspect of their wardrobe. LM Montgomery's Emily series had me seriously coveting Edwardian clothing, Jimmy-books, and Emily's shot-silk blue-green dress. The Wings series by Aprilynne Pike had me hunting for hair dangles and was the catalyst for my hair tinsel. I've crocheted shawls so that I could pretend to be mooning on foggy mornings on the moors, I've hunted high and low for fabric to match the dress description in Amy Plum's Die For Me. I've dressed in black and been ready to kick butt thanks to Divergent. Three words: butterfly costume dress from Incarnate *swoon*. The Babysitter's Club series was one fashion disaster after another for me when I tried to imitate Claudia's wardrobe and went full-on ballerina over Jessi's outfits. Trixie Belden made me want to be a teenage gumshoe and, combined with my Sherlock Holmes phase, I can tell you a million ways to pick up fingerprints. There was the post-Dracula uber-gothy phase. I was a teenager and I was dancing around my grandparents' patio, pretending to be Drina. I still want her grey and scarlet school uniform (complete with a "smart" matching cape.) I have a properly Slytherin black, silver, and green silk dress that I made for the last Harry Potter release party.



The Franklin Institute Narnia exhibit: a fangirl's dream come true.

Okay, who hasn't dreamt of slipping through the wardrobe?
Who hasn't run around their house looking for an entryway to Narnia?

 Oh, God, I'm not getting in to what the Lux series by Jennifer Armentrout is doing to me. Katy is already like us bookish types SO MUCH. I want her "My blog is better than your vlog" t-shirt and starry sleep shorts.

And fictional boys are ruining me for real boys. Tod, Daemon, Vincent, Bram, Cricket.. and those are only my recent crushes. I'm still carrying a flame for Teddy Kent, Jim Frayne, Gilbert Blythe... you get the idea.

This happens even when I'm writing my own stories. When I'm heavily immersed in my main character, I start picking up aspects of his or her personality or style and pepper them into my everyday life. Sara's a runner, so, even though I hate running, I found myself drooling over running skirts and a new pair of Nikes (teal. And they're very comfy for my skating warmups, thank you very much.) Aurora, a character in a short story I'm writing, is a bit of a girly fashionista based in Akureyri, Iceland. Hello, coveting the cute pink hoodie from 66°NORTH. Phoebe from my WIP is a book devourer and I"ve been buying a lot of... oh, wait, that's normal for me. But she's also a band geek and I've found myself digging through my piles of band music and brushing off my flute and piccolo, both of which have been languishing in their cases for AGES because apartment living= really hard to practice!*

New, pink flute and piccolo case! With a BUTTERFLY.
Yes, I'm four years old.

Thank you, authors, so much for amazing books and beautiful prose that make me want to become the characters. Thank you for the magic and covet-worthy wardrobes.

Thank you for making me go into frenzies of fan girl-y love.

*BTW, my flute playing isn't that bad. I do practice once in a while when my insane neighbors are out. We shall not discuss how 10 years of not practicing piccolo means that I sound like I'm murdering a bird.