Experiencing a Different World

I love to read. I love to read many different kinds of books, from many different genres. But when I look at the shelf that holds my most-loved books, nearly all of them come from the fantasy genre. Filled with exciting stories of Hobbits, rabbits, and elves, even just glancing at the covers is enough to make me smile and feel excited. The heroes in these stories encourage me on bad days and cause me to be more determined on good ones. If fantasy didn’t exist, I’m sure I would still love to read, but until I started reading these types of books, I didn’t recognize how much impact characters and stories could have on people’s lives, for good or bad. Today, I am going to share the reasons fantasy is my favorite type of story to read.

Join the Dark Side: An Exploration of Fictional Villains

One of the reasons I love fictional stories so much is that they remind me that Good will always win, no matter how hopeless the situation looks. But for it to do that, the characters need to be up against others who are constantly trying to stop them and discourage them. Sometimes, I feel like the bad guys of a story get foiled a little too easily, and while the “dumb sidekick/villain” character can be funny, I don’t enjoy seeing them very often. That’s not the kind of opposition we face in our daily lives. In this post, I’m going to talk about ways certain fictional bad guys stand out, whether all are redeemable, and ways writers have made me like some of them, even if I don’t agree with their actions. 

Crafts and Creatures: My Favorite Critters From A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Giant purple space whales. Electrical wire-consuming worms. Adorable chubby puffins. The Star Wars galaxy is full of odd creatures, and in this post I picked out some of my favorites to write about. I love how the inventors of these animals gave them more information than just a name, and made them unique from other fictional or real animals, even if some do have similarities. I found a few interesting facts to share about each creature, and also made two crafts to show you: a sock purrgil, and a Loth-Cat or porg face.

brOTPs 4ever: The Best Fictional Friendships

My fangirl friends and I spend a good deal of time talking about our favorite ships, or how much we love the father-son relationship between Tony Stark and Peter Parker, but today I’m here to talk about a different kind of relationship: the best friend kind. I feel like this kind of awesome relationship can get a little overlooked in the middle of all the other kinds of relationships. Not that I don’t love talking about the other kinds of dynamics, but friendships are really important and deserve more attention. In a way, any healthy relationship could be considered a BrOTP (the fandom term for a best-friend pairing,) in that they all involve teamwork and loving another person. And whether characters were immediately kindred spirits or unlikely comrades, every friendship requires hard work, but every friendship is worth it.

Book Review – Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno

Today I am back to talk about another book, Star Wars: Tarkin, written by James Luceno. This book is very different from any Star Wars book I’ve ever read. Usually, the stories I read are centered around the good guys, characters that inspire you, and who you can empathize with pretty easily. This book, however, centers on a cold, brilliant, Imperial. Wilhuff Tarkin isn’t my very least-favorite character, that spot has always been for the real evil characters, the manipulators, who corrupt those who may have otherwise been decent people. But Tarkin has still always seemed kind of bland to me. Smarter than most Imperials, but still stone-faced, impeccably clothed, and well, kind of boring. Not to mention cruel. So the questions I had when I started it were: “Will this book help me see Tarkin as more of a complex character? Will understanding him make me dislike him any less?”

Sunshine Blogger Tag

Audrey Reads The Silmarillion

This week, I delved deeper into Middle-earth history and lore, and read The Silmarillion. I have had this book since Easter, and had read a few chapters of it, but was distracted by other books, and a little intimidated by all the characters and places in it. And there are A LOT of characters. But I realized that even if I couldn’t name all of Fëanor’s sons, I could still enjoy the book, and learning the history that came before the tales of Bilbo and Frodo. In this post, I’m going to give some of my thoughts on it and give some introductions to the main characters.

My Favorite People in A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Obsessing over fictional characters is one of my favorite things to do. Their sacrifices and heroism inspire me, and their mistakes teach other lessons while making me love them more because I can often relate to their weak moments. I like analyzing why they make the choices they do in order to understand them better, which also helps me empathize with other people. Sometimes I can easily tell who is going to be my favorite character as soon as I see them, other times it takes a while for them to grow on me. But once I decide I love a character, it’s not often I change my mind. My list of favorite characters is very long, so in this post, I will be limiting it to a few of my favorites from the Star Wars universe. And these are in no particular order of favorites because it is very hard for me to rank characters, other than Leia, Han, and Luke who are usually my top favorites.

On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson – Book Review

It’s Summer! Which means more free time, and while that’s fun for a while, Summer can get a little boring after a few weeks. (Or is that just me?) In this post, I’m going to talk about the first book of one of my favorite book series: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, the first book in The Wingfeather Saga. I will be attempting to do this without spoilers, so you are safe to keep reading if you haven’t yet read these wonderful books.

Real Heroes

Two characters I am constantly having to defend from being spoken against are Frodo Baggins and Edmund Pevensie. People will say they don’t like Frodo because Sam had to get him out of some tight spots, or because he wouldn’t throw the Ring into Mt. Doom when he finally arrived. Or they won’t look past Edmund’s attitude and actions at the beginning of his journey. They tend to look at their weak points and decide that these characters aren’t as heroic as their friends, like Peter or Sam. But I believe that ALL of these characters are examples we should follow and that Frodo and Edmund show us something about being a hero the others do not.