My Obsessive Life

So, for my third post, I thought it might be a good idea to give you readers a better idea of just who I am.

What better way to do that than to list my many obsessions? Haha. ;p

I've had quite a few over my lifetime... but five stand out as being the most extreme, passionate obsessions I've ever had. Obsessions that have caused me much fangirling, happiness, and sometimes even heartache. Sooo... you're all excited, right? Let's get started.

Star Wars

First is... *drum roll*... Star Wars!

Was this anyone else's first obsession? Or was it just mine? Star Wars pretty much defined my childhood. It was my childhood.

Star Wars.

There it is.

My childhood.

I remember the first time I ever caught a fleeting glimpse of my future obsession. I was a wee lass (I can't exactly remember my age. I'm horrible at ages. And dates. I pretty much have no idea when anything happened in my life), and was lying on the living room floor late at night. My Dad had fallen asleep on the couch, and he'd left the TV on. Bright, golden light shone from the TV set, filling the dark blue room with majestic images of a sandy planet. Tatooine.

And, okay, I'm not even 100% sure it was Star Wars I caught a glimpse of that night. But I thiiiink it was. Anyway, it adds a bit of drama to my story, right? A sense of destiny?

The second time (or first, depending on whether you think that previous story was bogus) I heard of Star Wars was from my cousin, who kept chattering on about "Dark" Vader. (Yeah, I thought it was "Dark" Vader at first. Didn't we all?)

After another chance encounter with Star Wars on the living room TV set, my sibs and I pestered our dad until we finally got him to rent the movies and watch them with us.

And we were forever changed.

Can you blame me for loving him?

No, but really, our lives became consumed with this amazing thing called Star Wars. We played it, lived it, breathed it. If we played barbie dolls, most likely it was Star Wars barbie dolls. If we played house, it was Star Wars house. One of our favorite hobbies was to scour the internet for Star Wars pictures, print them out (we wasted so much printer ink and paper, oh my goodness, sorry Dad), then glue them into a homemade scrapbook. A Star Wars scrapbook.

Well, you can't accuse us of being uncreative.

Oh, and did I mention I fell in love with Han Solo? He was probably my first real movie crush. ;)

Whenever we went to the movie store, we rented Star Wars. Eventually we bought the movies. And watched them countless times, until I'm sure our parents thought we were crazy, and were sick of the movies themselves.

And my love for Star Wars has never died. Yeah, the prequels are pretty awful, I admit (except for Revenge of the Sith. I love that one!), but I was a kid when they first came out, so of course they were just as magical as the original trilogy to my young, naive eyes. It took many years of maturing to finally accept that Episode I and Episode II are pretty lame. But I still love them simply for being Star Wars (and cause Obi-Wan is in them. And Obi-Wan, my friends, is awesome sauce... and I've fallen in love with him too...).

Well, there you have it. The rather long-winded tale of my first obsession. *wipes away tear* So beautiful.

Pride and Prejudice

My second obsession was, strangely enough, nothing like the first. It was Pride and Prejudice.

Yep. Haha. And with that came a fascination for all things Jane Austen. Aaaand all things Regency. I kind of fell head-over-heels for the whole deal. So how was I introduced to it? You can thank my sister, Fayehope, who had to read Pride and Prejudice for school. I also read it - well, half of it, before having to return it to the library. We liked the book, so when she found out there was a mini-series, she decided to check it out from the library. Good choice, sister, good choice.

I don't care what anyone says, Colin Firth IS Mr. Darcy

We ended up watching an episode a night, with our Mom and Aunt. Very quickly we all fell under its spell. A few nights in, I was begging my Mom to let us stay up later than usual so we could watch two episodes instead of one. Then we re-watched the whole thing. Years later, when my sisters and I showed my Mom and Aunt the new Keira Knightley version, their opinion was "the mini-series is better." (I can understand this opinion, because it's mine as well. Though I do like the Kiera Knightley version.)

Oh, and I kind of fell in love with Mr. Darcy. *blush*

I have since read the book many times, and I've watched and read almost all of Jane Austen's other works.

The Lord of the Rings

Lord of the Rings was my next obsession! Yay! Again it was my cousin who introduced me to these movies. Hearing her gush about them made me curious, so I had my Dad rent The Fellowship of the Ring, and my siblings and I watched it with him. I liked it, but he fast forwarded a lot of it (some of my younger siblings were watching too, and they were easily scared, I guess. Okay, I was probably scared too), so I didn't fully "get it." Years later, my elder sister and I rewatched it, fell in love, and quickly gobbled up The Two Towers and Return of the King.

And then we bought the movies and watched them... let's just say we watched them a lot. And I fell in love with Aragorn (notice a trend yet? Yeah, I tend to fall in love with fictional characters a lot).

X-Men

I ship them, though they aren't canon. Le sigh.

This obsession has kind of a funny beginning. One night, my sister had a stomach-ache and couldn't sleep, so she asked my Dad if she and I could stay up and watch some TV in our room. My Dad, being a dad, said yes, of course. There wasn't much on TV that night. Except for some superhero cartoon I had never seen before. It was called: X-Men The Animated Series. We only caught the last half of the episode, but I already knew that the superhero with the gruff voice and and yellow tights was the coolest one of the bunch. And thus I fell in love with Wolverine.

We started watching the show nightly... only our Mom didn't know. I remember her finally finding out that we were watching TV past our bedtime. When she told us to turn off the TV, it was a low moment for me. I was miserable. What was I going to do without mah X-Men? Well, we started recording it, of course. ;)

Then we watched the X-Men movies. (Oh, and just a general warning: I suggest adults watch the movies before letting young people watch them, as they do have some inappropriate content.)

X2 was one of the coolest movies I have ever seen. I remember getting up after it had finished and realizing my legs were actually shaking and weak, I was so excited and tense. And I watched that movie to death too.

Doctor Who

Not too long ago, at the library, I pulled a Guinness Book of World Records off the shelf and opened to a random page, which just so happened to be featuring an article on Doctor Who. I laughingly showed my sister the pictures of the various Doctors, joking on how each one got more and more attractive as the show went on.

Then I started hearing more about the show on tumblr. I was curious. Was it really any good? The fans seemed rather... obsessive. That was a good sign. ;)

After watching a few episodes of the first season, I wasn't very impressed. I just couldn't figure out why people loved it so much. I decided to watch one of the most popular episodes to find out if the show was worth continuing. The episode was called "Blink," and if you've never seen Doctor Who before, I strongly recommend it as a starting point. It's a good episode for figuring out if you'll like the show.

Needless to say, I loved the episode. It was well made, funny, and scary.

This fanart is soooo gorgeous

So I stuck with the show. By the time I finished the first season, I was hooked. Then I started season 2, fell in love with the Tenth Doctor, and shipped the Doctor and Rose like a mad woman. "Doomsday" was a painful episode for me. It was literally heartbreaking. But the most painful episode of all was probably "The End of Time." It was the episode that killed me. I wandered the halls of my house after finishing the episode, feeling numb inside. It took me days to get over it. So yeah, just a general warning - if you want to get into Doctor Who, realize you might become very emotionally invested. Like, very.

And there you have it! These movies/shows have been my top five obsessions. Of course I've had other smaller ones along the way.

*cough* Pirates of the Caribbean. *cough*

What have been the biggest obsessions in your life? Do share! I love learning what people are passionate about. ;)