I am not a risk taker by nature. I don’t bungee jump. I don’t ride roller coasters. I don’t even step on cracks in sidewalks. For me reading is where I get the adrenaline of a great adventure.
Is there any better feeling than being so captivated by a story it sucks you right out of your own shoes and puts you in the soles of another? It like standing on the precipice of a world you can’t see, but can easily imagine. I love sitting, leisurely dangling my feet over the edge, enjoying the view.
I wax poetic about this because for the past five days I have been staring off into the lyrical abyss that is Tropic of Virgo. Awhile back the Twilighted muse @emmward mentioned in passing her love of this story. I had forgotten about it somewhere between reading the TaraSueMe trilogy and a fun fic about pennies and nickles*. But, a random note flitting across my Timeline caught my eye a dozen nights ago and somehow it called out to me again. Download me to your Nook…now!!
When I read I have a general rule: authors have 75 pages to win my loyalty. If I am not bound and determined to flip to page 76, I blow a goodbye kiss and ride off into the starry night.
This story had me on page 2.
By the third chapter, I had an overwhelming need to seek out the author. My fangirl gene is dominant, as you all well know, and I wanted to slobber on her a bit. It saddened me to find the account for @in.a.blue.bathrobe no longer exists.
I am late to this party – so I know nothing of this author and don’t know what made her jump over the edge and leave us. But I am grateful that at least she sat for a while amongst us. And so grateful that she left behind her work, etched out so those remaining could enjoy it long after she’d departed.
Every now and then you come across someone who can write words so powerfully they take ordinary, everyday actions and make them poetic , extraordinary experiences. Eating an apple, listening to music, pulling a ribbon from a girl’s hair. I have read thousands of pages in the last year, many of them full of lemons, some so strong they make me blush. But, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything more erotic than the way this author describes a boy simply watching a girl he loves sleep.
The beauty of reading exceptional writing is it elevates the way you view the common things around you. When you step back down off the precipice and are back in your own 3 dimensional universe (because say…your kids just pummeled each other or your husband wants dinner), you look at things differently. Today, I’ve found myself staring at clouds in a blue sky and the string beans my children planted from seeds and having deep, fruity thoughts that normally I would never take even 30 seconds to complete.
A great author’s gift extends beyond the mere entertainment value of the page, it makes the view of your own world more vibrant. Do author’s realize they have this power? Surely not or they’d all be ego maniacs?
I am constantly amazed by how much raw talent there is in this little community of ours. To the outside world we are just like Bella describes herself in this story. Ordinary girls. We are just someone’s daughter, sister, mother, wife, girlfriend. We are that girl with the plain brown hair pushing a grocery cart through a super market with double ply paper towels and fat free yogurt.
We live happy, yet unspectacular lives. We fangirl and marvel from afar over people who we think are extraordinary, but who earned that ranking probably in large part because they were in the right place at the right time or were born into the right family.
Not because they are truly that different from us.
Under the guise of our ordinary lives, there is spectacular talent amongst us. I’ve seen the edited tape, read the words, seen the art work, laughed at the jokes. It’s there. Underneath a pile of dirty laundry or the store bought dye that takes away our gray.
If someone drew back the red velvet curtain and shined a spotlight on it, or photographed it, photoshopped it and put it on the cover of a magazine, there are many amongst us who would transform from ordinary to spectacularly extraordinary overnight. @in.a.blue.bathrobe is one of them.
Her story made me think about the ‘ordinariness’ that surrounds us. Her Bella’s online user id is ‘Ordinary_Girl’, but like the author herself, the character has an amazing talent that had gone untapped. We watch her Bella transform from the shadows to center stage. All of this reminded me of one of my favorite lines in my bestie @eveningrainjlho’s fic Sexy Silk. Her Edward asks her Bella what kind of life she wants. ‘A life less ordinary’ she answers.
It seems to be a common yearning. I see this happening with my own daughter. Much to my husband’s chagrin, the fangirl gene it seems does not skip a generation. She flits about her room all day making up dance routines and singing off key to the soundtrack of High School Musical. If I’d let her she’d dye her magnificent blonde hair brown just so she could look like Selena. She dreams out loud of being a ‘super star.’
Maybe we are all ordinary girls who never grew out of our girlish dreams of those ‘less ordinary’ lives. Maybe that’s why we are all such fic h00rs. The adventure of reading takes us out of the kitchen and office cubicle and puts us anywhere we want to be.
All of these deep thoughts make me ponder how it feels to be Kristen, standing on the other side of the fence, living an extraordinary life. The gray strands playing peekaboo in my hair tell me the grass usually looks much greener from the other curb. My guess is she still feels like an ordinary girl when she looks in the mirror to brush her teeth. It’s probably not till she makes it down to her curb each day, and hears pap’s motor drives and our squealing, that she’s reminded she’s not. But, as we sit dangling our legs over the edge of the cliff and day dreaming about living spectacularly on her side of the street, I kinda bet she’s at home fantasizing of going to buy paper towels and yogurt without anyone watching.
I also think it would be fascinating to spend a day picking through Stephenie’s brain. Once upon a time she sat on her bed with her laptop typing out words on a programmed white page just like I’m writing this now. I wonder how it felt. Did the buzzer on the dryer interrupt her while she was writing the scene in Biology. How many times does she pinch herself when she opens her door each day and realizes how her tiny words touched off this massive avalanche. I wonder if the marvel of it has worn off for her and if so when did it happen? Or is it still like a shiny new penny? I walked into Toys R Us today and happened to see an Edward doll on the shelf. (No, I didn’t buy it.) How does it feel to her when she walks into any store, in any town, in any country and sees the characters her mind conjured up during her children’s nap time splashed across the shelf?
I hope it’s still surreal. It would make me sad if it’s not.
She was one of us. Somehow, her velvet curtain was lifted and she was invited to the other side of the street. I guess my point in all this is as I sit here on our patch of cement looking at all my twi-sisters beside me, I can’t help thinking there are so many of you who I think deserve to have our young fantasies of ‘super stardom’ come true.
I wish there was a street corner I could run to, to track down in.a.blue.bathrobe. Because I would take a camera and pap some pictures of her to splash across your screen.
I don’t know where you are lovely lady. I hope somewhere with an editor and a publishing deal. But your words move me. Your story beguiles me and I have 75 blissful pages left. (I love a story you want to read slowly because you never want it to end.) For some mentally-health-challenged reason, I felt the need to write this: You are not an ordinary girl – whether you’re wearing your bathrobe or not – you deserve to be sitting on the other side of the road…and there are so many other ladies in this ‘family’ who should be holding your hand and walking across with you…
With great admiration for all the authors and artists in this fandom,
- The Very Ordinary Twopeas1pod.
*The ’pennies and nickles’ reference is to the fic Fridays At Noon by @troublefollows1017. It will make you look at the change in your wallet and smile. Sexy Silk by @eveningrainjlho (jlho on ffnet) will make you want to say fuuuuuuck and buy tulips. She is brilliant. These two fics and Tropic of Virgo by the talented @in.a.blue.bathrobe can all be found on fanfiction.net. I hope you enjoy dangling your feet over the edge while reading all three of them…
***Author's Note: After originally posting this long-winded silliness, the lovely in.a.blue.bathrode. came out of self-imposed twitter exile and was lovely enough to send me a little tweet. Her twitter id is different than her author name. She mentioned that she was taking a break and living a bit of the hermit life right now, so I am not going to post her actual twitter name out of respect for her privacy. But I did get the chance to slobber on her a bit with a few fangirl replies. Slobbering made my day =) ***
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