Something Weird

[brightly_lit]

In the spirit of the something random meme, a thing that's been on my mind a lot lately: What's something you are, or were, TOTALLY into--a book or actor or hobby or anything at all--that NO ONE you knew, online or in person, was into at all so you were left feeling like a weirdo and you couldn't share your love of it like we can do here with SPN?

Comments

[deceptivemirror.livejournal.com]

...would you believe I actually was (and am, to an extent) an Ayn Rand fan? I have the Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged, and really liked Anthem in high school. Everyone else hated her! I could not discuss the books with a single other soul.

I disagree with a lot of what is in the books regarding her personal philosophy, but damn if they don't make a person think.

[septembers-coda.livejournal.com]

I totally went through an Ayn Rand phase! I abhor her philosophy, but nonetheless, The Fountainhead was one of my favorite books. I actually did have a friend to talk to about it, though. We even read it aloud to each other.

I liked Anthem, too. It was one of the first literature books I read, freshman year in high school, that I really got into and found totally haunting, like the stuff I read on purpose. :-)

[deceptivemirror.livejournal.com]

Her philosophy's a bit hard to take in places, yeah, especially the idea that a person should be sexually attracted only to those who share the same ideals and ideas. I don't get the point, and that's actually something she got angry about outside of the books. Apparently a lover of hers about 10 or so years her junior decided to get frisky with another woman who was dumb as a post. The way it was described, she actually got more pissed off about the fact that he slept with a woman as dumb as a post more than the fact that he actually cheated. Funky chicken.

Anthem was really fun. I kind of wish we could have seen the further adventures of Gaia and Prometheus, but eh, such is life.

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

ME TOO! Loved Anthem, loved The Fountainhead (though for whatever reason I couldn't get into Atlas Shrugged), and was regarded with bewilderment for liking them!

What's weird to me about her bizarre 'philosophy' is that, after reading up on it, I feel strongly like, especially with The Fountainhead, what the books were about and valued was the exact OPPOSITE of what she claims to be her philosophy. But yeah, great stuff. Howard Roark ftw!

[deceptivemirror.livejournal.com]

Atlas Shrugged is and remains the only book that forced me to read about what my friends describe as "normal people speed." It took me two WEEKS to wade through that thing, and it takes me the same amount of time each time I re-read it (which hasn't been for a while, but still).

Her philosophy's kind of fluid. She believes a bit in the almighty dollar too much for me to handle, and she keep sticking up for intellectual superiority, but the vast majority of her characters embody the complete opposite, and the ones who DO follow her philosophy end up on top only because they let the dumbasses (for lack of a better word) knock down all the other social structures first so that the only thing to go on is what the smart person wants. I liked Roark, though I feel his personality isn't quite as fleshed out as other characters'.

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

The 1960's show 'The Prisoner'? No one seems to know about it anymore....

[chiiyo86.livejournal.com]

I am not a number, I am a free man!

/random drive-by comment.

[septembers-coda.livejournal.com]

I never saw it, but always wanted to check it out! I don't know if I can handle 60s-style TV, but have been fascinated hearing about it; I hear it was really edgy, well-done and ahead of its time.

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

My brother was the biggest fan of All Things '60's, so I have, in fact, seen the Prisoner (and liked it)!

[anactoria.livejournal.com]

I actually did find one person online who was into them, years later -- I even wrote fic! -- but there was a series of teenage books called Losing Christina by Caroline B. Cooney that I was into as a kid that nobody else seemed to have heard of. I mean, they couldn't have been that obscure, because I got them from the school library, but they were pretty odd. It was about a couple of evil schoolteachers who got their kicks out of psychologically terrorizing teenage girls until they went mad.

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

Do you know about yuletide, which is where people write fic for rare fandoms? I bet you'd find other fans of the series there! ... and now I finally know where your icon comes from!

I was SO, SO into a book called The House of Thirty Cats when I was a kid--so into it, in fact, that I convinced my teacher to read it to the whole class. The rest of the class was so NOT into it that she stopped only a couple of chapters in, and all my passionate insistences to my classmates about how good it got convinced no one. I just couldn't fathom how everyone couldn't see the beauty in it, which is how I feel about so many things these days. :-( That's what led to this post ...

[freya922.livejournal.com]

Star Trek - truly, back in the DAY, man, when there was no internet and no nothing. I was in middle school, and getting beat up, and drawing the Enterprise on everything. (I'm sure there was no connection between those last two - snort.) Some story in TV Guide about a tiny little Star Trek convention (the first) where they expected a few people and stopped counting after hundreds showed up made me realize I wasn't really alone after all. Then came the 'zines and cons and all that. But there was a long, lonely stretch there where I felt totally alone with it.

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

You were getting beat up? :-( *pets poor freya* That's so cute that you were drawing the Enterprise everywhere! (For me, it was horses. ALL THE TIME. And deer. Lots of deer. The occasional rabbit.) As mentioned in a comment above, my brother was into all things '60's, ESPECIALLY Star Trek. My dad, too. This was before my time, but I'm told they watched it live as it aired the first time, so my family was always into it; I've been watching ST for as long as I've been alive. So I feel ya, but you aren't alone even in this post. <3

[freya922.livejournal.com]

Thanks, brightly, I appreciate it. It's OK - after all, these are events of the 70s though I will say I still loathe bullies! So cool that your family was into ST from the beginning. I was too little in the 60s to see it the first time around, but when it was in syndication in the 70s I'd watch it all three times a day it aired! :)

[kalliel]

For most of my weird shit, I've had the privilege and excellent luck of sharing it with my best friend from birth. And when they were born, my younger siblings. So I'm not sure I can think of anything I've been wholly alone in. But things--STILL OFT QUOTED, AND REGULARLY WATCHED/CELEBRATED--that no one outside my family was ever into:

The Brave Little Toaster (okay, seriously, no one??? for real?)
Gizmos & Gadgets (90s Mac science learning game)
Pinball Science (90s Mac science learning game)
Eyewitness Videos (inaccurate 90s science show)
Bill Nye the Science Guy (more accurate 90s science show!)
The Magic School Bus (totally 100% accurate 90s science show!!)

^ people had heard of these, of course, and seen these, but they were "school" and therefore punishment, XP I TAPED THEM. WHEN MY GRANDFATHER TAPED OVER THE WHALE EPISODE OF BILL NYE I WAS HEARTBROKEN. XP

The Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix (Australian YA sci-fi, aka THE HARRY POTTER OF MY CHILDHOOD)



What about YOU? You've talked about Bordertown a bit, naturally. Anything else? :D

[septembers-coda.livejournal.com]

I LOVED THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER. Badass.

I read some Garth Nix but never really got into him! There were a gazillion obscure fantasy novels I read that no one had ever heard of, though. Obscure fantasy novels were kinda my life. Along with the obvious ones.

Never really watched them, but I remember those weird Eyewitness Videos! And he came to be in the era where I didn't watch TV at all, but I love Bill Nye. <3 So YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

This may explain why no matter how far-fetched something you're into may be, you have faith that others will see its awesomeness, and sure enough, people join you in your obsession. Such as, bee!Winchesters, and marine!Winchesters. ;-> I need to take a page out of your book and learn to do this myself.

Well ... awesomely enough, nearly everything other people mentioned here in the comments are things I was super into at one time! Goes to show how much SPN fans really DO have in common. :-)

My list would be endless. Maybe I'll just have to make a post about it. But something that won't make the post but relates to your '90's Mac games is that I'm pretty sure only I and about fifteen people from my dorm in college have extremely passionate memories of a terrible-quality horse-racing game for the Mac in the very early '90's. We all learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of gambling over those heady nights, getting ourselves tens of thousands of virtual dollars in debt as we screamed and cheered on those tiny, pixelated white horses on a flat black background ...

KUNG FU

[septembers-coda.livejournal.com]

For me, that was the 70s Kung Fu show with David Carradine. GOD I LOVED THAT SHOW when I was a kid, and I was weirdly isolated watching it... it was the 80s and it was already in reruns on some obscure cable channel my family had. It felt like I was literally the only person in the world who knew about it. I had never seen anything like it, and my love for it was deep and passionate. It really influenced me, too. I still vividly remember some scenes and love to quote it. As you know... Grasshopper. <3<3

Re: KUNG FU

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

It's such a peaceful show, and so sort of reassuring/enlivening in that it was the only show communicating real Buddhist philosophy on t.v. at a time when t.v. was ALL about entertainment. Master Po!!

Re: KUNG FU

[septembers-coda.livejournal.com]

MASTER PO FOR THE WIN. That's a good point about the Buddhist philosophy, so counter not just to TV at that time, but to American culture in general. Eastern philosophy of any kind hadn't entered the mainstream yet, and it jibes really well with my beliefs, so that's why I loved it so much. <3

[milly-gal.livejournal.com]

The Tribe, no one seems to write fic anymore or even mention the show, but it was seminal and a huge deal for me. I watched it religiously and was so sad when it ended.

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

I guess this one isn't available here, so I never saw it. I just looked it up on the google and it looks cool! I LOVE a good post-apocalyptic story. (Speaking of which, have you seen our shared-world comm, tricycleman? Maybe it's something you'd be interested in being a part of ....)

[milly-gal.livejournal.com]

When my internet stops being a total WENCH I'll check it out hun :)

[cuddyclothes.livejournal.com]

As a child, the Black Stallion books. Nobody read in my school, and I spent most of my time in the library. Also the Red, Blue, etc. Fairy Tale books. Which are incredibly gross and gory.

[brightly-lit.livejournal.com]

THE BLACK STALLION! I was the horse girl in elementary school. I walked to school reading those books. (Freaked out people in cars when I crossed the street reading. ;-) ) I could not have been more into the Black Stallion, kindred spirit!

We might have been separated at birth

[septembers-coda.livejournal.com]

ME AND THE BLACK STALLION, TOO! But also those color fairy books! Those were my first exposure to real fairy tales, of the gruesome variety, and I had a friend who had the whole collection. I consumed one a day in my frenzy until I'd read them all.