Category Archives: About Me

Fangirl Thursday: Three Years of Nerdy Fun

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Today is a special day at Nerdy Girl Notes, and it seems very fitting that it should fall on a Fangirl Thursday. It’s NGN’s third birthday/blogiversary/whatever the kids are calling it nowadays. The point is, three years ago today, I picked out my hot pink color scheme, wrote a post about the joys of being a nerdy girl, and NGN was born.

NGN has evolved and grown so much since its earliest days, and in the process, I’ve grown so much, too. I started this blog as a way to reconnect with the kind of writing I wanted to do, and somewhere along the way, I also discovered the kind of person I want to be. That’s not something you think about when you write your first blog post, but it’s something I feel thankful for every day—that what started out as a writing exercise turned into a place where I was able to grow as a person not just through my writing, but through interacting with some of the smartest and kindest people I could have ever hoped to meet.

This year has been a year of new challenges at NGN. New TV shows were reviewed, new features were started, new lists were made, and new essays were written. I pushed myself as a writer this year not just in the sheer volume of posts I wrote, but in the vulnerability many of them required. And I am forever grateful for all of you who’ve responded with vulnerability and openness of your own. We share something special with one another when we talk about the media we love, and this year was filled with reminders of that belief, which has always been at the heart of everything I write here.

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You Have All the Strengths: A Letter to Leslie Knope

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Source: glamour.com

Source: glamour.com

Dear Leslie,

I’m not ready to say goodbye. I know all good things must come to an end, but that doesn’t make it easier to think about tomorrow’s series finale of Parks and Recreation. I’ve spent a long time thinking of the right way to bid farewell to a show that’s meant so much to me, and I decided to approach it (like I approach most things in life) the way you would: with positivity, with optimism, and with appreciation for the power one woman—if she’s the right woman—has to inspire those around her to be their best selves. You might not be real, but the impact you had on me is as real as it gets. So before I say goodbye, I wanted to say thank you.

Thank you, Leslie, for your passion. As we grow, we’re often led to believe that it’s cool to be apathetic; it’s cool not to care, or at least not to show you care. Because openly caring about things asks for a kind of vulnerability and honesty that scares people. So thank you for being brave enough to let the world see how much you care. Thank you for reminding me that a life well-lived is a life lived with passion and intensity. And thank you for never apologizing for feeling as strongly as you felt about the things that mattered to you. Women often feel a need to apologize for their feelings, especially if they’re strong, but you were allowed to own your passion unapologetically. And you were surrounded by characters who supported that passion and were inspired by your ability to care. The depth with which you cared about things was never mocked; it was celebrated, and it made me feel proud to be someone who only knows how to feel things strongly.

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Fangirl Thursday: Feeling Thankful

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On this day set aside for giving thanks, I wanted to take a moment to once again count my fangirl blessings. I have so much to be grateful for as the creator of this website, a website that continues to fill me with joy, pride, and excitement every day. After over two years captaining the good ship NGN, I am grateful for the fact that this little labor of love has grown so much and yet still feels as deeply personal as it did the day I started it.

When I take a step back and look at NGN, more than anything I am grateful for the people who have made this website a place that I am so proud to call mine. Because, for as much as I say NGN is mine; it’s really yours, too. All of you who comment here and so generously share your thoughts and feelings have created a space that feels like a home and a family for so many fellow fans who haven’t felt that in a long time—if ever—myself included.

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Fangirl Thursday: Let’s Play Dress-Up!

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Tomorrow is one of my favorite days of the year—Halloween! For as much as I love the whole “excuse to eat candy” part of the holiday, my real favorite thing about Halloween is dressing up. Halloween has always given me yet another outlet to show how much I love the fictional characters who matter to me, and that’s dressing up as them.

One of my favorite costumes—from Halloween 2010.

One of my favorite costumes—from Halloween 2010.

I’ve never gone to Comic Con (and I just started going to Star Wars Weekends, only dressing up for it this past year), so Halloween is a way for me to try my hand at cosplaying. In the last few years, I’ve really tried to make an effort to choose costumes based on fictional characters I like and not just whatever looked good at the store. It’s fun to show my passions through the costumes I’ve chosen, and it’s also fun to see other people’s costumes and figure out how those reflect things that matter to them.

When I was a little girl, my Disney princess costumes meant the world to me. (I can still vividly remember my Cinderella dress.) This year, I’m returning those roots to pay homage to my favorite Disney princess: Belle. (Expect plenty of photos of my costume to make their way to social media this weekend.)

Whether it’s Hermione from Harry Potter or Red from Once Upon a Time, my recent costumes have reflected fictional characters that mean a lot to me. This year, my costume is also going to reflect that, and I am so excited to wear a costume that connects 26-year-old me to the little girl I was when I first watched Belle sing about the “great, wide somewhere.”

Tell me, fellow nerds, what have been some of your favorite Halloween costumes from your childhood or your more recent past? And what—if anything—are you dressing up as this year?

Fangirl Thursday: A Magical Anniversary

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OUAT

Three years ago today, the Once Upon a Time pilot aired, bringing some much-needed magic to primetime network television. I will admit; I didn’t watch the show that first night. But I caught a marathon of the first seven episodes on New Year’s Day 2012, and it was love at first sight for me. I knew from the opening of the pilot episode that I was watching something special, and I know I wasn’t the only person who felt that way. And three years (or almost three years in my case), dozens of plot twists and new characters, and far too many hours spent analyzing this show later, so many of us still feel that way. And that’s something worth celebrating.

Once Upon a Time and Nerdy Girl Notes are intrinsically linked. The day I first watched the show was also the day I made the resolution to start this website. In no small way, Once Upon a Time has shaped the look and feel of NGN more than perhaps any other piece of media I’ve written about. Nothing inspires me as a writer like Once Upon a Time (just in case you didn’t already know that from the length of my weekly posts or the number of essays I’ve written about this show), and I am forever grateful that I found a show to write about that challenges me the way this show does with each new episode.

Once Upon a Time has taught me to write from a place of optimism and positivity. It’s taught me that it’s okay to acknowledge flaws, but it’s also important to acknowledge the good stuff—and there’s always good stuff. It’s helped me see that writing for me is a lot like magic for this show’s characters—it’s all about emotion. I write my best when I write from my heart, and Once Upon a Time celebrates the beauty and power of approaching everything with an open heart. Because of that, this show has undoubtedly made me a braver writer. It’s helped me feel like it’s okay to wear my heart on my sleeve, and I know for a fact I’m a better writer because of that.

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Fangirl Thursday: Hope, Happiness, and Hockey

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I love sports. March Madness is one of my favorite times of the year. I celebrated my 25th birthday at Yankee Stadium. And I love Sunday afternoons spent watching my beloved Buffalo Bills.

Although there are several sports teams that I love beyond reason, there’s only one that holds the top spot in my heart. And that’s the Buffalo Sabres, whose regular season happens to start tonight.

Hockey is a passionate game that inspires passion from its fans. And I’ve never been as passionate about another sports team as I’ve been about the Sabres. I’ve cried more tears over them than I have over any TV show or fictional character. I’ve spent more money on them than I’ve spent on probably all of my other fandoms combined. Being a Sabres fan led me to start my first blog, so I give them credit for being the first to really get me out of lurking around fandoms and into becoming an active participant. The Sabres taught me about communities of fans, families of blog commenters, and the importance of the connections we make with others based on the things we love.

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Fangirl Thursday: Making an Impact

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parks prom

We’ve all seen those lists popping up on our Facebook feeds—“15 Movies that Changed My Life,” “10 Books that Stayed with Me,” “10 Albums that Have Defined My Life,” etc. We’ve probably even made one or more of those lists ourselves. (I’ve done both the book and movies ones.) But I haven’t seen any of these “challenges” devoted to television.

That’s about to change.

I am the woman I am in no small part due to the movies I’ve watched and the books I’ve read in my 26 years. However, I’m also the woman I am because of the TV shows I’ve watched and the television characters I’ve loved. More than any other form of media, television has given me characters and stories to grow up with, to be inspired by, and to learn from over the course of many years.

Therefore, today I’m making a list of the 10 TV shows that have had the deepest impact on me. And I’m challenging all of my fellow nerds to make their own lists and post them in the comments!

1. Sesame Street: My love for television as a medium and my respect for it as a positive force in people’s lives can be traced back to mornings spent watching Sesame Street with my mom. It was the first TV show I was ever exposed to, and I want it to be the first TV show I expose my own children to someday. I love Sesame Street not only for the things it taught me (Spanish, letters and numbers, the continents…) but also for how happy it made me as kid and still makes me as an adult every time I see Grover or Big Bird or Cookie Monster spreading joy to a new generation of kids.

2. Boy Meets World: This was the first show to teach me that a piece of media can mean different things to you at different times in your life. I grew up with these characters not only when the show first aired but also through reruns that seemed to air just when I needed them in high school, in college, and even now. Boy Meets World’s series finale is one I treasure as an adult far more than I did as a preteen watching it for the first time, and it gave me some of the most profound advice any TV show could ever hope to give: “Dream. Try. Do good.”

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Fangirl Thursday: Who Encourages Your Nerdy Side?

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It’s not always easy being a nerd. There’s always going to be someone telling you that you care too much about “just” things: “just a TV show,” “just a book,” just a band,” “just a sports team,” etc. There are always going to be people who judge you for your emotional investment in fictional worlds and characters. And there are always going to be people who think that there are better, more productive ways to spend your time than reading, watching TV, or writing about things that make you think and feel.

That’s exactly why we as nerds need support systems—people who encourage our nerdy sides, foster our passions, and help us find even more things to become invested in.

I have a wonderfully large nerdy support system—from all of you lovely readers and commenters here at NGN and my friends who will talk for hours with me about books and TV shows to my cousins who are just as nerdy as I am, my father who’s taught me so much about sports fandom, and my sister who’s my favorite TV-watching partner. However, there’s one person who is at the heart of that support system—one person who first opened my eyes to what would become one my life’s biggest passions and has encouraged that passion ever since—and it happens to be her birthday today.

That person is my mom. When I was a bored preteen looking for things to read, my mom led me to To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby, and my life was never the same. In introducing me to those two books, my mom introduced me to my future—analyzing the pieces of media that make me think and feel the most deeply. As a reader herself, my mom knew the value of books and just how much of an impact they can leave on you, and I’m so thankful she passed that appreciation for the value of great literature on to me.

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Fangirl Thursday: TV Comfort Food

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Sometimes life just sucks. Even though I try to be as positive as I can be as a writer and as a person, there’s no denying that some days are just bad days. Whether you had a bad day at work or are sick with a cold or feeling sad for no real reason, there are days when you just need comfort—comfy clothes, comfort food, and comfort TV.

We all have those episodes of certain TV shows that we watch when we need a little dose of instant happiness. They’re the episodes that act like a warm mug of tea and a soft blanket on life’s rainiest days. A good comfort TV episode makes you smile, laugh, and maybe even cry when you really need to.

When I’m having one of those days where I feel like nothing will cheer me up, I reach for my Parks and Recreation DVDs. I’ve spent many hours curled up on my couch, starting impromptu marathons of this show to get through sick days and sad days. But sometimes you just don’t have time for a marathon. Sometimes you have to choose just one episode that you know will do the trick—one episode that warms your soul and lifts your spirits. And, for me, that episode is “Leslie and Ben.”

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Virtual Hugs Are Still Hugs

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Last week, one of my closest friends (Heather, for those of you who haven’t been following along on our adventures via Twitter) came to stay with me for a few days. We did plenty of sightseeing, went to the mall, and ate a ton of delicious food.

In short, they were the best three days I’ve had in ages. However, I’m sure there are people out there who thought it was weird that I was opening up my home to someone I’d only met once before. You see, Heather and I are what some people like to skeptically call “Internet friends.” We met through LiveJournal, grew closer through Twitter, and support each other now through our blogs. And for some, that means our friendship is inherently less valid than any we form with people we meet in person.

There’s still a real stigma around friendships that start in various corners of the Internet. I know that there’s the potential to be building a friendship with someone who is nothing like they seem, but can’t the same be said for friends we make in the “real world,” too?

I have a wonderful group of people I’ve met online whom I consider to be great friends. Some I’ve seen in person many times now, some only once, and some I still have yet to meet face-to-face. But what I’ve come to learn from my years in fandom is that friendship shouldn’t be measured by physical proximity or the number of times you’ve hung out in person. It should be measured by the experiences and pieces of yourself that you share with each other. It should be measured by the amount that you sincerely care for each other. And those things aren’t exclusive to friends who meet at school or at work.

If you take away anything from my writing, I hope it’s this: When we share our passions, we share parts of ourselves. And that’s what makes friendships that develop through fandom so special. I know that I share so much more about who I am when talking about the books, movies, TV shows, and characters that I love than I do when I’m just talking about myself. There’s a total vulnerability I allow myself when talking about fandom-related topics that I don’t always show under other circumstances. And I know I’m not alone in that.

Slowly, that sense of openness that comes with sharing fandoms with someone becomes a sense of real understanding. And aren’t openness and understanding the two pillars upon which all friendships should be built? The development from being two people with common interests to being real friends happens online the same way it does in person, so I don’t know why people feel the need to classify them as different levels of friendship.

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