Category Archives: Fangirl Thursdays

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: I Always Cry at Weddings

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There’s nothing like a great TV wedding. I’ve been very fortunate to have watched more than a few of my favorite TV couples get married onscreen, and there’s no better feeling as a devoted fangirl than watching a couple you’ve rooted for through all of their ups and downs finally get that perfect wedding episode.

Some of my favorite TV episodes of all time are wedding episodes because they are instant doses of happiness I can come back to whenever I need it. They’re reminders to never stop hoping and believing in happy endings (or, really, happy beginnings), and I love stories that make me feel hopeful and happy.

This week, I was lucky enough to get to watch another one of my favorite television couples—Rick Castle and Kate Beckett—tie the knot in an excellent episode of Castle.

The joy I felt watching their vows on Monday made me want to reflect back on my other favorite TV weddings.

Leslie and Ben (Parks and Recreation)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9PJOebnENY

I’ve talked about this wedding so many times, but I feel like I can never talk about it enough. I’m not sure any moment I’ve ever watched on television has made me as happy as this wedding. It’s my go-to episode when I’m in need of some TV comfort food, and I still cry happy tears every time I watch it. Every detail was perfect—from the location and the dress to the beautiful vows and the clips that accompanied them, reminding us of the journey these two characters took to get to this place where they could both so beautifully say, “I love you and I like you.”

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Fangirl Thursday: The Best of Castle and Beckett

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always

Can you hear the wedding bells starting to chime, fellow Castle fans?

On Monday night, after waiting what’s felt like forever, Castle and Beckett are finally tying the knot, so this seemed like as good a reason as any to reflect back on my favorite moments in their relationship over the last seven seasons. (I did the same for Leslie and Ben right before their perfect Parks and Recreation wedding a couple of years ago.)

Castle and Beckett’s love story is a story of two adults who have learned that nothing worth having comes easily. Happy endings aren’t given away; they’re things we have to fight for, things we have to choose even when we fear we’re not deserving of happiness because we’re too broken, too scared, or too used to being alone. Watching these two characters choose happiness with each other and choose to fight for that happiness whenever it’s been threatened has been nothing short of inspiring. We’ve already seen them choose to be with each other for better or worse; they’ve been promising each other “Always” since Season Three. This wedding is just icing on a lovely cake we’ve watched come together over the years.

Castle has always been, at its heart, a love story. And what an extraordinary love story it is. Without further ado, here are my 10 favorite moments in the relationship between Castle and Beckett (so far). Join the fun and share your favorites with us in the comments!

1. “I’ve gotten used to you pulling my pigtails…” (2.13: Sucker Punch)
This was the moment I went from liking Castle to loving it with the passion I still have today. This was the moment it became my favorite show on television. And it was all because this was the moment I went from enjoying the dynamic between Castle and Beckett to being moved to tears by that dynamic. I could write entire posts about this scene (In fact, I have.), but I’ll keep it short this time around. Castle showing up with every kind of food known to man just to make Beckett feel better is still one of the most realistically romantic gestures I’ve ever seen on television. It took my breath away then, and it continues to do so even now. And for all of the grand speeches and revelations these two have shared, I still think Beckett telling Castle that she’s gotten used to him pulling her pigtails is one of the most important. It was the first time she told him what he meant to her, and I will never forget how blindsided I was by the simple beauty of that moment.

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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: A New Dress and an Open Heart

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This post is a little different from my usual Fangirl Thursday ones, but sometimes you just have to go where the inspiration leads.

I love clothes. I love to shop for them, to look at them in magazines and on red carpets, and to talk about them. As such, dissecting a character’s costume choices is one of my favorite ways to analyze any piece of media. From the evolution of Kate Beckett’s hair to the bright colors worn by Mindy Lahiri, the outward appearance of a TV character gives us a lot of insight into exactly who they are.

Therefore, when a character shows up wearing something different from what we’ve come to expect, it’s important. It’s worth talking about.

JENNIFER MORRISON

This—Emma Swan in a soft pink dress with her hair pulled back, ready for her first real date with Hook—is worth talking about.

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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: A Perfect One-Two Punch

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The only thing better than a great season finale is a great season premiere to build on the foundation laid in that finale. It’s a perfect one-two punch: the shock that often comes with a brilliant finale and the catharsis often granted by an equally brilliant premiere.

In my years as a dedicated TV fan, I’ve seen plenty of great finales and premieres, especially from mythology-heavy shows like Once Upon a Time, Orphan Black, and Lost. However, I’ve never seen a more powerful finale/premiere duo than the knockout combination of Alias’s “The Telling”/“The Two.” Those two episodes set the standard for me in terms of shocking cliffhangers and premieres that dealt perfectly with their fallout.

Alias’s second season was pure brilliance. And its finale was exactly the kind of ending such a phenomenal season deserved. It featured one twist after another (“Francie doesn’t like coffee ice cream…”) until the final minutes gave way to what I still consider the most blindsiding cliffhanger I’ve ever watched.

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Fangirl Thursday: Let’s Get Lost

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Source: abc.com

Source: abc.com

It’s been 10 years since we watched Jack Shephard dramatically open one eye, stumble through a jungle, and come upon the harrowing wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815. It’s been 10 years since we met Kate, Sawyer, Charlie, Claire, Locke, and so many other characters who would make us laugh, cry, and fall in love right along with them over the course of six seasons. And it’s been 10 years since we saw a polar bear, discovered a smoke monster, and realized we were in for a journey like nothing else we’d ever seen on TV before.

That’s right, friends; Lost turned 10 years old on Monday. Ten years ago, I stood in front of the tiny TV in my kitchen and watched what I still consider to be the greatest pilot of all time. I knew I was in for one heck of a ride after learning all about J.J. Abrams’s crazy ways of weaving stories through my years spent loving Alias, but I don’t think any of us knew exactly how crazy this ride was going to be.

I learned so much from watching Lost, and those lessons have stayed with me for the last 10 years and will continue to stay with me for much longer. I learned that no character I love on a TV show is safe at any time (not just in premieres and finales), and that’s helped me get through every season of Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time, and even The Good Wife.

I learned that sometimes your choice of favorite character changes as you grow and change yourself—from Kate to Charlie to Sawyer to Juliet. I learned that you don’t choose your “ships;” they choose you. (I spent so long wondering why I wasn’t more invested in the Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle, only to discover that my heart was apparently saving all of its feelings for the unexpectedly perfect pairing of Sawyer/Juliet.) I learned that I love any and all plots involving time travel. And I learned that nothing makes me happier as a fan than when a character or a show can still manage to surprise me.

The most important lesson, though, that I learned from Lost was taught to me in the pilot and reinforced in the series finale: It’s all about the characters. For all the polar bears and smoke monsters, the reason I loved the pilot was because it made me care about these people beyond just their observations of the mysteries unfolding around them. The pilot opened with people just trying to survive and help one another do so; the mysteries came later. And I tried to never forget that. For as much as this was a show with possibly the most complex mythology to ever grace network TV, what made it work was its commitment to creating and developing characters that made us care.

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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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