So while I wasted the majority of my day on TVTropes (whoops!) thanks to a relapse (it happens--I am a recovering Trope Addict, after all, who once had near-encyclopediac knowledge of tropes back when TVTropes sided more with FORKS than it did with SPOONS), and I missed movie night as a result of this oversight plus what I'm about to talk about, it was something I was overall willing to have missed out on.
Why?
...Because of what I got to see instead: my family, watching Murder, She Wrote. A series that I used to adore as a kid. My mom used to have a fanatical devotion to it (and I also remember Magnum P.I. a great deal as well by extent, since they were paired together in airings), and I'd watch it there with her. And watching the series now, as a young adult, I found it still entertaining, and not because of nostalgia. (Nostalgia helps me to overlook the flaws like it being more predictable and the actors overacting!)
I caught the majority of one episode, not even knowing what my family was watching, until I heard the name, "Fletcher." Even then, it wasn't until I listened to her voice that it began to click what they were watching, and even then, while my brain was going, "Hey!", it didn't settle in until I saw her and was like, "(Could it be...)They are!" (I was too embarrassed to admit how long it took me to figure it out. I thought they were watching some generic movie, maybe a comedy of some sort, then realized it was probably a murder mystery type thing, yet I was only out there to eat. So I wasn't paying that close attention to it at first, until I did figure it out. After which...well. Let's just say I didn't leave my spot.)
Ah, Cabot Cove. Jessica Fletcher. The memories came flooding back to me. In an instant. I fortunately didn't remember any of the plots, and while they weren't too hard to figure out, I was fine with that anyway, because I was enjoying it so much. That show was probably one of the most significant shows of my childhood. It's one of the things I bonded with my mother about. But more than that...a 'fun' fact about me is that at times, I gave up on reading books at all.
It was my fascination with the mystery genre that got me reading mystery books. Guess where that fascination came from? It came from the show. I loved murder mysteries. That Jessica Fletcher was herself a writer certainly didn't harm anything, either! So basically, I think that watching that show, however inadvertently, set off a ripple effect which put me on the course of path where I'd ultimately end up becoming a writer. (Ironically enough, though I've had a couple of stabs at it and a few jumbled messes that might as well be, mystery is one of the only genres that I CAN'T write well about. The closest I've gotten to a coherent mystery novel crossed over into romance and fantasy by having it be the murder victim, as a ghost, inciting a living person to help investigate the circumstances of his death. Yet that book is just one in a series of books that are in the Romance genre with any other genre being secondary!)
By watching that show and having the spark of curiosity in mysteries ignited, and with encouragement from my mom, I started really, really getting into reading mystery books: short illustrated children's books at first, before moving on to youth books like, I believe they were called, "The Harrison Brothers" series or something like that. And with me really, really into books, eventually, there was the spark inside me to begin writing one of my own.
Now, to be fair, I mainly attribute all of the above to my first English teacher, Mrs. Conley, who I also know reinvigorated my love of reading, and wanting to impress her (she was basically a secondary motherly figure to me, one who I never had bad moments were in contrast with my mom who I had bitter tantrums with) is the direct thought which sparked the first book I began. (I also know that the book was inspired by two time travel video games, Final Fantasy Legend III, AKA SaGa3, and Chrono Trigger.)
One book turned into two or three before I went online to try and improve and two or three turned into twenty turned into two-hundred and so on and so forth. The point of the matter is, though, that without the love of reading, I never would have had the thought to do writing (even if the imagination potential was always there). And that love of reading--especially early-on--was made from mystery, which was inspired directly from watching the series about it.
...Speaking of mysteries, I think that also directly contributed to my love--nay, obsession--with mafia games. I have always had that desire to solve puzzles since I was a kid. And what better puzzle to solve than the human one? A constantly-shifting, ever-evolving, changing puzzle in which the clues are different each time even if the basic scenario is identical. Given how much I value those, basically never wishing to give them up...is it any wonder I am glad I got to see the show tonight? It reminded me of all of the above, and basically told me, yes. That something so simple can mean so much to a young mind.
Why?
...Because of what I got to see instead: my family, watching Murder, She Wrote. A series that I used to adore as a kid. My mom used to have a fanatical devotion to it (and I also remember Magnum P.I. a great deal as well by extent, since they were paired together in airings), and I'd watch it there with her. And watching the series now, as a young adult, I found it still entertaining, and not because of nostalgia. (Nostalgia helps me to overlook the flaws like it being more predictable and the actors overacting!)
I caught the majority of one episode, not even knowing what my family was watching, until I heard the name, "Fletcher." Even then, it wasn't until I listened to her voice that it began to click what they were watching, and even then, while my brain was going, "Hey!", it didn't settle in until I saw her and was like, "(Could it be...)They are!" (I was too embarrassed to admit how long it took me to figure it out. I thought they were watching some generic movie, maybe a comedy of some sort, then realized it was probably a murder mystery type thing, yet I was only out there to eat. So I wasn't paying that close attention to it at first, until I did figure it out. After which...well. Let's just say I didn't leave my spot.)
Ah, Cabot Cove. Jessica Fletcher. The memories came flooding back to me. In an instant. I fortunately didn't remember any of the plots, and while they weren't too hard to figure out, I was fine with that anyway, because I was enjoying it so much. That show was probably one of the most significant shows of my childhood. It's one of the things I bonded with my mother about. But more than that...a 'fun' fact about me is that at times, I gave up on reading books at all.
It was my fascination with the mystery genre that got me reading mystery books. Guess where that fascination came from? It came from the show. I loved murder mysteries. That Jessica Fletcher was herself a writer certainly didn't harm anything, either! So basically, I think that watching that show, however inadvertently, set off a ripple effect which put me on the course of path where I'd ultimately end up becoming a writer. (Ironically enough, though I've had a couple of stabs at it and a few jumbled messes that might as well be, mystery is one of the only genres that I CAN'T write well about. The closest I've gotten to a coherent mystery novel crossed over into romance and fantasy by having it be the murder victim, as a ghost, inciting a living person to help investigate the circumstances of his death. Yet that book is just one in a series of books that are in the Romance genre with any other genre being secondary!)
By watching that show and having the spark of curiosity in mysteries ignited, and with encouragement from my mom, I started really, really getting into reading mystery books: short illustrated children's books at first, before moving on to youth books like, I believe they were called, "The Harrison Brothers" series or something like that. And with me really, really into books, eventually, there was the spark inside me to begin writing one of my own.
Now, to be fair, I mainly attribute all of the above to my first English teacher, Mrs. Conley, who I also know reinvigorated my love of reading, and wanting to impress her (she was basically a secondary motherly figure to me, one who I never had bad moments were in contrast with my mom who I had bitter tantrums with) is the direct thought which sparked the first book I began. (I also know that the book was inspired by two time travel video games, Final Fantasy Legend III, AKA SaGa3, and Chrono Trigger.)
One book turned into two or three before I went online to try and improve and two or three turned into twenty turned into two-hundred and so on and so forth. The point of the matter is, though, that without the love of reading, I never would have had the thought to do writing (even if the imagination potential was always there). And that love of reading--especially early-on--was made from mystery, which was inspired directly from watching the series about it.
...Speaking of mysteries, I think that also directly contributed to my love--nay, obsession--with mafia games. I have always had that desire to solve puzzles since I was a kid. And what better puzzle to solve than the human one? A constantly-shifting, ever-evolving, changing puzzle in which the clues are different each time even if the basic scenario is identical. Given how much I value those, basically never wishing to give them up...is it any wonder I am glad I got to see the show tonight? It reminded me of all of the above, and basically told me, yes. That something so simple can mean so much to a young mind.
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