Fandom Snowflake Challenge Day Six

[tjs_whatnot]

Day Six

In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.

Since I'm unlocking these posts as part of the challenge, I wanted to talk about this book and movie without getting too personal, but I find I can't. So, I'll probably lock it once the challenge is over.



I actually saw The Outsiders movie before I even knew it was a book. For the first time ever, this was probably a good thing. It certainly was exactly what I needed to see exactly when I needed to see it.

It was the summer I was 12 and like most summers, I was staying with my grandmother in the Middle of Nowhere Washington. My teenage cousin who lived up the hill and her boyfriend at the time decided to take me to the movies. We had few options, but she was of the age that the movie was probably targeting so I'm sure we went for the eye candy. ♥SODA POP♥

Neither of us were prepared for what this movie would do to me.

Two years before, I had lost my brother. He had been ran over by a truck coming home from school. He was 14. And in my mind, in this movie, I just super-imposed, articulated all the things my brother was, all the feelings I had about him into the character of Johnny Cade.


SPOILER--it didn't end well for our Johnny. ;_____;

I don't think I really ever grieved for my brother until that night in that theater (Poor cousin's boyfriend). :(

Later that same summer, in that same Middle of Nowhere House, I got the news that my father died. I'm not sure what those two things have to do with each other except that they both happened that summer and the one helped me cope with the other in ways I wouldn't entirely work out for years after.

Back then, they didn't have DVD's and there was HBO and the like, but it was hit or miss and also for people who had more money than us. So, I couldn't watch the movie anytime I wanted. So I can't explain what it meant to me that it was also a book. I'd like to think there was some great sunlight-through-clouds moment involved when I recieved it, but I honestly don't know. What I do know is that I discovered early on that I don't get the normal level of obsessed with things...

I honestly don't know what I would have done if I knew of such things as "fandom" and "community" and all of that back then. I honestly don't know how my mother put up with me. The first three hundred times I read it, I was really there for the Ponyboy and the Johnny and to lesser extent the Dally and the other Curtis boys... but slowly, over time, when the pain of my own suffering lessened, I became obsessed with other characters--mostly SodaPop. If you've only seen the movie and not read the book, you might be confused by this, but the book delves so very much more into Soda's life and where he was in the world. Of course it did, Soda was Pony's favorite person in the world, he spent a lot of the pages of his book talking about Soda.


Bonus, he was so very easy on the eyes.♥

I started mimicking characterizations of Soda's. I walked around barefoot (something I would NEVER have done before) because Soda did, there was something with the mail too, I can't remember... I also, I think, became a better sibling to my sister. I wanted to be the sort of sibling to her that Soda was to Pony.

Like I said, weird.

But, since I didn't know about fandom and fanfiction and the ability to take someone else's worlds, characters and emotions and make them your own by WRITING THEM DOWN (I was very much doing it in my head ALL THE TIME) I did the next best thing--and this is the part I'm sort of oddly most embarrassed about. I began writing the book over, just word for word transcribing the words on the page into the words on my notebook and I don't even know why. Was I afraid that I owned the only copy and what would happen if it was lost or destroyed? Was I hoping I'd feel even more connected to the story if I wrote it down? Maybe.

I do know what it did for me though... it made it impossible to ever get the first (and last) paragraph out of my head: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight, from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home...

And this poem? It's ingrained into my very DNA:

"The Outsiders: Nothing Gold Can Stay" (Watch on YouTube)

“I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything's new, dawn. It's just when you get used to everything that it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep that way, it's a good way to be.” --Johnny Cade

But, what this book did do besides prove a distraction from suffering and help me through the awkward years of early teen life, was it taught me, like Pony did, like the author S.E. Hinton did at 16 when she wrote this book, that it was possible to write through the pain, it was possible that people will care about what I have to say and that I might be able to heal myself in little but profound ways by writing my story instead of copying hers over and over.

I will never forget those lessons. They made me who I am today, made me the writer I am today.

♥

Comments

[venturous]

oh my dear friend. the stories we live, the stories we love. isnt it terrible and amazing and heartbreaking and arent you amazing for turning grief into art.
I love you so much!
(I cant wait to watch/read this!)

[tjs_whatnot]

♥

[avon7.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing that. It sounds a bit stupid to say after that, that The Outsiders is one of *my* books - one of the small handful I always had by my side. As a miserable teen it spoke to me. I've never seen it. I was about fourteen when I read it for the first time and, yeah, there are bits I can do by heart. And the poem - I had to memorise it. I used to want to be SE HInton so badly. It's interesting to hear how Sodapop meant so much to you. To me it was all Ponyboy and Dally. That southern gentlemen bit still gives me goosebumps.

[tjs-whatnot.livejournal.com]

♥

Not at all! We don't all need trauma and grief to feel things at intimate levels... especially as a teenager.

I wanted to be SE Hinton SO BAD IT HURT! It's so weird to see her on twitter being just a normal person and ridiculously fangirly about Supernatural like we could totes be the same person. :))

Yeah, I don't know what it was about Sodapop... I've always, always, always had a thing for secondary characters though. But Dally and Johnny's friendship just GOT me too. ♥♥

[lelek.livejournal.com]

You just made me want to re-read The Outsiders. It's been... 10 years, maybe, since the last time I did, but it's an amazing novel.

[tjs-whatnot.livejournal.com]

It really is. I still cry every fuckin' time I read it.

[evila-elf.livejournal.com]

I haven't read The Outsiders in ages. I, too, and watched it before I read it. I became obsessed with it briefly in my early teens. I remember we had to do a poem book, so I used the part of the first sentence as the first line of the poem.

I used to type out things I enjoyed as well. I remember using an old typewriter to copy Ranger Rick magazine stories, then eventually a computer to do books. I also transcribed most of Titanic by seeing it in the theater 3 times and taking notes each time I got home ;)

[tjs-whatnot.livejournal.com]

♥

And haha on the Titanic! I was a nanny for two pre-teen girls... the amount of times I saw that in the theaters and I could have perform the entire movie from memory. :))

[drarryxlover.livejournal.com]

♥

Thank you for sharing. *hugs*

[tjs-whatnot.livejournal.com]

♥

Thank you for reading!

[cookiegirl]

So glad this was there for you when you needed it.
Thanks for sharing this entry ♥ x