Escape

This evening, I went to a Lord of the Rings themed pub quiz with a group of friends. I haven’t touched, read, watched or thought much about Tolkien for the past few years, and realizing how much trivia I remembered from my days of being a thirteen-year-old discovering the fantasy genre and the existence of fan fiction and the online internet fandom was incredibly nostalgic, to say the least. Apparently, I still remember who most of the characters’ fathers are, even if “Frodo, son of Drogo” now conjures up a funny mental image of Frodo leading a khalasar. (Intertextuality for the win?) I’m pretty amused that I still remember what “Tig” is, and that I retained good bit of the trivia I picked up reading the transcripts of “Fellowship of the Ring” over and over again for all the spoof fanfictions I wrote. Also, I’m pretty proud that I remembered that Faenor created the silmirlis.

Nostalgia is a strange thing and I’m pretty sure that in general, re-living that nerdiness, or even seeing the Hobbit trailer reminds me of being that age and viewing literature, and probably a bit of the online fandom, as an escape from mundane reality. It reminds me of coming home from school on Friday, running up to my room and getting on my computer to read, write, discuss and generally immerse myself in an alternate reality. Though really, it was never so much losing track of reality as much as needing the occasional escape from it.

In any case, reading through my old scribbles is so much like going back in time and reading notes from a past self that it’s uncanny. When I reset “The Fellowship of the Ring” in a junior high school, which apparently earned me quite a few reviews on FF.net, it’s pretty amusing to realize how much that was essentially me re-imagining my current situation at the time as something more exciting and fantastical than it was. And yet, I definitely see a good bit of snark and my attempts to satirize the inane aspects of school (stress, social cliques, faulty vending machines, band parties) and then I’m sort of proud of my younger self. I’m most definitely looking forward to “The Hobbit”, if for nothing else, because it’s going to be a good two hours of straight-on nostalgic feelings and happiness.