noahspud

Okay, I love that “Christine’s choice” ending scene. She can’t let Raoul die, but Raoul doesn’t want her stuck in Erik’s basement forever. The answer is to do the impossible: love the Phantom. Just a little bit, enough to kiss him. It’s not that Erik deserves her love, but he needs it (as a tragic character, he needs love more than most). Christine has enough love in her heart to love the Phantom; that’s what makes her a heroine.
So Erik doesn’t just learn to give real, mature, selfless love. He also gets it. It’s weird, because he always wanted it, but according to his plan it didn’t really matter if Christine loved him as long as she was his. When he got it in the end, he didn’t know what to do with it, so he had to let both Christine and Raoul go.
It’s not that shipping automatically destroys those character arcs. It’s just that shipping in the phanfiction sense cheapens one of the most powerful kisses in all of fiction.

As fast and loose as Buffy and Angel played with God and Christian concepts, I appreciate that they didn’t exactly vilify Judeo-Christian symbols of goodness – except for that misogynistic preacher, as you mentioned. But the church is made of fallible humans, and sometimes people use the church to justify their own sin. Not a big surprise there.
But unlike Supernatural or Lucifer, I don’t recall Buffy or Angel ever fighting representatives of Heaven, only hell. In fact (quick Wiki check) I don’t think any actual angels ever appeared on the show, only the comics.
As a Christian, I’m made a little uneasy when I see other shows make enemies out of God and his angels. Sure, Buffy and her gang made friends with demons, but the other side stayed good, albeit absent. That’s how Whedon kept the faith in his stories hopeful, rather than twisting it for the sake of a good story like other shows.

Although I really love reading, I’ve always felt my reading comprehension and memory are so high I don’t need to reread, and therefore I don’t need to spend money on books that I could get from the library. My home bookshelf, therefore, is filled with gifts from childhood birthdays and Christmases. Rereading, for me, is innately tied to the sensation of having the physical book in my hands. Maybe it’s a generational thing.
As a youngster, I tried to collect all 100 or so of the Boxcar Children books, not because I expected to reread all of them or even enjoy any of them as I grew up, but because owning the physical things felt like an accomplishment. (Why does anyone collect anything, after all?)
My favorite books that I own are the Complete H.P. Lovecraft and the Complete Sherlock Holmes. They’re both old-fashioned hardcover bricks, and I expect to enjoy the experience of reading and, once I finish, rereading them. It won’t be for increased comprehension of complexities or understanding myself, though. It’ll just be for the nostalgia of where and when I got the physical books and the sensation of holding them again.

I think I probably learned to be a writer by spending most of my free time reading. My thought process changed to match the style of the books I was reading. Then my teacher gave me a notebook and suggested I spend some of my free time writing. The rest is history. In other words, I had the good environment you mentioned, so I can attest to the truth of this.
The one thing I’m not sure about is “success…only requires the writer to adapt to his or her aims.” If someone aims to be a writer but isn’t meant for it on a personal, grand-plan-from-on-high level – if they’re not passionate about it, for example, or there’s something else that they’re really good at – adapting to those aims is more likely to make them miserable, and unhappy success is no success at all.

I think I probably learned to be a writer by spending most of my free time reading. My thought process changed to match the style of the books I was reading. Then my teacher gave me a notebook and suggested I spend some of my free time writing. The rest is history. In other words, I had the good environment you mentioned, so I can attest to the truth of this.
The one thing I’m not sure about is “success…only requires the writer to adapt to his or her aims.” Something you don’t mention that a writer needs is passion, just as any gratifying career path requires passion. If someone aims to be a writer but isn’t meant for it on a personal, grand-plan-from-on-high level, adapting to those aims is more likely to make them miserable, and unhappy success is no success at all.