This week involved the launch of Pokémon Go, and I do love me a good dose of fiction invading reality.
I mentioned it back on the 25th of May, which really was more about characters, but shows how narratives dig into our minds and become a part of our world. Shrines to Jon Snow in the street.
I don’t know how much Pokémon Go is really aimed at kids. Is this generation of 8-12 year-olds into Pokémon as much as the last? I suspect it will really be the 20-35 year-olds who are really getting into it, pacing around at two in the morning to catch that elusive Clefable. It has already become a problem for a police station in Darwin, which made me cackle with glee. I want this shit to take over. I want bands of opposing Pokémon trainers loitering around art galleries and cathedrals with their caps on backwards. I want youthful exuberance and ridiculousness and laughter.
It’s amusing but it’s also fascinating. I love this shit. Fiction and reality bleeding into each other. Fiction influencing everyday life, including where and how far you walk. It turns an afternoon into an adventure you wouldn’t have had otherwise. I hope it stays popular.
Speaking of Game of Thrones, life seems a little more empty now we’ve a whole year to wait until Season 7. The Battle of the Bastards was spectacularly done – frankly, to my mind, worth recommending the series as a whole just for that episode. But I’m the sort of person who likes my TV to be beautiful. I’ve heard rumours that there’s scuttlebutt that The Winds of Winter might appear in early 2017, so I’ve made it my mission to finish the books by then. I’ve already read the first two, and I’ve just started A Storm of Swords (part one). Not the best idea just before the beginning of the new semester, but still.
I’ll have a lot to read in semester two, as I’m taking an English paper that involves a lot of novels. I have been such a slow reader for the last few years, so I hope I can knuckle down and get it all done. Emma I think is the first, but there’s also some Nabokov to read early on and I am salivating to get stuck into Pale Fire, as I haven’t read it before. I should also begin Ulysses sooner rather than later… My life will be more reading than anything else! But that’s no bad thing. I’m hoping this semester will get me back into reading more regularly.
Regularity, schedule, and habit – these are the things I’m aiming for. More reading, more writing, more running. By the end of the year, I want to have sent…. let’s say ten. Ten submissions to magazines by the end of the year. That’ll give me something to work towards.
And now… back to my book.
Valar morghulis.