Waiting at Platform 9 and 3/4

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Chefodeath

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So like a lot of you I'm sure, I was a big Harry Potter fan when I was a kid. There have been but four, MAYBE five times in my life that something has drawn me in so throughly to the almost complete exclusion of everything else, and all the rest were video games.

So anyway, I remember getting into it over the summer when I was 11, and constantly playing with that little fantasy in the back of my head that I would be getting that letter from Hogwarts any day now, that I could be whisked away from all the boring normalacy of the everyday and practice magic. For a bit of poetic imagery, I suppose you could say I was waiting for the train on platform 9 and 3/4

And the train never came. Years passed by in a existence completely untouched by magic. I graduated Primary and secondary school, went to college, and hence became the cynical misanthropic bastard I am today.

There is a point of this thread however, beyond mere nostalgia. I don't think people who have ever waited at platform 9 and 3/4 ever completely leave it. I think we always leave some part of ourselves back there, waiting. Waiting even as that hope becomes a flicker infinitely distant but never gone. Waiting for something not of the mundane and the everyday, something that will shatter the mundane and the everyday. We are waiting for the letter that says we've been accepted to magic school, or the pill that will wake us up from the matrix. We're waiting for aliens to drop down, give us hyperspeed and lightsabers, and invite us to the galactic federation. We're waiting to wake up as knights in a mystic land from an ever strange dream, a dream that grows wispy as we resume our fight to save the land.

We're waiting for the Hogwarts Express.


TL;DR: Everyone has little fantasies as a kid they dreamed of coming true. Do you still hold any today?
 

Creator002

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I'm still waiting for the day I wake up and it's 1996 again.
My whole school life over again. How much I wish.
 

HassEsser

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I had read the first and second Harry Potter for the first time before I turned eleven. I had the same expectancy you did, and I was sorely disappointed :(

but anyway, I never really had any sort of fantasy when I was a child. I guess I was always a realist, even back when I didn't know what that meant.

On a semi-related note: the Harry Potter books are fantastic.
 

xHipaboo420x

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All of them. I am (and will be for the foreseeable future) the most romantic of dreamers.

Go me.
 

Blueruler182

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I actually d'awwwwwwwwwwwwed.

Everyone has that hope that they'll achieve the fantastic, go to some place where they can get the fantastic. But some of us decide to make it for ourselves. Sports, video games, movies. I'm planning on working in the comics industry. The trick isn't to leave off at one of those other fantasies but to make this world your fantasy.

And my fantasy world was Lord of the Rings. As I've grown it's turned into Marvel comics, and if by some miracle X-23 comes into my life and offers to pull me through the multiverse to a place where Hope touches me and I turn into a mutant, god knows I'll do it. Though Reed Richards popping up is far more likely...
 

RedEyesBlackGamer

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I have a "fantasy-prone personality" (Experts are torn on whether it actually exists) so I practice day dreaming and escapism for hours every day. I role play in my head being the MC in Persona 4, being a character in The Wheel of Time series, taking the role of Shinjiro in SW: So Long, My love, etc. So that feeling will never leave me. :)
[sub]Yes, I know that is very weird.[/sub]
 

Chefodeath

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RedEyesBlackGamer said:
I have a "fantasy-prone personality" (Experts are torn on whether it actually exists) so I practice day dreaming and escapism for hours every day. I role play in my head being the MC in Persona 4, being a character in The Wheel of Time series, taking the role of Shinjiro in SW: So Long, My love, etc. So that feeling will never leave me. :)
[sub]Yes, I know that is very weird.[/sub]
Wheel of Time eh? I've actually just finished book eight myself. I'd like to say I'm not a fan, but how much of a "not fan" can you be when you've already gotten through eight of the books?
 

StBishop

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I've made it a habit to re-read them every year since I got them for christmas when I was 9.

And yes, I'm hoping that they simply sent my letter to the wrong kid and I'll be accepted to Hogwarts as a senior aged student.

Side note. My sister hates me because I "Ruined the Harry Potter movies" for her because right before each one comes out I give her spoilers as punishment for never reading the books (Yes I know it's horrible.)
 

RedEyesBlackGamer

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Jan 23, 2011
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Chefodeath said:
RedEyesBlackGamer said:
I have a "fantasy-prone personality" (Experts are torn on whether it actually exists) so I practice day dreaming and escapism for hours every day. I role play in my head being the MC in Persona 4, being a character in The Wheel of Time series, taking the role of Shinjiro in SW: So Long, My love, etc. So that feeling will never leave me. :)
[sub]Yes, I know that is very weird.[/sub]
Wheel of Time eh? I've actually just finished book eight myself. I'd like to say I'm not a fan, but how much of a "not fan" can you be when you've already gotten through eight of the books?
I love the series for the same reasons people tend to hate it for. Political intrigue, numerous subplots, and a slow overarching story that slowly ties together. Is eight the one that Perrin spends the entirety of whining? I hated that one. I loved the rest, though. My favorite book series.
I've read the HP books multiple times and enjoyed them well enough. I hated the plot device of Love, though. I'll stop now. I don't want to derail your thread.
 

Chefodeath

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RedEyesBlackGamer said:
Chefodeath said:
RedEyesBlackGamer said:
I have a "fantasy-prone personality" (Experts are torn on whether it actually exists) so I practice day dreaming and escapism for hours every day. I role play in my head being the MC in Persona 4, being a character in The Wheel of Time series, taking the role of Shinjiro in SW: So Long, My love, etc. So that feeling will never leave me. :)
[sub]Yes, I know that is very weird.[/sub]
Wheel of Time eh? I've actually just finished book eight myself. I'd like to say I'm not a fan, but how much of a "not fan" can you be when you've already gotten through eight of the books?
I love the series for the same reasons people tend to hate it for. Political intrigue, numerous subplots, and a slow overarching story that slowly ties together. Is eight the one that Perrin spends the entirety of whining? I hated that one. I loved the rest, though. My favorite book series.
I've read the HP books multiple times and enjoyed them well enough. I hated the plot device of Love, though. I'll stop now. I don't want to derail your thread.
Yes, thats 8. Its too bad because if you cut out Perrin's bit, butchered down Egwene's, and just expanded on the bit with Rand it would have been great. I mean, I love how in the earlier stories, Robert Jordan would use multiple view points to tell THE SAME story, exploring the nuanced bits, but a little bit in 7, and now really in 8, he's using multiple view points to tell MULTIPLE stories, stories that I quite frankly find boring.

Hoping this trend starts to discontinue in the next book.
 

Anarchemitis

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Lego will return to the simple goodness when it was run by Ole Kirk Christiansen
Calvin & Hobbes will return to glory as Bill Watterson comes out of retirement
The disembodied spirits of The Nine Old Men [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%27s_Nine_Old_Men] return to haunt the executive Creative Board of Disney, bringing about the second Animation Renaissance
To Kill a Mockingbird is restored in color
The Obama Administration uncancels and restarts Project Constellation, putting NASA back on track to land a man on the moon in 2020
 

RedEyesBlackGamer

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Chefodeath said:
RedEyesBlackGamer said:
Chefodeath said:
RedEyesBlackGamer said:
I have a "fantasy-prone personality" (Experts are torn on whether it actually exists) so I practice day dreaming and escapism for hours every day. I role play in my head being the MC in Persona 4, being a character in The Wheel of Time series, taking the role of Shinjiro in SW: So Long, My love, etc. So that feeling will never leave me. :)
[sub]Yes, I know that is very weird.[/sub]
Wheel of Time eh? I've actually just finished book eight myself. I'd like to say I'm not a fan, but how much of a "not fan" can you be when you've already gotten through eight of the books?
I love the series for the same reasons people tend to hate it for. Political intrigue, numerous subplots, and a slow overarching story that slowly ties together. Is eight the one that Perrin spends the entirety of whining? I hated that one. I loved the rest, though. My favorite book series.
I've read the HP books multiple times and enjoyed them well enough. I hated the plot device of Love, though. I'll stop now. I don't want to derail your thread.
Yes, thats 8. Its too bad because if you cut out Perrin's bit, butchered down Egwene's, and just expanded on the bit with Rand it would have been great. I mean, I love how in the earlier stories, Robert Jordan would use multiple view points to tell THE SAME story, exploring the nuanced bits, but a little bit in 7, and now really in 8, he's using multiple view points to tell MULTIPLE stories, stories that I quite frankly find boring.

Hoping this trend starts to discontinue in the next book.
In my opinion, nothing tops the first 4. Sanderson has done a....ok job in Jordan's absence.
 

Nouw

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One day the Covenant will rain from the skies and I will turn into a Spartan.

One can wish...
 

sage42

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I know what you mean my friend, Hell I've recently wished for the freak thunderstorm to suck me and my girlfrined into a Biowear game, more specificly Dragon Age. Yes I know it will never happen, Yes I know it can't happen but I still want it. And In the far back of my mind I'm still waiting on platform 9 and 3/4.
 

IamQ

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The only fantasy I have right now is a Zombie Apocalypse. I never actually had any strong fantasies as a child. Sure, I had alot of fantasies, but I never believed in them that much. It only begun around 1 year ago.
 

Scarim Coral

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Any day now someone will have REAL superpowers as in flying without wings or having inhuman strength. With the first superhero announce to the world then many more will join in.
 

MartianWarMachine

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Dec 10, 2010
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I'm waiting for the day that a cyborg version of me to travel back in time and tell me that the world is doomed, or something.
 

The Funslinger

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Sep 12, 2010
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I'm a bit of a dreamer. I do always have a little bit going through my head when I get into something about "ooh, this would be awesome..." Something that never left me as a kid. Ah well, provided you can keep your life separate from it, escapism is a wonderful coping mechanism. Except the damn crash back to reality, but still...