A thank you to The Voice Australia (RT) @TheVoiceAU

So tonight the first season of The Voice Australia comes to a close and then the excitement of Monday nights shall disappear until Season 2 comes around. In a very short space of time this show has changed the lives of not only the contestants involved but the audience who have witnessed this show play out. People have allowed themselves to open up to new artists, different styles of music and make many realise that there are thousands of talented people out there waiting for that step up into the spotlight. Not only that but this show has sent the Australian charts into meltdown, right at this very minute the top 9 spots on the ITunes top 10 are filled with the final 4 contestants songs that they performed last night and the Aria chart now has songs by many from the show scattered through its lists. And despite the fact only one will officially be crowned the winner tonight I think most of those who have appeared on the show shall have very long & happy careers.

So I say thank you to this show for not only giving me some wonderful & an amazing people to listen to on a daily basis but for allowing me to make a heap of new friends. The power of this show to connect people over social media has been simply outstanding and reiterates a post on here I made last month, which online friends are just as real as those you make in real life. It’s just in this case much easier to connect because you can relate to things much more quickly. This show has also helped repair lives, allowed people to heal all through the power of music and I hope it shall continue to do so for many more seasons to come.
So finally congratulations to not only the four finalists but to everyone who has appeared on this show and to the coaches. Australia loves you and is forever thankful you graced our screens and I think it’s safe to say we are all looking forward to supporting each and every one of you for a long time to come.

The Post i had to write (Please RT & READ)

This is a post I never expected to write, mainly because I am the type of person who keeps a lot of my problems in and just puts on a brave face. But tonight you could say I have been inspired to just put it all out there and finally open up a bit more.
I’ve never had what you would call a perfect life, I have had issues, I’ve never been popular, I’ve never been someone a guy would go out of their way to meet or ask out & if they did it would simply be a joke to use as fun later on. The older I have got the more I have closed myself off from people and I have simply just gone through the motions of life.
I have been bullied so badly over the years that there were times I just never wanted to leave my room and my nature to put others before myself got used so badly I was at one point doing other peoples homework or helping others just so I could be talked too. I’ll admit looking back at it now I was a silly naive girl but it was either this or nothing and I am not someone who deals well with having no-one.
A few people knew that 2008 was a year id rather forget but it was worse than that over the course of 12 months everything went wrong to the point where by the end where I tried to commit suicide. It was only an accident where Delta’s album fell on my head which stopped me, I spent most of the night listening to Mistaken Identify and I credit Delta as one of the people who saved my life. Delta slowly helped drag me out of the hell that 2008 had become and gave me a small ray of hope. Fast forward to the 16^th June 2012 and here I sit on my bed on a cold and rainy evening typing this trying to stop myself stressing over my Tafe course. There are good days now and then there are bad days but I try my best not to let myself slip to where I have been. What I do to stop myself is use my music and in the last few months 3 new artists have been added to a small list which keeps me from making any mistakes. Danni Da Ros, Glenn Cunningham & Rachael Leahcar all from The Voice have voices that can evoke the soul & Rachael in particular has brought me to tears on more than one occasion. Less than a month ago my mind was swirling and I cracked, causing me to feel as bad as I did in 2008 but I used all 3 I mentioned earlier to give me a kind of inner peace & now I listen to them daily.
People may have their opinions when I read this saying I possibly need help, but I’ve already had plenty. Music is my drug now and that keeps me sane, it inspires me and Delta, Glenn, Danni & Rachael have been a big part of that & I can never thank them enough.

Fandom Wars are Pointless

Sometimes you overhear the most random things when you are travelling on public transport. Two high school girls, no more than 16 got on the bus and sat in front of me. I wasn’t intending to listen but their conversation; well actually they were having a debate. But the fact was it was so loud I couldn’t help myself. Their debate was and probably is one of the biggest problems for anyone who loves their TV and that is fandom wars.
For anyone who doesn’t frequent the internet a great deal or simply avoids social media, a fandom war is where people on two sides fight for the TV show/book/movie etc, they love. In some cases it’s simply to prove their show is better than another or in another case where one group of people will be little another because they believe the rival show is a copy. Sadly for people like myself when you love more than one show it can be hard to take one side or another.  So instead you stand on the sidelines watching as friends become enemies and internet and social media forums destroy each other. Both these girls though were making valid points, one could see a value in debating differences and similarities in shows while the other could not see a point at all, and I tend to agree. Too many times over the last 5 years have I seen a show fans attack another when they see one minor plot similarity and claim it as their own. Too many times have I lost friends when they try to drag me onto one side of the fight or another and too many times have I just sat back and shook my head simply asking why?
What I have noticed is that the attacks have become a lot more personal in recent times, and no clearer example of this is during the Bones vs. Castle fandom war.
Now before I go any further I am not saying all Bones fans are bad, far from it. But there is a small minority who are giving the rest a bad name. This war has bothered me from the start, I’ve always liked Bones, I used to religiously follow the show for 5yrs until the show fell off the wagon a bit with the infamous dream sequence sex scene (could have been earlier but my memory is hazy). I still watch the occasional ep now & I still love many of the cast members but the show is not the same for me. So by default I have found myself on the Castle side of this war and have copped a lot of flak from people because of it.  But this is my thoughts on it, I cannot see how these two shows are similar, even my mother who watches both shows can’t see the similarity. The only thing that is similar is the chemistry between the two leads, nothing more. My mother last night gave me a different view point, she said Castle was more similar to The Mentalist and I can see that more than Bones.
The bus debate ended when one of the girls got frustrated & ended up getting off at her stop clearly disappointed that the other girl had not relented in her opinion at all. And that’s the thing about these wars, they frustrate, they annoy and in the end will make it impossible for people to remain friends. But like anything they are a by-product of the internet & TV and probably will never stop but sadly increase.  

Online Friends are just as "Real" as any friends

It’s funny, you have these random conversations online and the old topic comes up again, how can people you meet online be considered real friends? The amount of times I have been asked that by people I knew at University is incredible; I even copped a fair bit saying I had no social life when in fact I consider it the opposite. I will admit when I first went to University back in 2007 I didn’t go much online or frequent social media, I did sign up for Facebook but didn’t use it much.
It wasn’t until early 2010 when I was having problems in my real life that I started to frequent the social media space more often, I joined Twitter and in a very short space of time found people who wanted to get to know me. And that’s when fandom came along, when people started learning I was a fan of the TV show Castle and that I was big into sci-fi shows such as Stargate I started to find somewhere I could belong.
These shows caused a chain reaction of sorts because through one person I met another & another and another. I have now spoken to so many people from the four corners of the globe and we are all connected by our love of similar things. And as time has gone on some of these people I now consider more important to me than anyone I have ever met in real life because they genuinely care.  You’re probably sitting there reading this thinking I am completely mad, that these friends I am so willing to defend are probably nothing more than creepy middle age men in some random country. And of course there are plenty of those freaks out there who are willing to woo children to an early grave but not always. At last count I had about 730 people following me on Twitter and from those 730 I have met a good 20 of them, ok that isn’t much but it’s enough of an indication that there are real genuine people out there, it just happens to be they live too far for you to see them all the time.
Take my friend Tasha as an example, I started speaking to her online mid 2010 but it wasn’t until early 2011 that I finally got to meet her. It happened to be that Adelaide was holding a convention and she was able to fly over. It’s been over a year since I have seen her in person but thanks to sites like Twitter, Facebook etc I speak to her nearly every day. But that memory of saying goodbye to her at the airport really sticks out in my mind, even now.
And that’s the other thing I am thankful for, going to conventions started thanks to speaking to people online. I went to my first convention in late 2010, and I have gone to another 4 since then & another is in the works for next month. I now have friends who I consider part of a giant extended family all because it started online. People outside of the social media space don’t understand the fuss; even after you explain all the good points to them it doesn’t seem to change their mind. Even people now give me an odd look when I say I met my best friend online, even though it’s true. I met my best friend Michelle online through our mutual love for the TV show Sanctuary & our respect for actress Amanda Tapping. After we met in person in January 2011 we have virtually been inseparable ever since. The highlight was when we both got to speak to Amanda together thanking her for what she inevitably did.
 I don’t bother explaining myself anymore when the question gets posed to me about online friends being not real. I just simply say “They are” and move onto another topic because they never will understand because this isn’t their world.