Unpopular Opinions

I had another fun signing last night. People came to see me! We hooked a new victim -- er, reader! There was cake! Oddly, though, I'm utterly exhausted this morning, like I did some great physical labor. Some of that may be cake hangover, though, as I skipped dinner and instead ate two pieces of cake. I'm now pretty much done with the "author" phase of my life, until convention season kicks off in June. Normally, I find it hard to write when I'm in promo mode, but this time, I've had trouble with promo mode because my brain is frantically trying to generate a new book.

As we were discussing somewhat last night at the signing, I often feel that I'm out of step with the mainstream of society. I guess that's another thing I have in common with Katie in my books. In the first book, when she notices that she's the only one who isn't swooning over Rod, her whole mental riff on things that are popular that she doesn't get is pretty much me. So, I thought I'd share other unpopular opinions I seem to hold. Mind you, I'm not saying any of these are bad things or that other people should agree with me, just that these are things I think and sometimes feel like an oddball about.

In no particular order:
1) I really am not interested in the mating habits or love lives of vampires. I don't find vampires sexy or romantic, and I have no sympathy for the vampire/human relationship angst of wanting to be together, but not being able to because of the vampire thing. Actually, I don't much get into any of the doomed/forbidden love type stories (perhaps because I'm too practical. If the odds against us look insurmountable, I'll go find someone I can be with without the angst). But looking at the urban fantasy bestsellers, it would appear that I'm one of the few people who isn't into vampires. The really annoying thing is that most of the lighter urban fantasy type books, the ones with a tone similar to mine, seem to be vampire books, and I'm not any more interested in vampires when they're shopping for shoes or having difficulty dating, even without the angst. I'm mostly interested in vampires as stake fodder, and even there, Buffy may have maxed out my vampire tolerance levels. We need more funny wizard type people.
2) I'm not at all excited about the X-Files movie coming out this summer. I loved the series when it was on. I was obsessed with the series when it was on. But the final episode gave me closure, and I'm not interested in revisiting these characters. Ditto the Sex and the City movie, though I wasn't a really huge fan of the TV series. I watched it more out of a sense of duty because all the editors at the time were saying that's the tone they wanted to see in books.
3) I don't get why people would want to buy clothing "designed" by someone whose job has nothing to do with designing anything. Like, why would I want shoes bearing the name of a singer mostly known for being on a reality TV series? Why would I want to wear perfume "designed" by any of the pop tarts? But this stuff really seems to sell.
4) I don't get the designer-logo thing at all. Why would I pay a fortune to become a walking billboard for any designer by carrying or wearing something with the logo all over it? If it's true designer quality, it should speak for itself without having little "LV"s all over it. I also don't understand why anyone would pay more than a thousand dollars for a purse. There are purses that are more expensive than my car. That makes zero sense to me, and yet there are waiting lists to get these purses.
5) The degree of obsession related to all the Disney Channel-spawned musical things is frightening. Is there subliminal mind control involved? How do kids suddenly get the message that they must worship Hannah Montana? Space rays? At the target age for that stuff, I was obsessed with Star Wars, but that amounted to having a t-shirt, reading the novelization a few hundred times and cutting any related pictures out of magazines. I did expect my parents to take me to the movies when they came out (my parents wanted to see them, too), but if that had been as crazy as what it takes to see these Disney people in concert, I can't imagine I would have expected that. (Though I guess this opinion is only unpopular among tween girls.)
6) I usually don't much care if a particular couple gets together on a TV series. I'm more likely to be opposed to them getting together than eagerly awaiting it, but in general, I just go with what they show us. It's all about story for me, and if the relationship takes over, I generally get bored. Romance has ruined far too many TV series.
7) On that note, I was very annoyed that they went there with Mulder and Scully. I remember when Chris Carter said in the first season that they would never get romantically involved. But then they did go there, and didn't do it very well. I felt like the last holdout, though, because everyone else seemed to be swooning in rapture that they were in love and were calling each other by their first names in their sappy love-letter mystery e-mails. Ick. I also never thought that Rose and the Doctor had any kind of great romance going on in Doctor Who. If I was supposed to think that she was the love of his life, he was doing something wrong, or else he's pretty tepid about the love of his life. (I got more of the romantic interest vibe from the Ninth Doctor. The Tenth was too easily distracted by every other woman who came along, and his concern for Rose seemed to be more along the lines of "Her mother will kill me -- as many times as it takes -- if I let something happen to her.")
(Yes, I used to write romance novels. I was obviously in the wrong career field because I am so unromantic.)
8) I loved the epilogue to the last Harry Potter book. Yeah, it was a little sappy, but it was satisfying. Harry's kids are so going to get beat up and picked on at school, though, with the names he gave them (I don't think that part is an unpopular opinion, but liking the epilogue seems to be).
9) I don't find most of the mainstream "heartthrob" guys all that appealing -- men like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Tom Cruise (and I disliked him long before it was cool to), etc. (However, I do seem to be more in the mainstream for the geekier heartthrobs in geek circles.)

Anyone else want to get something off your chest, something that makes you feel like an oddball? This is a safe place for unburdening yourself. You may find that you're not alone!