Happy Friday the 13th? Creepy Friday the 13th? Well, whatever. It’s been a great day. My teacher advised the class to watch a film version of Hamlet over the holidays and told us what each version focuses on so we could choose the angle which we were most interested in (everyone was creeped out when she mentioned the incestuous angle that the Mel Gibson version takes), so I of course chose the one which focuses on paranoia...and has David Tennant in it. He was amazing. He played the madness to hilarious perfection. I especially love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXiykFI5uJM. There is no question as to what I’ll be thinking about when we reach this point in the play. He was brilliant and, nerd that I am, I added it to Mum as a birthday present suggestion. I can’t wait for my friend’s reaction when her mum tells her that the suggestion was the movie version of a text that we are studying this term. We discussed watching a movie tonight; Dad wanted something violent and mentioned Texas Chainsaw Massacre, while I thought that Ghostbusters would be appropriate, but Mum and I decided upon The Green Mile while Dad is watching a Knights game. I've never seen it before so it's interesting but really worrying because, as they're on death row...chances are that most of them will die.
About a week ago, after I’d finished my midcourse exams for the day, I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine about heaven. I’m a Christian (obviously) and he was raised in a Christian household, though I’m not sure whether or not he is one too. He asked me whether or not I regularly went to church before moving onto the subject of heaven. He had a different conception of heaven than I do but the points he raised were interesting. It was awkward, though, as I had suspected for a while that he was not actually a Christian, and it’s often awkward talking about one’s beliefs with someone with different beliefs, especially as a lot of my peers don’t think highly of Christianity so I want to make sure that I say the right words as an advocate for my beliefs rather than merely the first, sometimes uneducated, response that comes to mind; I often then miss the chance.
Firstly, what happened if you wanted to see someone and they didn’t want to see you? He wondered whether there was a clone or image or something of that person while that person was with the people with whom he or she wanted to be; if so, how would you know whether or not the person that you were seeing was real? I didn’t think of this point until later – honestly, we hadn’t talked much for a while and I was surprised by what he was saying – but there will be no grudges in heaven, so while there might be people you would rather see there would be no one that you specifically don’t want to see, and when you have infinity I don’t think that you’d mind spending an hour or so with someone if you were obviously close enough for them to want to see you. Unless you had only tolerated them on Earth, you had some bond with them.
Secondly, furthering the point of how you know that what you are seeing isn’t just what you want to see, he asked what would happen if you wanted to see someone, well, naked, but hadn’t before death; how would you know whether it’s what they really look like or how you want them to look? He used a particular actress as an example. Again, I had no reply; this time because I was beginning to believe we had a different view on what heaven entails and that his is pretty much just our lives now, except with God, without the worries and pain that comes with life, and where you can have whatever you want (such as seeing someone naked when she doesn’t want you to, so it’s just a replication of that person so she never experiences it and so gets what she wants while you do and so get what you want). I think. I may have misinterpreted it.
Finally, he questioned what would happen if your spouse died when you were young and you remarried later in life, and then when you went to heaven you were reunited. Who is your spouse? It was death that parted the first couple, so the second remarriage is recognised before and by God; therefore both marriages are recognised before God. However, the New Testament instructs us to be monogamous. I haven’t studied the appropriate areas of the Bible so most of my assumptions are based off Tim LaHaye’s theology in the Left Behind series. However, while sex occurs during the Millennium, I don’t believe that it does in heaven. I, um, may have voice this opinion and told him that sex may not exist in heaven. He was definitely opposed to that idea; he pretty much told me that I didn’t know what I was saying. I dropped the issue but still hold the belief that sex probably doesn’t occur in heaven. It might. However, I doubt that it would be a priority. It’s not as if sex is the most important thing in the world now; many people place higher value on other things, which is evidenced by the number of nuns and monks in past and present societies, and also there are asexual people who either derive no pleasure from sex or are repulsed by it. Surely that would be further compounded by the fact that, as you are now in permanent existence with God, there’s an additional way with which to spend your time.
Okay, just started loving the movie. They just realised that the storeroom would be a very good place to confine an annoying prisoner whenever he gets annoying; always wearing a straightjacket, of course. Oh, and the mouse is adorable.
Omgoodness. THE MOUSE. !!!!!!!!!! First tear; that was beautiful.
That guy has an annoying accent. "You're harassing me" became "You're harissing me." The others have nice accents though.
And that was horrible. I'm so glad that Mum warned me to look away, but I still feel slightly sick and you can definitely tell that it is a Stephen King movie.
13 April 2012
10 April 2012
The Twilight Saga
Apparently this series is going to crop up as examples, which most of the time will be critical of the series, so I should probably set the record straight as to my opinion on it.
When I first read it, I loved it. I still appreciate it. Stephenie Meyer is a good storyteller. The Twilight Saga was addictive and easy to read and I completely understand how so many people love it. I love The Host (I already wrote a post about attraction triangles today; I liked the attraction triangle in The Host as it was completely plausible given that world, unlike most young adult attraction triangles, and the protagonist’s inability to decide made perfect sense in her situation). I like some characters, especially Emmett and Angela.
However, I didn’t like the plot. Especially, like many people have been saying, Edward and Bella’s relationship. He is controlling and some of his behaviours, such as watching her sleep without her knowledge and climbing through her window, are stalkerish. Being bruised (the scene in Breaking Dawn, if you’ve read/watched/otherwise heard about it) isn’t a matter to just accept. Ripping out some part of her car (can’t remember what part it was) isn’t just overprotectiveness; it is vandalism. While I hate when characters die…in certain scenarios it’s inevitable. It should have happened. The constant physical description of Edward and Jacob is irritating. In my experience, most teenagers don’t fixate on a person’s appearance almost EVERY time they see them; we do tend to notice other things too. Such as personality for those who have one; which everyone does.
So I guess I have a mixed opinion on it. It was fun to read, interesting, addicting, compelling. However, it wasn’t the best literarily and some themes were just wrong.
I just rewatched John Green’s review of Twilight and New Moon. It can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkoBoF9FDXg. It is hilarious and contains a brief explanation of Twilight and, in typical vlogbrother fashion, is very funny. I disagree with his comment about the idealisation of people. It is true that such idealisations will occur in fiction, probably especially in young adult fiction. Putting aside any debate about whether these idealisations should be present so as to present a more realistic view of average teenage perceptions or whether authors should avoid them so as to create a more realistic view of the actual world, there is a difference between the narrator/persona idealising romantic interests and the author idealising them. In the first case, while the character might describe his or her physical appearance in depth and believe that he/she is perfect, other characters would notice their flaws. In the second case, there are no flaws; the character him- or herself is idealised. However, the video states similar thoughts to those above in a different, more interesting way, and presents some different opinions.
When I first read it, I loved it. I still appreciate it. Stephenie Meyer is a good storyteller. The Twilight Saga was addictive and easy to read and I completely understand how so many people love it. I love The Host (I already wrote a post about attraction triangles today; I liked the attraction triangle in The Host as it was completely plausible given that world, unlike most young adult attraction triangles, and the protagonist’s inability to decide made perfect sense in her situation). I like some characters, especially Emmett and Angela.
However, I didn’t like the plot. Especially, like many people have been saying, Edward and Bella’s relationship. He is controlling and some of his behaviours, such as watching her sleep without her knowledge and climbing through her window, are stalkerish. Being bruised (the scene in Breaking Dawn, if you’ve read/watched/otherwise heard about it) isn’t a matter to just accept. Ripping out some part of her car (can’t remember what part it was) isn’t just overprotectiveness; it is vandalism. While I hate when characters die…in certain scenarios it’s inevitable. It should have happened. The constant physical description of Edward and Jacob is irritating. In my experience, most teenagers don’t fixate on a person’s appearance almost EVERY time they see them; we do tend to notice other things too. Such as personality for those who have one; which everyone does.
So I guess I have a mixed opinion on it. It was fun to read, interesting, addicting, compelling. However, it wasn’t the best literarily and some themes were just wrong.
I just rewatched John Green’s review of Twilight and New Moon. It can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkoBoF9FDXg. It is hilarious and contains a brief explanation of Twilight and, in typical vlogbrother fashion, is very funny. I disagree with his comment about the idealisation of people. It is true that such idealisations will occur in fiction, probably especially in young adult fiction. Putting aside any debate about whether these idealisations should be present so as to present a more realistic view of average teenage perceptions or whether authors should avoid them so as to create a more realistic view of the actual world, there is a difference between the narrator/persona idealising romantic interests and the author idealising them. In the first case, while the character might describe his or her physical appearance in depth and believe that he/she is perfect, other characters would notice their flaws. In the second case, there are no flaws; the character him- or herself is idealised. However, the video states similar thoughts to those above in a different, more interesting way, and presents some different opinions.
On Gender Inequality in YA Fiction
Warning: there will be slight spoilers on love triangles in The Hunger Games and Twilight near the end of this post.
EDIT: I'm changing the names of different things around so a person scanning this will hopefully be able to avoid spoilers, but they're still here. So, yeah, consider yourself warned.
I am female. I believe that everyone was made equal and should be treated as such. I hate when guys (not all guys do this, obviously, but some do) objectify or otherwise disrespect women. However, I also hate when women act as if, because our sex has been oppressed in the past, we can do whatever we like as any criticism of our actions is supposedly sexist. (Same as when people of other religions seem to think that they can insult Christianity and Islam (because it is supposedly a terrorist religion; a topic for another day), often without justifying their insults, due to past misdeeds or to misconceptions. (Again, a rant – I mean discussion topic – for another day.)
I guess I’m not a feminist; I’m an ‘equalist’.
I was on The Hunger Games discussion board on the Nerdfighter Ning and revisited the idea of love triangles in young adult fiction. The concept of a love triangle isn’t horrible; it’s overused and I generally dislike them unless they’re done well, but it’s not inherently bad. It depends on how it’s handled. However, there is discrepancy. I don’t read much young adult fiction, but the love triangle idea seems to be cropping up a fair bit, and it’s pretty much always a girl choosing between two guys who generally, outside of that fictional world, wouldn’t be that obsessed with her.* I don’t like it; it’s trite, it’s overdone, it doesn’t even make that much sense most of the time. Why do they like the girl so much? She often constantly picks fault with herself, failing to see her inner (or often outer) beauty while everyone else does and always reassures her that she is in fact beautiful, despite her perpetual protests. EDIT: Or am I mixing up the overused YA heroines? Sorry, but both love triangles and "I'm a horrible human being"/"No you're not, you're the only one who thinks that way" are overused and so merging into one big cliché.
Back to the point. I could ramble for ages about how much I don’t like love triangles (which are inaptly named; most times it isn’t about love. It should be attraction triangles or romance triangles or something).
My point is that few people seem to complain when the girl is debating between which perfect guy she wants to be with, a debate that usually takes more than one novel, but if the roles were reversed people would be irate that the guy was stringing along two girls like that. For example, if Kyle was choosing between Gayle and Petra, especially if he kissed Gayle under the circumstances in Mockjara… Well, people would either call Petra and/or Gayle desperate or would hate Kyle (unless they were cheering Kyle on and saying he should, ahem, ‘date’ both at once). If a guy called Ben kept calling himself plain and supposedly fell in love with a girl named Emma, became emotionally attached to girl named Jessie when she left, then when Emma returned was with officially with one of them but seeing the other despite Emma not trusting Jessie, most female readers would say that he should respect her wishes and would assume that Jessie would be villified in the future as the 'other woman'. Yet, when the girl is finding it hard to choose between two guys, female readers generally think that it’s romantic and insult any male readers who protest against it. Why is it acceptable for us to be self-centred and take time to make up our mind due to being 'independent young women' but if a guy is doing the same it's wrong as they're hurting our delicate feelings?
Why is there this double standard? Why can fictionalised females get away with having two hot, ‘perfect’ guys flirting with them, generally kissing one while romantically attached to the other, when if a fictionalised male was dating a hot, ‘perfect’ girl while interested in and at one point kissing another hot, ‘perfect’ girl, either he would be seen as a cheater or the latter girl would be seen as desperate. Why aren’t young adult women ever really called up for kissing another guy? It’s as if the YA fiction boys just love us YA girls so much that we can do anything…but we can still treat them in the way that they should really be treating us if the roles were reversed. If you kiss someone else, you cheated, and whether or not the person forgives you there will at least be a trust issue or other consequences. Our YA miniatures need to face these consequences rather than suggesting that we can do whatever we want without considering how it affects the people around us.
EDIT: There are some girl-guy-girl love triangles which seem drawn out but people accept, such as in the Archie comics. Due to the different medium, I think this works better as the idea is that these characters are caught in a moment of time (sort of) and so encounter different events and experience hiccups in their relationships but generally there are no big changes. Archie will always be caught between Betty and Veronica and neither girl will ever make him choose between them definitely as then the rest of the comcis will be confined to that one path and the general friendliness within the comics will be affected due to tension between Archie and the unchosen girl, the chosen girls, and everyone else that it affects in Riverdale. It's also slightly different as Betty, Ronnie, Archie, Reggie and even to an extent Midge all flirt with different people and go on random dates. I want them to pair off and stick with their boy- or girlfriend, but it's not likely to happen as that's just Riverdale for you. This isn't really a great example as I believe one of the main reasons that people accept this continued love triangle is that the comics are in a way based around it, but it's still one of the few examples of a girl-guy-girl love triangle that I have encountered in which one of the girls isn't the heroine and the other isn't a bitch.
EDIT: Note - I know that there are many people who call female characters out as being self-centred when they do this. I'm mostly complaining about the fact that many YA books seek to perpetuate this trend. Love triangles are, like other things, useful tools that can be used to wonderful effect. Some of my favourite books have love triangles in them. In Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, the whole plot is affected by the love triangle, which has a metaphorically tangible effect on the story. They can help develop a story or add tension. However, so many authors are using them nowadays that it's cheapened the idea. I guess what I'm calling for is for authors to consider the plot from different angles and ensure that they're not just writing down their fantasies, but to develop and maintain a believable situation. If the guy has a girlfriend but is falling for the heroine, don't make the girlfriend a bitch; there's a reason he liked her in the first place, and chances are that aliens haven't taken over her brain and made her a different person than the girl that he originally liked. Another of my favourite books has this scenario. Characters comment on how the girl has changed in the past year. The author presents a legitimate reason for the guy's hesitancy to leave her so I feel that it doesn't take away from the story too much, but I would still have preferred to see some more redeeming qualities in her. If the main male character is so great and if the main female character falls into his 'type', chances are that his girlfriend is at least a halfway decent human being.
Sorry for rambling.
* SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER (KIND OF, BUT THE MORE TIMES I SAY ‘SPOILER’ THE MORE LIKELY THAT SOMEONE WON’T ACCIDENTALLY GLANCE DOWN HERE AND SEE A SPOILER. SO, SPOILER S-SP-SPO-SPOI-SPOIL-SPOILE-SPOILER). In The Hunger Games, I think that it’s done okay as a lot of the time only one guy is on the scene and there’s so much going on that it makes sense that she doesn’t have time to sit down and work it out. Also, the two guys recognise that she is flawed. Like Haymitch said, Katniss could live a thousand lifetimes and never be good enough for ______ (I’m not going to say who to decrease spoilers). I found that one of them was idealised but, as a girl who does appreciate that sort of thing, enjoyed it and believed that he was the right match for Katniss. So in my opinion, one of them had a realistic attraction to her and the other’s love was more romantic and idealised but he was perfect for her.
EDIT: I'm changing the names of different things around so a person scanning this will hopefully be able to avoid spoilers, but they're still here. So, yeah, consider yourself warned.
I am female. I believe that everyone was made equal and should be treated as such. I hate when guys (not all guys do this, obviously, but some do) objectify or otherwise disrespect women. However, I also hate when women act as if, because our sex has been oppressed in the past, we can do whatever we like as any criticism of our actions is supposedly sexist. (Same as when people of other religions seem to think that they can insult Christianity and Islam (because it is supposedly a terrorist religion; a topic for another day), often without justifying their insults, due to past misdeeds or to misconceptions. (Again, a rant – I mean discussion topic – for another day.)
I guess I’m not a feminist; I’m an ‘equalist’.
I was on The Hunger Games discussion board on the Nerdfighter Ning and revisited the idea of love triangles in young adult fiction. The concept of a love triangle isn’t horrible; it’s overused and I generally dislike them unless they’re done well, but it’s not inherently bad. It depends on how it’s handled. However, there is discrepancy. I don’t read much young adult fiction, but the love triangle idea seems to be cropping up a fair bit, and it’s pretty much always a girl choosing between two guys who generally, outside of that fictional world, wouldn’t be that obsessed with her.* I don’t like it; it’s trite, it’s overdone, it doesn’t even make that much sense most of the time. Why do they like the girl so much? She often constantly picks fault with herself, failing to see her inner (or often outer) beauty while everyone else does and always reassures her that she is in fact beautiful, despite her perpetual protests. EDIT: Or am I mixing up the overused YA heroines? Sorry, but both love triangles and "I'm a horrible human being"/"No you're not, you're the only one who thinks that way" are overused and so merging into one big cliché.
Back to the point. I could ramble for ages about how much I don’t like love triangles (which are inaptly named; most times it isn’t about love. It should be attraction triangles or romance triangles or something).
My point is that few people seem to complain when the girl is debating between which perfect guy she wants to be with, a debate that usually takes more than one novel, but if the roles were reversed people would be irate that the guy was stringing along two girls like that. For example, if Kyle was choosing between Gayle and Petra, especially if he kissed Gayle under the circumstances in Mockjara… Well, people would either call Petra and/or Gayle desperate or would hate Kyle (unless they were cheering Kyle on and saying he should, ahem, ‘date’ both at once). If a guy called Ben kept calling himself plain and supposedly fell in love with a girl named Emma, became emotionally attached to girl named Jessie when she left, then when Emma returned was with officially with one of them but seeing the other despite Emma not trusting Jessie, most female readers would say that he should respect her wishes and would assume that Jessie would be villified in the future as the 'other woman'. Yet, when the girl is finding it hard to choose between two guys, female readers generally think that it’s romantic and insult any male readers who protest against it. Why is it acceptable for us to be self-centred and take time to make up our mind due to being 'independent young women' but if a guy is doing the same it's wrong as they're hurting our delicate feelings?
Why is there this double standard? Why can fictionalised females get away with having two hot, ‘perfect’ guys flirting with them, generally kissing one while romantically attached to the other, when if a fictionalised male was dating a hot, ‘perfect’ girl while interested in and at one point kissing another hot, ‘perfect’ girl, either he would be seen as a cheater or the latter girl would be seen as desperate. Why aren’t young adult women ever really called up for kissing another guy? It’s as if the YA fiction boys just love us YA girls so much that we can do anything…but we can still treat them in the way that they should really be treating us if the roles were reversed. If you kiss someone else, you cheated, and whether or not the person forgives you there will at least be a trust issue or other consequences. Our YA miniatures need to face these consequences rather than suggesting that we can do whatever we want without considering how it affects the people around us.
EDIT: There are some girl-guy-girl love triangles which seem drawn out but people accept, such as in the Archie comics. Due to the different medium, I think this works better as the idea is that these characters are caught in a moment of time (sort of) and so encounter different events and experience hiccups in their relationships but generally there are no big changes. Archie will always be caught between Betty and Veronica and neither girl will ever make him choose between them definitely as then the rest of the comcis will be confined to that one path and the general friendliness within the comics will be affected due to tension between Archie and the unchosen girl, the chosen girls, and everyone else that it affects in Riverdale. It's also slightly different as Betty, Ronnie, Archie, Reggie and even to an extent Midge all flirt with different people and go on random dates. I want them to pair off and stick with their boy- or girlfriend, but it's not likely to happen as that's just Riverdale for you. This isn't really a great example as I believe one of the main reasons that people accept this continued love triangle is that the comics are in a way based around it, but it's still one of the few examples of a girl-guy-girl love triangle that I have encountered in which one of the girls isn't the heroine and the other isn't a bitch.
EDIT: Note - I know that there are many people who call female characters out as being self-centred when they do this. I'm mostly complaining about the fact that many YA books seek to perpetuate this trend. Love triangles are, like other things, useful tools that can be used to wonderful effect. Some of my favourite books have love triangles in them. In Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, the whole plot is affected by the love triangle, which has a metaphorically tangible effect on the story. They can help develop a story or add tension. However, so many authors are using them nowadays that it's cheapened the idea. I guess what I'm calling for is for authors to consider the plot from different angles and ensure that they're not just writing down their fantasies, but to develop and maintain a believable situation. If the guy has a girlfriend but is falling for the heroine, don't make the girlfriend a bitch; there's a reason he liked her in the first place, and chances are that aliens haven't taken over her brain and made her a different person than the girl that he originally liked. Another of my favourite books has this scenario. Characters comment on how the girl has changed in the past year. The author presents a legitimate reason for the guy's hesitancy to leave her so I feel that it doesn't take away from the story too much, but I would still have preferred to see some more redeeming qualities in her. If the main male character is so great and if the main female character falls into his 'type', chances are that his girlfriend is at least a halfway decent human being.
Sorry for rambling.
* SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER (KIND OF, BUT THE MORE TIMES I SAY ‘SPOILER’ THE MORE LIKELY THAT SOMEONE WON’T ACCIDENTALLY GLANCE DOWN HERE AND SEE A SPOILER. SO, SPOILER S-SP-SPO-SPOI-SPOIL-SPOILE-SPOILER). In The Hunger Games, I think that it’s done okay as a lot of the time only one guy is on the scene and there’s so much going on that it makes sense that she doesn’t have time to sit down and work it out. Also, the two guys recognise that she is flawed. Like Haymitch said, Katniss could live a thousand lifetimes and never be good enough for ______ (I’m not going to say who to decrease spoilers). I found that one of them was idealised but, as a girl who does appreciate that sort of thing, enjoyed it and believed that he was the right match for Katniss. So in my opinion, one of them had a realistic attraction to her and the other’s love was more romantic and idealised but he was perfect for her.
Old About Me (mostly so that I have a record of this, as I seriously need to update it...all those code names are confusing me)
Hey so the idea from this came from my friend Puzzle, who got it from her friend Rhoddie, who got it from her friend Katie. Who got it from Sonja. Well, I think that was the link anyway. I know up until Rhoddie.
Back to me, as this is supposed to be a description of me anyway. I'm fifteen, have an older brother, play netball and basketball, enjoy the piano when I play it but don't usually, go to the same school as the aforementioned people, have a beautiful dog Wagalot...nope, can't think of much else at the moment. Oh! Except I love reading. And as I spend a fair amount of time travelling daily I read on the way. Or talk to Puzzle. Or do homework.
Oh, considering the names in here, you can probably tell that none of these names are the person's real name. Not even mine. *attempt at an evil laugh*
Back to me, as this is supposed to be a description of me anyway. I'm fifteen, have an older brother, play netball and basketball, enjoy the piano when I play it but don't usually, go to the same school as the aforementioned people, have a beautiful dog Wagalot...nope, can't think of much else at the moment. Oh! Except I love reading. And as I spend a fair amount of time travelling daily I read on the way. Or talk to Puzzle. Or do homework.
Oh, considering the names in here, you can probably tell that none of these names are the person's real name. Not even mine. *attempt at an evil laugh*
Bienvenue
I decided to start blogging again. It's been so long. It's funny looking back on the posts on my other blog and seeing the stupid code names I used for different people and what I was talking about (I'd forgotten about the fact that the Coordination topic in year nine science was pretty much a lesson or so on coordination to lure us into a false sense of security before suddenly becoming about sex and periods). It took me a while to decode some of them; I'll have to find my list of names later. However, at the moment this is only a brief post (because I couldn't resist) as it's 1am and I really should go to bed.
As a point of interest, this was almost named The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword, except that sounds really pretentious AND probably taken AND when it was written in lower case and without spaces like it would have been in the URL it turned dirty. Which would not have been a good start to this blog.
As a point of interest, this was almost named The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword, except that sounds really pretentious AND probably taken AND when it was written in lower case and without spaces like it would have been in the URL it turned dirty. Which would not have been a good start to this blog.
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