Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I know we have Christian fundementalists.

I know we have Islamic fundamentalists- hell, I think little green things on Alpha Centuri know we have Islamic fundementalists!

But why, why Mr Dawkin, do we have to have Atheist fundementalists? I mean, I thought that was the whole point, to be rational and moderate- and yes, maybe a little smug, but to stay aloof from religious debates and let those monkeys throw shit at each other. But nooo, Mr I'm-Right-You're-Wrong has to get involved. Mr Smarter-Than-Thou has to make himself heard. Mr I-Too-Damn-Smug has to start preaching like a Jacobin and get embroiled in stupid religious debates that makes us all look bad. They're starting to blame us for the F**cking Holocaust for pity's sake! You do not take them up on a debate like that! You give them an incredulous what-are-you-on look and you stay aloof! You do not argue back because hell, let's face it everyone has blood on their hands and while I don't know what they were smoking when they thought up the Holocaust theory, atheism did have a hand in the French revolution. Both religion and atheism (and yes, Mr Dawkins, they are different things) can be used as an excuse for terrible acts, but arguing back at these people just turns it into a shit-throwing match and everyone ends up stinking. 
You cannot argue with these people. Trust me, I've tried. Just go with the live and let live approach and for pity's sake don't equate their religion with a disease, it's stupid. Feel free to argue against creationism and religious wars, but start saying that science is the be-all and end-all and I may have to visit you with a sledgehammer to pound some common sense into your skull because we do not know everything! Don't try and say we know more than the religious people because we don't. All we do is not hide behind an almighty God to make us feel better. We look at the world with untainted glasses and try and reason what we see as best we can without resorting to at catch-all deity.

I left religion in disgust after seeing the ridiculous hypocrisy and senseless belief there, but I think I should just call myself a non-believer rather than an atheist, because that lable is starting to have some rather nasty connetations. Rather like being an animal activist really, execpt we don't burn down churches.

Yet. With this guy as our figurehead I haven't the foggiest where we'll end up.

And yes, Mr Dawkins, I returned your book. It was shite and I wanted a careful deconstruction of modern religions, not the atheist bible. I exchanged it for The Road, and think I learnt a whole lot more from that.

ooI just watched 'My Summer of Love' and am feeling just downright pissed.

Firstly, and most loudly. CAN WE STOP WITH THE FUCKING PSYCHO GAY PEOPLE ALREADY!!!!!!!

Holy shit people! This isn't the fucking 1950s! We're supposed to have grown up a bit since then and realised that being gay is not actually a mental illness!

If it was just that film, I wouldn't have minded. It was okay as a film, if disjoined and the acting was pretty bad. It had great use of colour and interesting relationships otherwise. But no, you look at all the films out nowdays, and all the gay characters are either mad or unhappy (the last is in deference to Brokeback Mountain more than anything else). Posidon- The guy was threatening suicide.  Little Miss Sunshine- The guy actually tried to commit suicide. I could go on, but fuck, my blood pressure's high enough as it is. What is the media saying here? Being gay is bad and you die sad and unhappy and alone! (because nothing actually gets better for any of these characters) Right. Please line up the directors, because I have a sharp katana which has a date with their balls (or lack of them).

Oh yes, and while you're at it, line up the leaders of the religious reich, because I'd like to castrate them too while I'm at it.

Sorry, that was very little about the film, but I needed to rant.

I was all set to eat my words about Lord of the Rings, then along comes Return of the King and I'm wondering if my first impressions were the right ones.

Lets me recap first though.

Fellowship of the Ring: I loved that book, it made me want to start off on my own adventure, explore new places, and so on, it was faster paced than I remembered, even the first part, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I also went back to my old Aragorn/Boromir haunts from whence I first shipped ;D.

Two Towers: All around favourite book, I loved it to death. Helm's Deep, the journey to Mordor, just loved it. And my favourite ever part of the book was the Entmoot and the destruction of Isenguard. Yay! Mass terror and destruction and flooding! I love Ents.

And finally, Return of the King, which was where it all went horribly, horribly wrong.
To be honest, the Frodo bit wasn't bad, although it did get slightly repetitive, and if I hadn't been secretly rooting for Sauron by this point it would have been a lot better. I never really liked Frodo and Sam, in fact, my main problem with the books (and the reason I have trouble writing fanfic about it) is that none of the characters really grab me. But anyway, that storyline was okay.
But the other one... to be honest, it was the message it was sending that made me want to throw the book out of the tube window (yes, I did want to do that). Firstly, Tolkien must have had serious issues with women, because there are a grand total of six female characters in the book and that's counting Rosie Cotton and Shelob. But the thing that made me want to break something was the treatment of Eowyn.
She constantly gets shunted aside, and when it comes to her big moment of glory (facing down the Witch-king), she gets knocked out and the Ringwraith gets killed by a hobbit, who stabs hin in the knee. I'm sorry, but the feminist in me was screaming blue murder at about that point.
And, to add insult to injury, she gets meekly 'tamed' by Faramir, and immediatly renounces the way of the sword to become a healer instead. At this point, Faramir (who I'd liked up to then) suffered a downward plunge, the likes of which I have rarely experienced.

My next problem had actually been bugging me from the start, but really came out here. Everytime we hear about the men and elves, it seems as though they're on the way out, their power is always waning, nothing was as good as it was previously, etc. The only one who seems to be gaining any power is Sauron. According to my Moorcock-warped mind, this should mean that he will be the new power, and good/evil be damned! Instead, the good guys win, and it just seems... wrong, as though they shouldn't have. I guess I'm reading too much realistic fantasy (go George Martin!) but it just smacked me wrong. The restoration of everything just seemed like delaying the inevitable. Sauron's time had come, and to fight against it was useless.
So that was why I supported the Dark Lord, that, and I've always had a crush on the Ringwraiths (*drool*). And that is why, ultimately, I didn't like to books. It just seemed a little too conveniant.

My friend Olga doesn't like the Luddite influences, I sort of agree, but it's more the railing against the inevitable that irritates me (hence, my dislike for Tanis), as well as against progress. It just struck me wrong, went against the grain.

I wonder if the woman problem would be solved in the films (never saw RotK).

At first I thought that my dislike was due to the burgeoning popularity of the books at the onset of the films. I was wrong.


Skull Bearer.

Basically a piss-take of biblical preportions on JKR's disasterous interview. Gods, if I ever become a big-shot writer, remind me not to piss off half my fanbase.

Finished one assignment, will be going to Uni tomorrow to chat to my lecturer about my poetry assignment. I'm still jammed. Also look up possiblities of transfering to Kingston.

To paraphrase Spider Jerusalem: I hate it here.

Played my Lone Wolf gamebook for most of the day, and ranted about HP (yeah, I'm still sore) for the rest. Still found time to finish off my assignment.


Muses still AWOL for the time being, nothing lost, I'm just taking a bit of a holiday. They sprung a big one on me a few days ago and I still need to hammer out the details of my new storyline in my head. it's a great one, but I'm having to go over a lot.

It's 4am and I have just realised what's been happening in the HP fandom since I signed off it in disgust. And before.

I wanted to find people who shared my opinion that HBP was rubbish, and ended up elbow deep in ship wars.

I'm amazed at what's been going on, although not that I didn't know. After all, Harry/Hermione or Harry/Ginny? *yawn* Pass the Snarry please...

But I didn't know of the sheer rivalry that's been brewing between these ships since the beginning, I thought they were just... there. And they got on just as well as Gun 'n Handcuffs and Loonies got on: I don't like the ship, but whatever, each to their own.

But instead I found that the bad feeling ran deep, I suppose it was because they were the most 'canonical' pairing, the one most liekly to happen, but honestly? I thought Harry was going to get together with Luna. And I didn't care.

Then HBP came out, and not only was it Harry/Ginny, but it was dreadful. I've rarely read published romance that's quite that bad. Even the Tanis/Laurana of Dragonlance was superior! And that was pretty much the equivelent in that universe.

So now nobody's happy. The Harry/Ginny die-hards are upset because their pairing was mangled, and the Harry/Hermione bunch are pissed because their ship didn't sail, and could tote the pairing as the reason the writing was so bad.

It might be true, Ginny was an awful character. Ginny-sue, they call her.

Some Harry/Ginny fans would be happy, of course, after all, if Raistlin/Dalamar was canon I would be squee-ing no matter how badly it was written... Actually, maybe not. What I like about the pairing is the characters, and HBP was character butchery. I'll keep my subtext, thanks.

But what happened after that could not have been worse. The infamous interview.

I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Muggle-net interviewers, personally. But JKR isn't exempt from the blame, to call an entire section of your fanbase delusional! Particularly one of a realistic ship! If you're going to name anyone delusional, name me, I like Harry/Voldemort for pity's sake!

So now not only are the Harry/Hermione group miserable, they're also feeling victimised. You just can't call you're fans delusional! Particularly like this! Anvil sized hints... for Ron/Hermione maybe, but Harry/Ginny? I'm sorry, I didn't see that one coming. And I still don't. As I said it was a lot of very bad writing. JKR sould leave romance to ficcers like Jade Tatsu, who can write a Harry/Voldemort romance and make us believe it. JKR couldn't make me believe Harry/Ginny.

The Harry/Hermione shippers are feeling betrayed, so am I. Not for the same reasons exactly, although many of them aknowlege that the book was bad, I couldn't care less about shipping, butI know a good book.

HBP was not one of them.

The interview just made things worse. HBP might have loaded things up, but the interview sent them to hell on a handbasket.

And now the shipping war is in full swing, and it's only going to get worse. Not that I mind, I don't care either way and it's something to watch, plus JKR might get the idea that her books are no longer as beloved as they once were.

Book 7 is going to be hell, and not just because my favourite character will die *sniff*, but there's so much hanging on that book. If JKR writes the wrong thing, she'll turn the fandom against her, and if she makes Snape a Death Eater... well, a part of me wants that to happen, just to watch the reactions. Snape is the character with the biggest fanbase (I don't count Harry, he's the protagonist after all), and to make him evil would be to a) screw the books up terminally, and b) turn the vast majority of her fans against her.

It would be something to watch, but I still like Snape, and everything I am loves good writing so I pray she doesn't do that.

Either way, if JKR thinks that what she wrote was in any way on a par with her previous books, she's the deluded one.



Skull Bearer.