More on Harry Potter

I’ve been thinking more about Harry Potter, and I’ve sort of come to one essential question: what, exactly, are wizards? A wizard can be born from two muggles, and at the same time, a muggle (squib) can be born from two wizards. So then, wizardness must be some obscure genetic mutation (think: albino). Magical animals could be like albinos as well, all stemming from other species but changing gradually after the mutation becomes prevalent, like with deep vein rats.

So then wizards are born with magical potential, but to unlock their real abilities, they have to choose to school themselves, and this is where it gets complicated. Hogwarts isn’t a public school. You have to pay to go there. Yes, Tom Riddle gets financial assistance, but some families probably can’t afford to go into debt to send their kids to school, meaning that there are a whole bunch of untrained wizards out there.

Furthermore, as opposed to having to get a degree required to start using magic outside of school, there is an age limit. If the untrained wizards and witches were using magic freely and without training after turning 17, then I bet the laws would change, so we can assume that if you can’t go to the school, most people choose not to be part of the magical community. Why not? Well, despite having magic, wizards don’t seem superior to muggles in any way. They still have sickness and disease, they still die after a semi-normal span of years, they age without grace, have problems with poverty and civil unrest and seem completely unable to use their combined power to any affect. I mean, their world is threaten by a band of a dozen oafish wizards and witches who, by any reasonable standards, are completely transparent during work hours a troop of what pretty much amount to giant muggles with social problems and a self-detrimental culture and some creatures who can be defeated by thinking happy thoughts. I mean, I bet some people who can afford to go to Hogwarts choose not to, just because it’s a stupid culture that functions with even less efficiency than muggles.

All in all, the wizard world seems more like a cult than a race. Actually… that description fits pretty stunningly well. Attempts to take over government: check. Generally a knat to society with a superiority complex but no real desire to try to improve anything: check. Poor criminal investigation as the only public service offered by a ministry that otherwise seems totally pointless: check. Random arrests made of public enemies that basically amount to vigilantism: check.


Also: why does everybody trust the Dumbledore so much? Sure he’s an old, white dude who speaks with authority and his eyes flash alternately with laugher and anger so terrible it makes the dark lord tremble like a puss in boots, but he also seems really, really dumb. In the first book it’s suggested that Albus let Harry try to stop Voldemort on his own as some sort of a test (which seems really unfair), but what’s his excuse after that? He fails to put extra security on the DADA position even though he knows it’s cursed, he pits the houses against each other even though everyone- including the sorting hat- seems to realize it’s unwise, he repeatedly exposes his students to danger, he plays favorites to a ridiculous extend, he doesn’t tell Harry information that could be vital to his life and for the most part seems completely checked out, leaving a 12 year old to solve the school’s problems. I mean, second year? Come one. Kids couldn’t have been dying, and Dumbledore was too busy to walk a circuit around the school to look for traces of Voldemort magic? Come on.

I've been thinking about Polyjuice Potion lately, a few confusions a lot of people seem to have about it and my own answers. Firstly, the polyjuice potion uses hair or seemingly any other little piece of a person, but not DNA. I am sure of this for two reasons. Firstly, only the folical of a piece of hair holds DNA, and Barty Crouch was cutting the hair out in chunks from Moody's head. Secondly, and more obviously, DNA would not account for the shape of a full grown person, which includes scars, haircut, suntan, etc. Genetic information is not altered when outside forces play into appearance. The best likeness someone could expect to get from DNA would be eyecolor, haircolor, some general skintone, and maybe a few features. Even height and body type are affected by what you eat and do, and how well fed you are durring puberty. Polyjuice potion does account for these artificial changes, however, there are exception, which brings us to the next point: artificial non-flesh appearance information does not translate. Moody's artificial eye and woodenleg, for instance, have to be put in later, something of a contradiction. The line blurs around things like tattoos, stomache contents, disease, any curses currently in affect on the body, and so on and so forth.

...I need to get a hobby.

It occurred to me last night, watching The Dark Knight on my home small screen, that this movie is actually not that good. Here's the breakdown of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good:
The special effects were good, no doubt about that. The lighting is nice. The explosions are... convincing, I guess.

Joker's acting is impressive compared to the wooden, model-turned-actor reading by most of the other characters.

The Bad:
The plot is inconsistent and splotchy. It didn't build to a peak; it just sort of... blew stuff up, and kept blowing stuff up until it ended.

The "I have to be bad to be good" motif was forced far beyond reason. All this nobility crap- you're only letting a hospital get blown up because it's for the people’s own good. You only do horrible, nasty things to keep everyone safe. Come on. Every conniving, evil politician in history has said exactly the same thing. It was one big piece of propaganda: wire tapping, torture, terrorists, becoming the villain to be a true hero, protecting the masses by keeping them in the dark: sounds like a certain president we all know and hate, doesn’t it?

The police officer gets baited way too easily. "I guess I knew your friends better than you did"? Please, the officer is supposed to be a trained professional. And wouldn't they have made the Joker pass through some sort of metal detector before letting a man stand in the room with him alone? Why was he in there alone anyway when he could have watched through the double sided mirror? Cops work in pairs anyways, and plus, even with the officer and knifepoint, the door would have been locked from the outside.

No strong female characters are present in this film. There is one developed woman, and she is weak, vilianized for dragging out Batman and Harvey's emotions and utterly unable to decide what she wanted for herself. Her one wish after death, for Batman to get her letter, is denied, because he "deserves better" than the truth. Other than that, the only women are that whore ballet dancer, Natasha, whose only character trait was bitchiness, and then the entire Russian ballet. Note that Bruce couldn't vanish for a day without having an alibi, but he trusted all those women on the boat to not notice him hop off the side and climb into a fucking helicopter. Because OBVIOUSLY no WOMAN is smart enough to cause any sort of problem for MR MAN THE BATSTUD and his vigilante reputation. Then of course Mr. Police Chief's favorite family member is his son, and the traitor in the force is a weak-willed woman- the only police woman in the entire movie. Oh! And the police chief’s wife doesn’t understand the nobility of her husband’s sacrifice and obviously doesn’t know her husband as well as, say, her seven-year-old son, who seems to know exactly what is going on everywhere forever. A few too many damsels in distress in this movie for my tastes.

The only black people in this movie, or Asians or Mexicans for that matter, or any race but absolutely white were criminals.
I am actually offended by the face but on mentally ill people in this film. Schizophrenics are perfectly capable of reason and adult thinking processes. A lot of crime is done by people who have absolutely no excuse: like how rich kids get a rush stealing stuff from stores in the mall.
I hate movies and books were the public are the enemy. It just builds on this whole selfish, European mindset: I’m the only one who understands what’s going on and can make the right choices; everyone else is just a hindrance. And again with the propaganda! The masses need to be controlled, they’re a burden to themselves, they just don’t realize it. Total Dr Cable from Specials moment.

The Ugly:
The screen write... was... oh my God. So bad! "He said he'd make the voices go away and replace them with bright lights!" "You don't know what it's like to have to tell the person you love most that it's going to be okay, when you know it isn't. Lie." I couldn't believe what I was hearing half the time. Bah! Bat language is the least of this movies' dialogue problems. At least when Batman talks, I don't have to deal with the burning lameness of his words. I mean, come on, even Stephenie Meyer can write better than this, when she sets her mind to it.
Everything about Two-Face. His face isn’t frightening- it was laughably reminiscent of that parody alien movie by Tim Burton. His sudden change from good to bad was utterly unreasonable, as we never got the indication that he cared about whatsherface that much. He asks to marry her, sure, but in an extremely casual way, and she doesn’t give him an answer. He doesn’t excuse Bruce’s behavior for her sake, or let her lead in the court case they fight, or remove himself from a dangerous position to protect her. Police chief’s wife cried when she was told her died. Dent went totally fucking nuts. And what for? He doesn’t have any real motivation after that to kill a bunch of people.
There are lots of things that don’t add up: criminals being equipped with weapons after they should have been searched, getting a bomb onto both of those big ships going off the island, etc. It just stretched into impossibility at times, ruining the atmosphere.

I guess I’ll just never understand the hype.

Why Breaking Dawn Sucked Balls

Having read the much anticipated fourth and final book in the Twilight series, I am… honestly stunned. I would like to start off with a few good things about the book, but I really can’t think of any. It was that bad. I mean, damn, was Stephenie Meyer drunk when she wrote this? Or taking a spin on the Pineapple Express? My ass could have written a more articulate story. The entire book had that ‘there are no more coming in this series, so I’m not going to bother making this one good’ feel to it. Yes, the first book was empty headed and vapid, yes, the second was pointless and dull, and yes, the third book was painfully predictable and not at all clever, but Breaking Dawn absolutely took the literature’ocalypse cake for shear balls-suckedness. The following is a somewhat orderly account of what was wrong with this book.

1) Book three ends with Jacob sort of redeeming himself and saying he’s going to try a little harder to be everyone’s friend. What happened to his evolving character? What happened to him growing up? Jacob went from being one of my favorite characters to one of my least favorite in a few (badly written) paragraphs. The whole Jacob vs. Cullens conflict dragged on about two books too many.
2) Then he comes racing back for her wedding, because, apparently, all is forgiven on the day that his worst nightmares come to fruition. Then, when he learns Bella and Edward are going to have sex, he freaks out all over again. Seriously, though, Jacob made less of a fool of himself when he thought Bella was just becoming a vampire back when he still thought vampires were animated rocks or whatever.
3) Bella blackmails Edward into having sex with her. And then he goes on emo tour and feels all violated because he thinks she didn’t like it. What? Did he get stupid or something? Obviously she liked it. I don’t think she’s a good enough liar to fake it.
4) Isn’t love based on trust? Because these two trust each other less than… than… than I trust either of the upcoming presidential candidates. Which is to say, not a terrible lot. Like, none, actually.
5) Whoa. Edward is potent. They have sex three times and, bam, there’s a bun in the oven! He should sell is macho super-sperm on the internet for much moneys.
6) Bella’s greatest fear is becoming like Renee. Played against her want to make Edward happy, her fear was stronger, which is why she held off marrying him. She gets embarrassed when people even think she could be pregnant. Edward is the exact opposite. Probably because of his upbringing in the early 1900’s, he wants to live the life of a good, Christian human. He believes in God, heaven and hell. He believes in saving his virtue to save his soul. He believes that a fetus is more important than a woman. He actually told Bella he wished she was pregnant, which is unusual, as Edward hardly ever admits to wanting anything other than Bella’s love. Enter pregnancy. Exit character development. Bella goes totally gaga for her lovely little nuptial bundle, leaping happily into a life she previously spat on, while Edward instantly turns against everything he’s ever confessed to wanting and decides to knife the poor thing before it can cause any trouble. What the hell happened here?
7) Humans age slowly. Vampires don’t age at all. So naturally human plus vampire equals miracle grow. Er… right? This whole thing stank of ‘I’m too lazy to write all nine months so let’s get the damn thing over with.’
8) Edward asks Jacob to have sex with Bella. Ummmm... wut?
9) And then Bella goes and bashes adoption and surget children and stuff. What’s with that, Bella? And because Stephenie chose to write outside of Bella’s perspective for the pregnancy, we have no idea why this fetus in particular has completely changed all of her values. I mean, she loves the thing more than Charlie, Edward, Jacob, her vampire family: basically everyone she’s hurting by keeping it. She loves it more than she loves herself. And that isn’t something that automatically comes with pregnancy. Lots of women abort, or put their children up for adoption once they’re born. A little explanation might help.
10) The whole thing was preachy. Marriage before sex. Abortion is a sin. Blah, blah, blah. Bottom line: don’t need to hear it. Miss Meyer’s a Mormon, and I’m getting pretty fed up with her religious propaganda. I have no problems with God. I love God. I love life. I just don’t like it messing with my girl-porn (aka: sappy vampire romance novels).
11) Stephenie Meyer says that she supports gay rights, and says that there are gay vampires. So why are none of them in the book? Isn’t it like, one out of every twenty college students are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transsexual? And not a single member of the cast was looking at someone with matching chromosomes and licking their lips. Way to stand by your morals on that one, Steph.
12) Jacob being a sexist brat. Seriously. It was sort of over the top. Why is Bella attracted to guys who want to push her around? Jacob thinks he could just hold her down and tear the fetus right out of her womb. Edward ignored all of Bella’s ideas throughout… like, pretty much all of the books, starting when he won’t listen to her ideas about James in book one.
13) Bella doesn’t stand up for Rosalie. Neither does Edward, or Emmett, or anyone else Carlisle should have, at least, as he was on her side about letting Bella choose.
14) Shouldn’t Bella worry about Charlie thinking she has a mysterious tropical disease? Gone over night: oh noes, Charlie’s going to kill himself! Dying of bird flu: woot, glad we got him off my back. His character isn’t needed for another 500 pages, and lord knows his cop uniform smells like feat.
15) What on earth is she going to tell Renee?
16) …And why is Jacob revealing himself any better? If Charlie was ever investigated by the Aro, he’d still be a human who knew too much, if we take into account the mentioned ‘rest of the supernatural world,’ all those moon-children and stuff, then we can assume knowing about any supernatural creatures is a capital crime.
17) Jacob’s plan wasn’t clever. Why do Bella and Edward forgive him so easily? Isn’t Bella supposed to be stubborn? Isn't Edward easily opinionated?
18) Jacob pulled Renesmee out of Bella’s arms, the first time Bella got to see her own daughter. In real life, Bella would have torn his head off, best friend or not.
19) Renesmee.
20) Carlie.
21) Cullen.
22) Was this book written by a ten-year-old?
23) How I hate her! “I’m so powerful… I’m so clever… I have nothing to do with a consistent plot…”
24) Geesh, Alice sucks all of a sudden. Let’s face the obvious: she only stayed hidden for about five minutes once the meeting began before prancing out into the open. Why bother with the disappearing act at all? Which leads me to the bigger factor: this entire plotline was choppy and tacked on. Stephenie obviously made up the ‘Aro wants Alice more than Edward’ strand as an excuse to put it into action, even though Edward already said he wanted them both.
25) The book is 750 pages long. Remind me again why we needed the whole filler arc about Bella printing out fake papers for Renesmee.
26) Why did the wolves decide to kill the baby, again? There really wasn’t even an attempt to rationalize that. Do the math, people. Strong plus weak equals average. Technically, any child of a vampire and a human should be weaker than the vampire alone. Plus, it’s being raised by the Cullens, who they suddenly have faith in. Shouldn’t the Cullens be just as capable of controlling the thing if it got out of hand as the wolves? The idea of storming Cullen Manor to protect the wolf pack is absurd.
27) Way too many new characters, way too many powers. Stephenie Meyer just threw her editing to into the blender for this one, didn’t she? None of the vampires that came to stand as witnesses were important or progressive at all, seeing as there was no battle.
28) There was no battle.
29) Benjamin’s power. Is this a novel, or a volume of manga? I was half expecting Speedracer to leap out from behind a wall, a delicate, scantily clad cat girl perched across each of his shoulders, and cleave Aro in two with a sword the size of a small whale. (“Naruto clones, seize him! Ulquiorra, you bring up the back!”
30) There was no battle! None! Nada, zip, zero-
31) Why did the Volturi bring witnesses? They never did that before. And why did they bring the wives? We never even learned the wives’ names, or where the witnesses were from. For a book written by a woman, Breaking Dawn is surprisingly non-uplifting.
32) Most anti-climactic ending ever, in the history of the universe, ever!!
33) The plot didn’t unravel. It didn’t unfurl. It bust, like the sticky insides of a rotting egg (a gory memento to a chance at life) over an already somewhat jeopardized and moldy cob salad, spewing runny, yellow-green shards of the body’s largest cell all over an assortment of wilted, seemingly unrelated characters and lettuce.
34) I don’t know about any of you, but nobody I have ever talked to has dreams that relevant. I’d go to sleep after learning about the immortal children and dream about self aware home fries running a divorce agency in my aunt’s bathtub, and I don’t think I’m that un-average for saying so. Which leads me to believe Stephenie was just looking for a cheap plot device to express the emotions that she was otherwise incapable of illustrating.
35) Suddenly introduction of cousins- a swarm of more human-vampires crawl out of the woodwork at random with no foreshadowing or anything. Wow. That wasn’t sudden and chalky and poorly thought out at all. [/sarcasm]
36) I wasn’t comforted by the knowledge that Renesmee would live forever. Wouldn’t the real victory have come from her living out a mostly human life with Jacob and be able to… you know, prove that being human isn’t all bad? Help heal the ties between vampires and humans and fake werewolves?
37) Jacob imprinting on Renesmee. Oh. Gross. That’s like… if I dated one of my mom’s boyfriends. And it’s like that because that’s exactly what is going on.
38) Fake werewolves. Where did that come from? And why is it important in the slightest?
39) Finally, it was boring. Actually, really boring. I think Bella changed way too early in the book. It ruined the element of danger and the sort of cheery comedy whenever human-Bella tripped over things. This book wasn’t cute. It wasn’t sweet or heartwarming. It wasn’t exciting. It was an epic fail. Summary in ten seconds: boring boring SEX boring boring Jacob’s an ass, boring boring… How many chapters are in this thing?... boring boring boring… Oh. Look. It’s over…. Can I have my sixteen dollars back, please?

End.

I apologize to everyone I’ve offended. Had to get that off my chest. Please feel free to post a rebuttal to any of the statements listed above. That’s why they’re numbered. Please feel double free to add your own complaints.

So, hokay, bullets on why I pity myself:

Missed semi- my own fault, I didn't get my RSVP in on time, but it still sucks.

I just got really sick. My throat hurts like a bitch, my head aches, my skin hurts, I'm freezing cold... UGH.

I can't draw perspective on people. At all. I'll keep trying, but wow, it's like FAIL= me at perspective.

My tea is too hot. (-Fezned)

In other news, I've been working on two pictures. A really basic comic of some of my OC, and a picture of a girl with a huge scith which is gonna be called 'The Reapers Daughter' and which is a companion piece to a short I want to write.

So much homework to do! Gah!