The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
I had the pleasure and delight to engage in a series I haven’t read before. My addiction to YA literature tends to disappoint me often in many areas. Even when I find myself pleased with the characters, the writing, and the story, often I find something lacking: Women’s stories that are truly women’s stories. Stories that don’t revolve around men. You know, the story that says it is about a woman, but it is really about the men in her life…
With The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, by Ann Brashares, I found a nice balance of women’s stories that involved figuring out themselves, their relationships to each other, and how any men at all fit into their lives, and how. I find the book series to be heavily heterocentric…which is something else that I think is missing from YA lit, or perhaps I am missing out on the right kind of lit that suits my fancy. *shrugs*
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is about four young women, Bridget, Carmen, Lena, and Tibby, who have almost literally grown up together, since their mothers were in a laughable maternity aerobics class one September before they were born. They have forged a sisterhood long before the eponymous Pants found their way from the thrift store into Carmen’s closet. The book begins at a time when these young women have grown up almost as one person, and now for the first time, they are spending a summer apart, which will mean learning how to learn to be themselves (I meant to write it that way). Three of the four girls will venture off to different parts of the world, leaving Tibby alone in Washington, D.C. with a summer job.
Each girl’s (or young woman’s) journey forces them to confront parts of themselves that they are not used to facing, with the exception of Bridget. Bridget has lost a parent at a young age to depression (so far in the first book it isn’t specified exactly how), and has seemingly spent the rest of her life so far rebounding. Her change is more internal as she learns to balance what she thinks she wants, and how to deal with it once she gets it, arguably much too young to achieve it. She is a powerful goddess of a young woman who knows how to reach her goals and is self aware, but not really aware enough of herself, realistically. I was rather impressed with how Brashares dealth with this topic, as sensitive of one as it is. She faced it on, and only slightly shied away from some parts of it. I have a feeling that the parts that weren’t faced head on will rear back later in the series (without giving too much away).
The book jumps around to the four stories in segments, giving a taste of each young woman’s story before moving on, as they pass the Pants between them. It gives you just enough story to start to make you uncomfortable from a feminist perspective before revealing how each one of them learns to grow and cope (and apologize or stand up for herself).
I will admit to being a little bit in love with Carmen’s character, thinking back to myself as a teenager, and being the girl who didn’t know how to tell someone that she was angry because she had been hurt by someone who was supposed to love and protect her. Carmen represents how easy it is to get angry at the wrong people because we know that they will keep loving us rather than risk admitting that we are afraid someone will take love away from us if we reveal how much they hurt us.
Aside from a chronic use of the word “lame” which, grates on me to no end, and another topic that I discussed in a forthcoming post at FWD/Forward, I found the book incredibly enjoyable. I want to read more stories like TSotTP, and will continue through the series, partly because I want to see what happens to Bridget specifically.
It gets a hearty stamp of approval (unlike some other books I review here), and will be adding to the home library.
Who’s read it? Care to share?
Monday Random Ten
moar funny pictures
Nothing like a long weekend to keep you busy!
I hope you had some time to slow down and reflect upon and celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Remember that his life didn’t just mean a day off and extra time to screw around.
Let’s have some music for your Monday, however you have spent it.
You know what to do: Turn on your iPod, iTunes or other music gadget, and list the first ten songs that come up.
We recently added some new stuff from a recent outing to one of the local music stores where The Guy picked up some CDs, and I finally got around to uploading them into the external.
So, without further ado:
- Multiply — Jamie Lidell
- I Am Somebody — Santana Feat. Will.I.Am
- Somebody to Love — Queen
- Super Trouper — Mama Mia! (Korean Cast Recording)
- Come On Over (All I Want Is You) — Christina Aguilera
- Animals — Nickeback
- Again and Again — The Bird and the Bee
- Miss Independent — Kelly Clarkson
- Angel Main Theme (The Sanctuary Extended Remix — Darling Violetta
- Zero — Smashing Pumpkins
Bonus Video:
Kelly Clarkson, Miss Independent AOL Live Session. I absolutely love Kelly Clarkson. I am talking some major girl crushage here. Kelly, if you vanity Google, and come across this post, please come to Korea and do a USO show, and invite me to meet you back stage! I will cook you a most delicious meal for you and your whole band! That woman has some pipes, and she sings w/ a little bit of grit. Love *swoon* *lessthanthree*
*heh-hem*
Video Description: Shots of the band playing interspersed with Kelly Clarkson singing the song “Miss Independent”.
Lyrics After the Jump. Read more…
Random Linkspam and Some Me Here and There…
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While I finish up some projects and deal with some…stuff…please enjoy these links from my RSS, from my co-contributors/friends/both, from my email, from me, and elsewhere:
slave2tehtink writes a letter to NPR
Your statement this morning that the US military “wouldn’t arrive” in Haiti
until early next week, as the Army is projected to be there Sunday and a
contingent of Marines onboard the USS Bataan a day or two later was followed
by an off-hand mention that the USS Carl Vinson would be there THIS FUCKING
MORNING.Allow me to assist you with your reporting by sharing some shocking facts
about the US Navy in general and aircraft carriers in particular.
lisa at Sociological Images: Socialization and Gendered Job Segregation
So it’s more than just gendered jobs, it’s an acknowledgement that when boys and girls do the same job, it gets called something different and, more, better compensated when men do it.
Angry Mouse at Daily Kos: Feminism Fail
And it’s always a crisis. Even under a Democratic president, with a Democratic supermajority in Congress, the nation’s biggest feminist organizations are in crisis mode, raising money but unable to deliver results. They’re just as effective as they were under Bush. Which is to say, Not. At. All.
Snarky’s Machine (via meloukhia on tumblr): Pay the Lady
I don’t give a shit. Pointing out the obvious just doesn’t really hurt my feelings. You’re gonna give me what you gave the rich white lady and you’re gonna like it.
Hell, you don’t have to like it, but you do have to give it.
Anna at FWD/Forward: Feminist Icons
When we talk about Women’s History – and I understand Women’s History month is in March in the US7, so that’s not too long from now – we are doing something wrong if we do not include the lives of women with disabilities. Helen Keller isn’t the only woman with disabilities who has been ignored, erased, or sanitized for public consumption – it happens over and over, to queer women, to women of colour, to women who are ‘marked’ as ‘not-mainstream’.
elle, phd: The Limits of Choice
This is our world, where a woman who may have been sterilized against her will has to offer arguments as to why this should not have happened to her.
Alex DiBranco: Sexting: The Problem is Bullying, Not Sex
Whether or not it’s a good idea to text naked pictures of yourself to someone else, it wasn’t the act of “sexting” that led two girls to commit suicide in the last two years. It’s the bullying that accompanies it.
Tracy Clark-Flory: Formula for disaster
Well, which is it? It’s hard enough to navigate the contentious breast-feeding debate in the developed world, let alone as it applies in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere — and during a heartrending crisis, no less. So, I spent the better part of a day on the phone and immersed in reports from UNICEF and the World Health Organization to get the lowdown on baby formula as aid.
Paul the Spud: How Dare You Question Me
I’m continually amazed that anyone can consider Pat Robertson a man of compassion and love.
lschmeiser: Screenshot: Tina Fey, avatar of ambivalence
Also: Can we talk about the food thing?
Natalia Antonova: Dear Pat Robertson
(must click through)
Some Shameless Self-Promotion:
Outdated FMLA Laws Hurt Workers, Families, and the Public (from Change.org)
Military Wives: The Right Kind of Sexy
Youth Say Pregnancies Best Planned, But Half Have Unprotected Sex
What Women Troops Really Need in Care Packages: Plan B
Hillary Clinton: Still A Hero for Women’s Rights
Military Builds Wounded Warrior Barracks to Ease Transitions
VA Study on Veteran Suicide Rate Leaves Out Women
Tell Us About You Visit… (from FWD/Forward)
I am talking about you
From Anna, on tumblr, with permission:
I think the fundamental problem is I am being too subtle.
Principles of Anti-Oppression, from the Los Angeles Direct Action Network.
- Power and privilege play out in our group dynamics, and we must continually struggle with how we challenge power and privilege in our practice.
- We can only identify how power and privilege play out when we are conscious and committed to understanding how racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other forms of oppression affect each one of us.
- Until we are clearly committed to anti-oppression practice all forms of oppression will continue to divide our movement and weaken our power.
- Developing an anti-oppression practice is a life long work and requires a life long commitment. No single workshop is sufficient for learning to change one’s behaviours. We are all vulnerable to being oppressive and we need to continuously struggle with these issues.
- Dialogue and discussion are necessary and we need to learn how to listen non-defensively and communicate respectfully if we are going to have effective anti-oppression practice. Challenge yourself to be honest and open and take risks to address oppression head on.
What Anti-Oppression does not involve, a short list, by Anna:
- Implying that people are faking an oppression.
- Erasing the identities of people you are angry with, including gender-identity and racial identity.
- Jumping to conclusions.
- Not asking for clarification.
- Assuming people who are not you are arguing in bad faith, while you are arguing with nothing but the best of intentions.
I am, frankly, a bit appalled that more people seem to have read & responded to my earlier tumblr about When We Want Reasonable Responses Vs When We Want Reactionary Responses when melouhkia added to it about being patient with the Tumblr Staff.
Gentle reader, I am very happy for that post to be referred to at any time, most especially when one is hoping to create a dialog, or solve a problem. But honestly – it was not about Tumblr Staff. It was about you.
We must continually struggle with how we challenge power and privilege in our practice. Badgering a woman who has a disability, a child on summer break, and lives on the opposite side of the planet to respond immediately, on your terms, and then implying that she is not really disabled and is just whining – this is not challenging power & privilege in our practice. Supporting someone who does this is also not supporting challenging of power & privilege. And yes, one can not know that is going on – one rarely does, since that is not a pretty story, and does not fit into the approved narrative.
Describing a woman who has made repeated public posts about her racial identity being erased as XX”crying white woman’s tears”XX [CORRECTION: having “fragile white woman syndrome”] also does not challenge power & privilege. Supporting someone who does this does not challenge power & privilege.
Completely neglecting that someone has repeatedly identified as not being on the gender binary, while talking about them as though they are – that is also NOT challenging power & privilege.
Specifically stating that one wants to center voices that are not able-bodied cis-gendered men is something I am rather surprised to see considered anti-feminist, anti-ally work – especially since defining it that way still erases members of FWD who are not cis. I am also rather surprised to see it considered appropriate ally-work to erase someone’s disability because it’s suddenly inconvenient to acknowledge as a factor. I’m surprised to learn it is okay to claim a woman is white when she is quite loud and proud about not being white. I’m surprised to learn it’s ally-work to erase trans* contributors – perhaps because they do not identify as having a binary gender?
We need to learn how to listen non-defensively and communicate respectfully if we are going to have effective anti-oppression practice.
Sincerely. This is as unsubtle as I can imagine being. This is about you. It is about me. It is about us. But mostly: I am talking about you.
***
I have some thoughts to follow up with…but I have A LOT OF WORK TO FINISH , and have already forgotten my MRT in this mess. When I get a little caught up I will catch up with my thoughts if it isn’t time to catch the bus.
God Doesn’t Hate Me!
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Contrary to popular belief…and maybe to some recent evidence that might persuade me if I were an individual who would ponder such thoughts…
But yesterday’s New York Times ran an Op-Ed by Nicholas D. Kristof about Religion and Women.
Kristof gives a great run down about the various ways that the major world religions have spent their time over the centuries putting women in the place of second class citizens, from excusing rape to demanding their silence to teaching that it was perfectly OK to throw acid in their faces for the audacious act of going to school. He points out that it isn’t a doctrinal message, this violence and abuse that causes oppression to be carried out in the name of religion. Biblical scholars, Kristof says, even argue that Paul never really said that women should always be silent.
So who is it, then, that decided that women should be shunned, used, or abused and have it justified by holy sacrament?
The men in charge of interpreting the holy law, or waging the holy war.
That makes my Pagan/agnostic bones tingle (or maybe it’s the Topiramate, who knows), to read about a speech delivered by former President Jimmy Carter, (whom, apparently I fall close to on morality tests, who knew?), where he stated,“Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths, creating an environment in which violations against women are justified,” and I think that hits the nail on the head of what has alienated me from religion for a long time, at least until I found Paganism. Women have long been cast aside as less than.
It reminds me of being young and being involved in church for the first time, and like all things I take on, I threw myself in head first. I wanted to do it well. But I wasn’t allowed to serve communion, even though my friend was (because he was a guy, of course), or take offering. I couldn’t lead prayer. If I was older, I was allowed to teach Sunday School, but for now I could work in the Nursery, rocking babies, like a good mommy in training.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it at the time. I have always — and this is in no way a statement of femininity or innate nurturing instinct — enjoyed other people’s babies (and then, eventually my own, even though it wasn’t ever my plan until it happened). But I didn’t understand the divide, and because you are a girl never made enough sense to me. Why couldn’t I pass a tray of grape juice around during evening service? Why couldn’t I read a passage from the Bible or give a prayer? Didn’t God think that I was just as important? Wasn’t I told that I was made in his image too?
No, actually.
Of course, a lot of things didn’t make sense to me, and my Aries personality and a youth pastor telling me, a 17 year old girl who had been tossed from home to home, working and buying her own way at a minimum wage job, that she had a problem with money and was greedy and a bad person because she didn’t tithe, began my Great Schism. And no I didn’t want to talk about it, and no, I didn’t feel like having it Mansplained to me anymore, by anyone. Not even other Youth Ministers that I had good relationships with.
I bounced. I might have flounced, but I was 17*, and while I was mature due the nature of my situation, I had a stubborn streak to beat…well…Hell.
I had to reconcile it for myself, and figure out why I wasn’t good enough. No matter how hard I worked or how good I was, I was never good enough for God.
To me, some 12 years later, that speech from Carter is like a breath of air. That little quote, that one moment in time (even, again, coming as permission from a white man), gave me pass to feel that my feelings of frustration during my time in the church were validated (but never relieved, because my whole extended family is Catholic, and I was the wayward Other…so…hence, the Guilt).
This brings me to The Elders, which sounds like something out of some of my favorite fantasy works. It is a real thing, made of Awesome, in that it is a Who’s Who of former world leaders, and comprised of many religious and spiritual powerhouses, lead my Nelson Mandela. Among the ranks are Carter, Aung San Suu Kyi, Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, and several others. They meet with a silent moment of prayer, and have many goals, including not attacking religion, but recognizing, according to Robinson, “if there’s one overarching issue for women it’s the way that religion can be manipulated to subjugate women.”
While I find myself mostly outside of religion, I love the way it works, and to learn about the different kinds. I’ve also live three major world religions from birth to now, and know much about them not just from a college intro class, but from life experience. I love how people who get to the fundamentals of what their religion is love their religion without hurting others. And The Elders do that, and more.
With the formation of The Elders, and my big crush The Dalai Lama naming himself a feminist, perhaps organized world religions haven’t failed me after all. Perhaps there is hope that they can foster a place where women will be treated with love and dignity and respect. As equal citizens, because that is all I have ever wanted.
*Teenagers are not a monolith. I was, sometimes, your stereotype, the moody girl prone to over reaction. But, I was also the girl who had to adapt to many adult situations. Many teenagers are like that. Do not assume that teenagers are not thinking, mostly adult-like people, worthy of respect, despite what you might read eslewhere.
Random Linkspam…
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Too much stuff in my Google Reader and elsewhere for me to keep up with…so here are some links for the best of Bloglandia…according to me:
Renee at Womanistmusings: It’s Elementary A Gay Sherlock Holmes is a No No
Apparently, in promotion for the film, Downey appeared on Letterman, where he dared to question the sexuality of Holmes….lions and tiger and bears oh my! Now gasp everyone. What if the famous Sherlock Holmes “was a very butch homosexual”? It seems the wrestling, sexual tension and sharing of the same bed does lead one to a certain shall we say speculation.
Cristian Asher: In Sickness, Health … and Silence
If this gay soldier is injured, his husband may not be allowed to visit him in a military hospital. If this soldier is killed, no one will call his husband.
No one will call him. How could they, when he doesn’t exist?
In a funeral, he will not be offered the folded flag. When medals are awarded, he will not be recognized as the person his husband fought for, the reason that he served so valiantly.
Sady at Tiger Beatdown: Acts of Contrition: Feminism, Privilege, and the Legacy of Mary Daly
If you are like me, and didn’t know who the fuck Mary Daly was until she died, I recommend this piece. Sady lays it down for you. I couldn’t find a good excerpt because it really needs to be read in whole.
Maia Spotts: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Greedy Homophobic Socialite
And yet, silence in 1984 when In Bed With Sherlock Holmes was published, overtly acknowledging the homosexual overtones in Doyle’s work. Not a word in 2004, when Graham Robb created an explicit affair between the two in his book. Tight-lipped about My Dearest Holmes, published by the Gay Men’s Press.
elle, phd: Hey, Census Bureau! You Forgot to Include “Cullud”!
Because–and I can’t speak for everyone–”Negro” certainly invokes thoughts of a much different era.
abby jean at FWD/Forward: It Will Always Be The First Thing I Think Of
*Trigger warning for descriptions of self harm*
Natasha Chart: Why Do Women Have to Go to Clinics for Abortions
I view violent, abusive, coercive and manipulative protestors as an arm of the State. Because the government refuses to take the logical step of removing women from harm’s way by letting them get all their medical care at the same places that less icky citizens get theirs, they must therefore sanction this abuse that’s going on in plain sight, in front of gods and everybody, every damn day in the country they’re responsible for.
That’s all I got for this week. I am sure I forgot something, and if you have anything great, drop it in comments.
The Space Between…
The policing of other women’s bodies is never OK from a feminist standpoint. I can’t stress that point enough. It doesn’t serve any productive purpose in feminist discourse.
It is mostly an understood concept among people outside of the mainstream of feminism. Those who are able to work their theory around the concepts of white, straight, cis, upper-middle class, educated, able-bodied privilege.
Yet, a concept that still slips into the space between understanding is the difference between criticizing someone who comes from a place of thin privilege and tearing someone down for a body that is not like your own.
This article at Bitch, to me, was the latter.
It doesn’t seem like so long ago that I was a size 0. And yet, looking at myself now it feels so far away. That is something I am coming to grips with even today. But my mind remembers it all so well. How can nothing be something? And even at nothing I felt all my flaws. I covered in my towel so I didn’t have to glimpse myself in the mirror and be disgusted by what I saw. I still do that now! I refused to own a scale, afraid of what I would see (I still do that now!)…because it would send me into fits of fear and rage and crying…because no matter how much I threw up and refused to eat I could not weigh what all the charts said someone of my height and weight should…and my thighs jiggled and my belly bulged and my arms — while muscular from kitchen work — wiggled. Even though I was actually nothing. My clothing size was nothing.[1]
Jennifer Hawkins has thin privilege. Yes. She most certainly does. But when I was struggling I had two kinds of people to look at in magazines and on television: overly photoshopped women who were too perfect, and purposefully imperfect women meant to make me hate myself so that I would work to not be like them. There was no campaign of women of any size coming out to say “we are imperfect, but here we are“.
I will grant this: The Bitch piece does criticize the way that Jennifer Hawkins’ flaws have been the main focus of her nude cover. That is not the conversation that this cover should be invoking in feminist circles. But if she is talking about how hard this was for her, that is not something we should be criticizing. Dismissing her hesitancy, her own insecurities just because she is thin and has a different body type than someone else… that is not feminist either. When has it ever been OK for us to dismiss another woman’s experiences?
Why can’t we, as feminists, understand that?
She no longer has the protection of her Photoshop Deflector Shields, so she is in a vulnerable place, but her thin privilege doesn’t put her in the same place as all the fatties of the world who are crying in clothing stores because shirts are not made for their bodies. I get that. I think Kelsey Wallace at Bitch, for whom I just did a mostly lovely guest blogging stint w/ some of the FWD/Forward team, even gets that despite what I am garnering from her post.
Jennifer Hawkins is not the same as me. She does not know what it is like to walk into a doctor’s office and have hir assume that the pain or illness is caused by my weight before they know anything about me. She does not know the pain of the stares when I have trouble walking somewhere, as if it is definitely because I am a fattie. Or how clothes are made for people like her and not for me…or how society is made to make me feel like I am a big worthless pile of shit whose only chance at redemption is to adopt a “Lifestyle Change” for just sixty bucks a month or whatever.
But while we are throwing stones at Hawkins and scolding her for making us all feel like crap, let’s remember that she is entitled to feel like crap too. And other women who look like her, who aren’t models, who might feel like crap about themselves, they are allowed to feel that way too if they want too. Because some of them might be trying to recover or hold on or what the fuck ever. Maybe they are healthy, and have been told to Eat a Sandwich[2], as if it funny or hip, but they can’t gain weight or can’t eat that much for whatever reason.
Or, maybe we, women of any size, are allowed to love our bodies and just be fucking happy, no matter what, and these women on these covers should show us that at any size we can all be beautiful (and maybe we will see more variance soon…but I am a silly, idealistic girl[3]).
We can criticize thin privilege without policing other women’s bodies.
Just sayin’…
[1] Why are women’s sizes arbitrary numbers? Why can’t they be waist measurements? That would be more consistent?
[2] Yes. I linked to them. I want people to see how awful that thread is, and how flippantly and dismissively that is defended, even when it is pointed out to the mod to be harmful. As in, she doesn’t care that some people find it harmful.
[3] I can’t back this up. I am not.
The Importance of Being Ginny Weasley
HPatHBP came out on DVD (finally), and in a way that you can watch a movie in your own home and see things better than you can on the big screen (even in an IMAX, yo), I was able to get a better understanding of some of the things that rubbed me the wrong way about the differences between the book and the movie.
Ginny Weasley is, hands down, my favorite character of the younger HP crowd, the my all time favorite character quite possibly being McGonagall possibly followed by Molly Weasley. I should probably write a post someday explaining why I like Molly so incredibly much, especially when she has been criticized so sharply for being a throw away character for being a SAHM. /digressing
We only get to see snips and snatches of Ginny’s awesomeness. Thanks to the movie adaptations we get glimpses of her untapped potential — the witch she is going to be and the power and brilliance she herself doesn’t yet realize. The books do her slightly less justice, but only slightly. Ginny, possibly from being the youngest and only girl in a very large family of all boy children, has a spark in her (oh, right, the stereotype of the red haired girl!). She isn’t about to be pushed around by all of those older brothers, to whom she has made it clear that she are not to go prodding into her business.
And that includes the matters of her, well, sexuality. Part of what I enjoyed about Ginny is that she is written as a young woman who is aware of and unafraid of her sexuality. From an incredibly het-privileged setting Ginny explores her sexuality and enjoys it almost consequence free as far as I can tell from multiple readings. She experiences the embarrassment of the first crush, a rocky relationship, and deals out and is dealt a fair share of break up. True, Rowling, in the end, gives us the Happily Ever After of letting Ginny have the first boy she ever crushed on forever and ever, and there is fair critique of that, but sometimes in fiction…especially escapist or YA fiction, we don’t mind things that tie up nicely. I don’t speak for every other reader in the whole of the Multiverse, but for me, because of the tumult of the world that Harry Potter has taken us through, with real plots (that make sense *coughtwilightcough*) and depictions of war with characters that you have grown emotionally invested in over the course of seven lengthy novels (and more than one drop-kicked book), well, a Happily Ever After detail can add some salve to a harsh wound of your twin brother dying after you’ve lost your ear. /another digress
It is some of that romance with Harry that was altered in the HBP movie that irritated me. Where Ginny’s character gets a fair amount of healthy buffs in the screen adaptations of OotP that I don’t recall reading in the books:
(one hell of a reducto)
Oh, shit. I think we are going to need a new practice mannequin over here…
I didn’t find this sly and seductive new Ginny that is introduced to us in HBP as enjoyable on screen as I do the confident, funny Ginny, the Quidditch team member Ginny, the fill in as Seeker Ginny. The brilliant, mind-your-own-business, “I do what I want” Ginny. I just didn’t feel like this was the same Ginny in the story…
There are, as The Kid — who is in the last third of reading PoA — pointed out to me, good differences to reading books, in that you get to know what the characters are thinking. Possibly the reason that we never notice that Ginny is subtly laying on the Ladycharm™ is because Harry is oblivious to it, like he has been of Ginny for five whole books. Or, perhaps the screenwriter thought that people would get bored with seeing Ginny bounce around the screen being Harry’s and Hermione’sm pal, telling a rowdy team to STFU and L to him. Ginny, who saves the day because Harry is a bit of a git who lets his temper get to him and his common sense falter leaving her to play Seeker, and then getting the kiss that Ron and Lavender totally steal (which was such a shamelessly self admitting *squee* moment in the book to me. STFU!).
(OK, this one I couldn’t resist…get it…she is like a fucking PPG, all saving the day on her broom and shit! [source])
That moment both ends the build up of Ginny’s five years of “well, I am not going to pine over someone who doesn’t want me” and Harry’s shifting, not quite defined feelings toward her (well, we know what that is called, but this is a PG-13 movie kids…). The movie…didn’t quite do that.
And COME ONE! Stuffing things in his mouth? Getting DOWN ON HER KNEES? Zuh? What kind of movie did I just walk into? *checks the back of the box* It still says PG-13… o_O
I loved the way the movie played up their shared connection over “listening to books that talk to you”, but the trip to the Room of Requirement was slow, awkward, odd…and while I liked parts of it, it just…left me feeling…WTF? There was more hype over Harry ZOMCC totally snogged Cho! But I was certain about a nonillion Harry/Ginny fanfic sprung forth when the sixth book came out…so I would think they could have done the first smooch some more justice… /dogdammit another digress
It also just cut off the whole thing there. That was it. One smooch and we’re out of here. I hear we have two more movies to stretch it out and fuck up the story line some more (like, did anyone else catch that Ron totally joins the Quidditch team in OotP, not HBP, and was a returning member?), fudge some more non-battles, and maybe turn some characters I like into tropes I hate. Who knows?
Anyhow…I can’t keep this post focused. Depending on the aspects of Ginny’s awesomesauceness, one medium or the other is giving her some proppage. IMNSFHO, Rowling could have done more with her, and the screen writers for some of the movies could have been more consistent.
I know I have yet again written about some fiction that has a following, but I am counting on the fact that I have a readership under fifty to keep things tame in comments. Let’s see how that goes…
Monday Random Ten
see more Lol CelebsThere is a thick blanket of beautiful, nigh untouched snow blanketing everything I can see…and it is the first winter we have really had in years. This is actually The Kid’s first one in her living memory. The down side is that the base came to a screeching halt…so we had a Snow Day. Guess no one else around here is from Real Northern Michigan. I can still see the cars…
Anyhow.
Shall we?
- The City — Joe Purdy
- Just Feel Better — Santana featuring Steven Tyler
- Higher Ground — Red Hot Chili Peppers
- Blister in the Sun — Violent Femmes
- Bicycle Race — Queen
- She Will Be Loved — Maroon 5
- Losing Grip — Avril Lavigne
- Open Arms — Journey
- Tell Me (Rap Version) — Wonder Girls
- Get Mine, Get Yours — Christina Aguilera
And of course, I believe we need a bonus video for the week, huh?
The video for the Wonder Girls song is particularly fun.
It starts off with five Korean young women dressed in school uniforms watching television. It seems that you are supposed to determine that four of them are “pretty” and the fifth one is possibly nerdy. Then it switches to dance scenes mixed with scenes of the girls at school. The “nerdy” girl transforms into Wonder Woman when various troubled situations arise, ultimately saving the day.
“killer”…the official mascot of random babble
Go Galavanting!
What a Crazy Random Happenstance!
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how long i’ve been babbling
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Random Babble by Ouyang Dan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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