DnD time (LEGO style!)

Longbottom = BAMF

No one ever really respected Neville Longbottom.

I loved him as a character when I was growing up with the book (I was always a sucker for an underdog) - so maybe I'm slightly biased, but it always pisses me off when he doesn't get the respect that he actually deserves.

In the Potter Puppet Pals he's a butternut squash on a stick who explodes becuase he's too lame, and in the Very Potter Musical he's given the nickname "Schlongbottom" then prompty ignored by everyone - the only fanfic where he's actually given any character is Hary Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but even with the lightsaber, he's still just a Hufflepuff.

After Rowling's treatment of him in the first few books, this is understandable - first impressions count, and everyone's first impression of Neville was a boy who couldn't keep hold of a toad and was terrified of his gran.

But Neville is possibly the character who undergoes the most radical changes throughout the series, if you were to sum up the main characteristics of each of the main characters in the first and last books, you'd have something that looks a bit like this:

    

	Book 1	Book 7
Harry	"The Boy who Lived"	Still Alive
Dumbledore	Infallible Gandalf	Dead, fallible Gandalf
Snape	Evil	Evil because he's sad
Hermione	The brightest witch her age	The brightest witch her age
Ron	Ginger	Still there

Sure each of them makes sacrifices and accomplishments (defeating the Dark Lord, dying, killing, excellent test scores, still being there etc), and I'm not trying to diminish anything that any of them have done (except Ron, because seriously), but it's Neville who actually developes as the books progress, almost as if he was living in an instituion with the greatest teachers of the generation who don't expect him to be the man he'll be for the rest of his life on the first page:

   

Book 1:	He can't remember things he's forgotten even when he knows he's forgotton them, the only thing he can do on a broom is fall off it and the only thing he can do with a potion is melt the cauldron.
Book 2:	He's pretty much a non-entity in this one, his only real accomplishment is not being able to wear pink earmuffs properly.
Book 3:	He starts to conquer his fear, now that he actually has a teacher who can let him do so without also terrorising him further in the process, and allows him to dress Snape up in women's clothes and laugh in his face.     He's still not quite there yet though and, fearing his own inadequacies, inadvertently lets convicted killer into Gryffindor tower.
Book 4:	Starting to come into his own now - he's growing in confidence under the tutelage of Professor Sprout and really starting to like Herbology. His back story is also starting to flesh out a bit: why does he know about the Cruciatus Curse?     He actually holds the key to Harry succeeding the second trial, but obviously the characters still don't know him well enough to even bother asking him if he has any opinions.
Book 5:	Here he helps found an Army in order to better his knowledge of defensive and offensive spells.     Initially everyone's afraid to partner up with him in case he'll blow them up by accident, by the end of the year everyone's afraid to partner up with him in case he blows them up.     He's getting top marks in herbology, and the confidence boost from that carries him through the rest of his classes. Towards the end of the book, mirroring his refusal to stand down in the first one, he refuses to let Harry go to the Ministry alone - and when there he fights some of the Dark Lord's strongest henchmen, including the woman who tortured his parents into madness and never backs down.
Book 6:	By now, most of the character have noticed just how bitchingly awesome Neville is, even McGonagall states that "[His Gran] should be proud of the granson she's got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have".     Nevilles itching to learn some more offensive spells, pleading with Harry to reinstate Dumbledore's Army.     At the end of the book, Neville defends the castle against an invading force with only a few of his friends against a cupboard-full of dark wizards and a paedophagic werewolf.     After the fight at the ministry last year, Neville has a new wand and is no longer inhibited by one which was loyal to another wizard (his father) - with this wand, his full potential is unleashed and he just goes all our crazy on those Death Eaters.
Book 7:	Obviously he's not with Harry through most of the book, but when we catch up with him, it turns out that he's been leading a guerilla campaign against the Death Eaters in the school, hiding out in the Room of Requirement, and leading task forces of students into the depths of the castle to prey on the teachers torturing the students, and recruit as many followers as he can.    In the final battle, he even takes the flowers that everyone called him a cissy for liking, and turns them into full-on sonic grenades that he launches over the castle wall, causing fatal injuries at best, and knocking his enemies out at worst.    Then, with Harry "dead", the Dark Lord turns on Neville and sets him on fire - Neville decides that he doesn't quite like this idea, shrugs of the flames, pulls a sword from a hat and decapitates the nearest giant snake, which also happens to be 1/8 of Voldemort - putting him on equal parr with Dumbledore in terms of how many Horcruxes he destroyed, and remember: his one could actually fight back!

  
    If there's a moral to the Harry Potter series, it's that you should never under-estimate the underdog. Voldemort's inability to see the house-elves as a threat ultimately led to his destuction and death, and cutting the house-elves from the climax of the final movie is, as far as I'm concerned, the only unforgiveable cut that they made in the entire transition.
    Neville, ultimately, epitomises this trope- every other character was either naturally gifted with the brains to cast good spells, or the brawn to cast strong ones. Neville got to his strength through sheer hard work and determination to avenge/honour his parents. And he did it all while wearing a cardigan!

Finally, as a gay man I feel morally obligated to share the following:

BAMF!

Fictional Science Can Be Wrong Science

Let me start this one with a quick disclaimer: I know that the movie is fictional.

    I understand that the technology used in the movie isn't supoosed to be the same type of technology in the real world - and that isn't what this is about. I can accept dinosaur clones for the sake of the movie regardless of whether they're realistic or not.

    What I object to, and what this post is about is the "scientists" themselves, and I use sarcastic quotation marks because these people do absolutely nothing in the entire movie to justify that title.

They don't even wear lab-coats!

    The main plot of the movie basically starts with man-scientist showing how charmingly inept he is at dealing with children, apparently he just happens to carry around a velociraptors claw with him for the sake of terrorising small boys who laugh at his theories.

    After listening to his main reasons for believing that dinosaurs are now birds, it not actually too difficult to imagine why he'd need to carry some kind of anti-bullying protection around with him at all times:

    "Look at the pubic bone, turned backward just like a bird.
Look at the vertebrae, full of airsacs and hollows just like a bird.
And even the word 'Raptor' means 'Bird of Prey'"

    The bone stuff, yeah fair enough maybe, I'm no expert in that field. But as far as I'm concerned that last line alone is enough to immediately discredit someone claiming to be a scientist. He argument seems to be that the ancient Greeks were so good at naming things, that when a bunch of people took one of their words as a metaphor thousands of years later - that's enough evidence to conclude that the two things are actually the same thing.

    I watched this with a fellow linguist, and we both audibly groaned when he was only halfway through the sentence. By the time he'd finished it we were ready to throw things at the TV.

    But the main premise of the movie isn't about dinosaurs being birds, I can almost forgive someone for not realising that words aren't the same thing as reality (almost), it's about an amusement park - an amusement park that's about to be shut down because one of its rides ate one of the workers (or at least gave him a decent mauling). So Colonel Saunders calls in the "scientists" to show them around, and get them to tell everybody how awesome it all is, because if there's one thing that world respects, it's sexy scientists being paid to endorse a product.

He could have at least worn an open lab-coat over that bare chest.

    So these scientists come to the island and it takes them until their first meal to decide that they don't like it. This is actually fair enough and pretty much the only smart thing they do the whole movie - up until this point they've been in a helicopter which doesn't have working seatbelts, almost been trampled by the opening attraction, and gotten off a ride they were supposedly fastened into by simply pushing at the locks and walking through the door into the main lab.

    Does any of this come up? Not one of them thinks "Well, I could get behind this, but maybe make it so that 3 children working in unison couldn't overide your entire security".

    Instead, the object to the fact that the Colenel is "cheating" evolution:

Gee, the lack of humilty before nature that's being displayed here staggers me...
don't you see the danger inherent in what your doing here. Genetic power's the most
awesome force the world has ever seen but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun...
I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any
discipline to attain it, you read what others had done and you took the next step,
you didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it.
 You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could
and before you even knew it you had...
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they "could" they stop to think about whether they "should".

    What pisses me off most about this speech is the bastardised quotation of "we are but dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants", which Wikipedia handily paraphrases as "One who develops future intellectual pursuits by understanding the research and works created by notable thinkers of the past."

    So yeah, not only did the writers of this little speech not understand the very purpose of science, but they butchered a beautiful line which actually summarises everything that scientific progress is about.

    

    Unfortunately, that was only sexy-scientist warming up his complete lack of understanding. He's angry at the Colonel for not earning the science for himself, because if there's one thing that scientists do on a regular basis, is discover a field that no one ever has investigated before and take the experimentation to such a level that it's theoretical and practical implications are so well understood that no one ever needs to bother with it again.

  But then he goes on:

Dinosaurs had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction...

What's so great about discovery? It's a violent, penetrative act that scars.
What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world.

    That little spark of rhetoric is what I hate the most about the film. True, it was only one man's opinion but the others didn't exactly shoot him down; lady-scientist just nodded her head and moved the conversation onto the eco-system. None of these people are fit to wear the lab-coats they're so desperately avoiding.

    Sexy-scientist literally compares the scientific method to rape - not even subtly so, he actually uses the word "rape". The Colonel is trying to augment the natural world, to bring about a new stage of life that we didn't think could have even been possible only years previously. He makes the point himself: sure, dinosaurs are what's gonna bring the crowds in, but the profits can go to wildlife preservation or saving the countless animal and plant species that have been wiped from the planet by mankind. He only goes so far as to talk about condors, but think what we could learn from a cloned neandrathal, a being with the same capabilities of sentienty as humans, but with a radically different interpretation of the world.

    Dinosaurs are the first step, and sure he'd have probably been safer with a nice Dodo petting-zoo, but that wouldn't bring in the money to give them the lee-way to turn the attention onto the practical implications of this kind of discovery could have for mankind.

    And what really gets me, what pisses me off so much more than the fact that a man who calls himself a scientist can have those opinions of "discovery", is that in the Jurassic Park world, he's right!

    This is a man who repeatedly states that "life will find a way", and that the problems in the movie are the Colonel's fault for "angering evolution". These are the people that the world turns to when death itself has been redefined, and the limitations of what it means to be alive have been infintely expanded, and yet none of them can tell the difference between "life", "evolution" and "karma". And to make it worse, they seem to believe that all three of them are conscious, self-aware and petty forces who like to kill people that annoy them.

   

    If the movie makers are going to sacrifice education for entertainment, then that's fine, I object, but it's their perogative - but this movie replaced it with miseducation. There's already enough fear and misunderstanding regarding what evolution actually is - children don't need to be afraid that it's actually going to send dinosaurs after them when they're sitting in the bathroom.

Pictured: NOT evolution

And that's why I hate this movie.

Victoria Jackson: "I'm not a homophobe, I'm a moron"

I'm not a homophobe, I'm a moron.

So Victoria Jackson said a whole bunch of stuff about what I think was one of the best scenes in one of my favourite TV shows. I had to take this opportunity to sit down, go through her arguments, and list every reason why she’s wrong.

I’ll try and see the point from both sides, and would love to hear comments both agreeing and disagreeing me in order for this to be a “well-rounded” analysis.

The interview starts with Jackson embarrassing herself not noticing she’s on camera and struggling with the words “your welcome”. When the interviewer shows the scene in question Jackson objects, and actually tries to cover her eyes so she doesn’t need to see it. I’m gonna try and not make this personal (ad hominem arguments are some of the worst), but seriously? Are you 5 years old? Your voice makes you sound like it, yes, thats unfortunate…but you don’t need to act like it!

The first question asked is something along the lines of “how do you respond to accusations that your homophobic?”. I thought we were going to get a well-prepared summary of the leading anti-gay thoughts of the day (they don’t procreate, they’re not natural etc etc.).

Instead, She holds up the bible (which I’m assuming she brought herself for this sole purpose), stumbles over her words (again) and comes out with “I doesn’t matter what I think, It’s what’s in the bible that counts”. She goes straight from that (with no actual explanation of what’s in the bible), onto the “immorality in our country”. Apparently she can’t finish that train of thought, however, so she goes straight onto accusing what she calls “secular humanism” of ruling the airwaves and stealing our children’s innocence.

What does this even mean? There are plenty of religious ‘airwaves’ out there, religious TV shows and radio broadcasts. The internet has thousands of apps and sites designed to bring the bible further into your life. But also,  the ‘airwaves’ are run by businesses, whose responsibility is to their profit - they merely supply what is needed to fulfil the demand of modern culture. If that’s vampires and gay kisses then that may be unfortunate (seriously, what's with all the gay vampires lately?) that’s what happens, if Christianity was more profitable then there would more shows devoted to it.

Jackson can’t find any show that her child can watch. Good for her! As a parent you should be enforcing control on what your child is subjected to; but that only works in one way. You should stop your children from watching what you think is bad for them, but you can’t force people to provide what you think is good for them. Again, the ‘airwaves’ aren’t for you, their for the population at large. If you need to censor everything on TV, then perhaps your censorship guidelines are too strict.

The interviewer repeats her question (“Do you think you’re homophobic?”), at which point Jackson calls ‘homophobia’ a ‘cute little buzzword’. Fuck you Jackson!

Homophobia is not a ‘buzzword’. People don’t say it to attract attention. You said a gay kiss was morally wrong and sickening. Not because it was a kiss, but because it was gay. Even only using the origins of the word (fear rather than hatred of gays), you’re homophobic: when they showed the clip of the kiss, you covered your eyes and whimpered. Don’t try to avoid the question, you’re homophobic by every definition of the word, admit it so we can move on.

But no, she’s only doing what the bible says!  Seriously? You’re worried about your country because of it’s immorality. I’m worried about your country because its filled with people like you, who claim things aren’t their fault becuase they were just following rules: if the rules are homophobic and you choose to follow them, you’re homophobic.

But apparently the whole “liberal-agenda” (I’m not really part of American pop-culture but that sounds like a cute little buzzword to me) is anti-Jesus. No. I’m not entirely sure what the ‘agenda’ is, but I’m fairly certain it’s something along the lines of letting people choose. I’d consider myself a liberal (though I’d want clarification on the definition); for me it’s all about choice. Choose to follow Jesus? Fine! Choose not to? Fine! Choose to force me not too? Not fine! Choose to force me to? Not fine!

The host brings it back to the Glee topic, reading out a quote for a viewer. Listen carefully: when she reads “…these are things happening in real-life…” you can here Jackson scoffing in disbelief. To me that just loses her all credibility. You don’t think gays should be living their lives? Fine, that’s your opinion. You don’t think gays are living their lives? You're insane. Literally! You don't need to believe in UFOs to believe there are people who think they’ve been abducted. If you don’t think this episode reflects real-life (the gay bits at least; my life is far too musical-less) then you are wrong. That’s not something you can have an opinion about, its a fact: there are gays.

Jackson then makes a sly, underdeveloped comment about how Glee is not helping kids. I’m gonna leave that there: since she doesn’t develope on it, neither can I.

Then she apparently makes up a new statistic on the spot that 50% of teenagers have a new STD from all the oral sex thats apparently happening all over the place. Does someone know where she got her figures? Please tell me. I want to know what this new STD is so I can protect myself from apparently half of every single teenager I meet.

Her solution to fantasy? Celibacy. NO! NO! NO! You don’t tell kids not to do it, you tell kids they shouldn’t; but that if they do, they should use protection. You’re against sex because of STD’s? We have a way to literally remove that risk from sex. All the good stuff, none of the bad! Kids are gonna want the good stuff, nothing you say will stop that in most cases. Why try to remove the whole thing completely, when you can take out the only thing in it that you object to?

Another under-developed comment; but apparently the agenda of these shows is “trying to make kids gay”. I really don’t want to get into a “it’s not a choice” argument cause they go nowhere, but the point is that these shows are telling kids it’s ok if they are gay, not that they should be.

Then she asks what must be the single most fucked up series of half-thoughts that have ever been uttered without drooling halfway through:

“Why are liberals pro-muslim and pro-gay. Muslims kill gays!”

Apparently thats confusing to her. I’m going to try to explain my standpoint: I’m pro-choice. Pro-choice on everything. You can choose to be Christian, so long as you don’t infringe on someone’s right to choose to act on their homosexuality. And the same with Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews etc. I don’t care how you let me live you lives, so long as they don’t interfere with mine.

I’m not pro-Musilm, I’m not pro-Christian and I’m NOT pro-gay. I’m also not anti-Muslim, nor anti-Christian, nor anti-gay. There are neutral spaces that can be occupied. Muslims kill gays, thats wrong. That doesn’t mean I think it’s ok for Christians to kill Muslims.  

My moral loyalty lies to a principle NOT to a group of people.

But not Jackson. Apparently since she loves God, everyone who is against her view that gay is wrong is also against God:

“The only thing I can come up with is that since gays hate God, and Muslims hate God…”

At that point the host cuts her off, I’m assuming before she states that the ‘liberals’ are forming some kind of anti-God alliance. This made me angry. I mean, what the fuck! First even if both groups hate God, that would not be the reason why I’d “side” with either one. Second do you know what a Muslim is? They follow the teachings of Islam - which is based of the same holy text as your own. “Muslim” actually means “one who submits to God”. Shut your Goddamn mouth and learn something before trying to teach it!

At this point I’m afraid I have to give up. She’s pissed me off far too much to continue analysing her ignorance and her hatred.

Before I stop though, one final comment: in the episode with the kiss, Glee included a character who was a parody of Tea-Partier. She hated the Dalton performance because it involved a duet between two boys.

Jackson has taken that parody, which I took to be a stereo-type played up and exagerrated for comic effect, and she’s turn it into a reality. The same hatred coming from the character is now coming from her, except that she was waving a bible in our faces as screamed.

Justin Beiber Rapist

Now I know lots of people hate Bieber; he’s up there with High School Musical and Twilight and I can see why. He’s got a whiny little voice as he’s singing about love and romance which he’s obviously to young to understand, not to mention the homophobic and anti-abortion “opinions” that he “has” that are being spread around his fans as facts of life. Now that may be why lots of people hate him, but have they actually watched his video? Have you? Click that link, I’ll wait…

Done? Ok, let’s start.

So it starts off innocently enough Bieber crying “Ohh Waaoohh x3” (quoted from the official lyric sheet) sticking his hand in his pocket, then heading to a bowling alley with some of his friends - I did that when I was 15 too (the pocket and bowling bits, not the “ohh waaoohh” bit), that's all fine.

Then at about 0:13, he sees some girl with her friends, and immediately declares that:

“You know you love me, I know you care. Just shout whenever, And I’ll be there. You want my love, You want my heart, And we will never ever ever be apart”

Does that strike anybody else as wrong? We can only assume that they’ve met before, because if I shouted that to a girl in a bowling alley I’d be arrested. Check out the main girl’s friend’s face at 0:17, even in the video the characters are thinking this little punk is just a bit too rape-y for their liking.

Then things start to take a turn for the worse as far as “Baby” is concerned (just the fact that that’s the only thing he calls her has me concerned for her health): at 0:39, after stating that she thinks of them as “just friends”, he grabs her jacket and pulls her towards him. 

When she struggles and pulls away, he’s starts shouting about his broken heart. He dances around her friends calling her “baby” over and over, then sits on that little ball dispensing gadget so that the only way she can get her bowling ball is to grab it from his crotch. 

When that doesn’t work he’s goes for a more direct approach at 0:54 and places his crotch right where her hand is and starts stroking her hair.

Baby finally gets the common sense to walk away from this creep, but then he starts with the “Baby, baby no” and follows her through the bowling alley rolling over pool tables to block her exit. At 1:20 Bieber’s friends join in on the fun and start egging him on since they too obviously “can’t believe [they’re] not together”

and at 1:24 Bieber realises that walking along banisters doesn’t really impress the ladies, so takes to grabbing at her clothes again.

After a quick crotch-thrust from the Beebz, Mr. Ludicris comes to his aid at 2:13, apparently distracting the camera’s attention with nonsense statements about not needing coffee when he was 13 (did anyone), while Bieber slips some rohypnol in Baby’s diet coke.

Around about 2:46, the rohypnol kicks in and Baby starts to become impressed by Bieber’s I-don’t-care attitude. She’s no longer the victim; instead it’s now the poor bowling alley’s cleaner who’s gonna have to take care of all the alleys Bieber and crew dance upon  and apparently all she’s looking for in a guy is a dark-side that’s not aimed at her.

(seriously, guys, they give you special shoes for a reason)

Finally, at 3:26 we learn that the girl who’s been singing backing vocals the whole way through was actually Bieber himself, but by that point it’s too late for that to mean anything; Bieber and Ludicris share a congratulatory handshake on a job well done, and then it’s off to the Pizzeria’s bathroom stall where Baby will have to:

“Just shake me til’ you wake me”

When Glee covered this they made it look all cute and innocent and about Chord Overstreet’s hair. Were they missing something? Or have I just become way to cynical and able to read anything into anything? 

All jokes aside; she's drugged and he’s forcing her hand into his crotch. Right? I’m not the only one seeing this?