laurus_nobilis: (I HATE YOU UNIVERSE)
I hate the whole "first world problems" thing. It makes me want to punch people in the face. I've always had trouble articulating why, though, but now I've found this:

I don't like this expression "First World problems." It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn't disappear just because you're black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here's a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.


YES. YES.

(Fair warning: if you agree with me about this, the comments of that article will make you want to punch people in the face, too.)
laurus_nobilis: (Archimedes)
So, X-Men: First Class. It was fun! I liked it more than the other X-Men movies, but I don't know if it's better or if it's just my WISE OLD MENTOR BACKSTORY thing again.

That said, I feel it's my duty to make an oh so tiny clarification:

spoilers for a five-minute location )
laurus_nobilis: (I HATE YOU UNIVERSE)
(This one, in case you haven't seen it.)

Instead of ranting about it, I'm going to 1)link to a great fix (thanks to [livejournal.com profile] etrangere for the link!), and 2)follow [livejournal.com profile] allira_dream's idea and channel my RAAAAGE in a positive way:

GIVE ME A CHARACTER WHO IDENTIFIES AS FEMALE. Then I will write you the reasons why the lady is awesomer than awesome. It might be my squealing, it might be a drabble, it might be five reasons. The point is, I will gush about a female character, then YOU can gush about said female character and we will all be a little bit happier because 'FUCK YEAH, SHE'S AWESOME'.

I'll probably go for squealing/listing reasons instead of drabbles. But still. GO WILD.

Martha Jones (Doctor Who) - spoilers for the end of season 3
Sari and Arcee (Transformers: Animated) - spoilers for the end of the series
Donna Noble (Doctor Who) - implied spoilers up to End of Time
Trucy Wright (Apollo Justice)
Katara (Avatar: the Last Airbender)
Karrin Murphy (The Dresden Files)
Airazor (Beast Wars)
Nakuru (Card Captor Sakura) and Suki (Avatar: the Last Airbender)
laurus_nobilis: (Archimedes)
... and I'm saying that mostly just to give you people an idea of where I'm up to. Because I would like to make a proper post, but SO MANY THINGS HAPPENNED OMG. I feel like Mark. SHIT JUST GOT REALER!


Also, apparently the reason why I haven't been able to see any Tinypic images in a month or so is that they aren't providing their service to Argentina anymore. :| Which... oooookay. I mean, I can sort of get not letting people from here upload pictures (apparently the reason was that they didn't sell enough premium memberships here? or something?), but... we can't see anything anyone uploads? What the hell, Tinypic?

I mean, yes, we can use proxies but still.
laurus_nobilis: (Archimedes)
So I spent most of yesterday wondering why on earth people were so upset about LJ adding a ticky-box they can just ignore if they don't want to crosspost, and then I read that other people can crosspost your stuff. Uh. Ooookay. Why are those things never clear?

You know the drill, don't crosspost without asking. I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here, though.


In completely unrelated news: it's raining, so my dog's inside the house. The plate with her food is still outside, somewhere dry. And a neighbour's cat keeps sneaking towards it, staring at me for a few seconds to see if I'll kick him out, and then sneaking away again with some food. Every five minutes or so. It's so ~careful~ and everything.

I'd love to share a photo but of course, every time I try to take one he runs away. Oh well.
laurus_nobilis: (Dumbledore's got style)
Dear certain sectors of the Harry Potter fandom:

The Harry Potter books are a coming of age story.

Reading a coming of age story and complaining because children/teenagers solve problems instead of adults is like watching an action movie and complaining because the hero solves problems instead of letting professionals do it according to protocol.

No love,
Me

Also, flist, remind me to write a huge Why I Love Albus Dumbledore post one of these days.

(Next on "people who make Laurus rant": fans who complain because an '80s cartoon made to sell toys feels like an '80s cartoon made to sell toys.)


tl;dr I tend to be a Doylist and that makes my life so much happier.
laurus_nobilis: (Archimedes)
Day 2: Your least favourite character

This one was easy )
laurus_nobilis: (Star/Sky - to boldly go)
So, Transformers fandom, where did you get the idea that Skyfire is a doormat? Because, while I can't deny that G1 is not precisely made of wonderful 3D character development and there's a lot of filling-in-the-blanks to do in Fanfic Land, it's not that hard to miss that his whole intro episode is about him getting in trouble for not being a doormat.

But noooo, he's calm and gentle, so of course that must mean he takes any kind of abuse without so much as defending himself, and is completely incapable of saying "no" to anyone, and is such a pushover that he does anything he's told to. You know, like shooting those Auto- OH WAIT.

Seriously, fandom. In 25 minutes the guy gets in trouble with Megatron for "overstepping his authority" (!), gets shot for refusing to kill people and generally be a bad guy just because his Bestest Friends says so, and then proceeds to fight back said ex-friend as soon as he's repaired enough to do so. He's not a pushover! And, again, G1 is hardly the land of subtle hints. I'm not asking you to read between the lines, here.

... but yeah, look at the subject. I don't even know why I'm surprised anymore. Showing basic politenes = being a doormat, obviously.
laurus_nobilis: (Know-it-all)
I've been wanting to write a post about Clow in Tsubasa for a while, now. I know, it's been a relatively long time already; this isn't exactly a reaction. It's more like rambling about why I reacted that way. Because, well, I was surprised that some things bothered me as much as they did.

I like Wise Old Mentors who made huge mistakes in the past, after all. I like them a lot. It's one of my favourite character types. So why did finding out that Clow had made a huge mistake make me headdesk so much instead of appreciating it as rounding his character? Well, I think I've finally figured it out, now that I've taken the time to look at the whole thing with a cool head instead of ranting in frustration about it.

So here's my very, very belated rambling about it. As far as spoilers go: I'm going to talk about Tsubasa up to its ending, but I'm not touching xxxHOLiC Rou at all. (I've got my issues with that one too, but they have nothing to do with this particular rant.)

Cut for length and TRC spoilers )
laurus_nobilis: (WHINE WHINE WHINE)
... so, a few days ago I was joking that I might write a post about how Starscream and Skyfire's story would have been like if they were CLAMP characters. But then I saw the actual latest CLAMP chapters and it immediately stopped being funny. Siiiiigh.

Hint: if an underdeveloped side character from an '80s cartoon made solely to sell toys has more common sense than all your Tragic Heroes put together, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

*runs away from actual CLAMP fans*
laurus_nobilis: (TARDIS drawing)
I don't know if these Tsubasa spoilers are true or not, but if they are, that's even more stupid than anything I ever expected. A lot of people in that thread posted reasons why it wouldn't make any sense and I agree with all of them, but, well. It's CLAMP. I wouldn't put it past them to pull off something this stupid. Then again, if they can screw up their own canon, so can I! :D So if these spoilers turns out to be the real thing, my new philosophy for CLAMP fanfic will be "Let's pick the bits of canon I like and ignore the rest. IT'S WHAT THE PROS DO!"


... anyway. Yeah. Who.

spoilers )
laurus_nobilis: (McGonagall)
Yes, I know I should be writing instead of reading Harry Potter forums. I guess I deserved the headache, although I didn't think I'd find many reasons to headdesk in a sane place like the Sugar Quill. But the way HP fandom treats villains creeps me out.

Spoilers for Deathly Hallows, you guessed it )


ETA: I remembered I'd promised I'd keep meta-ish posts public. Oops. It's unlocked now.
laurus_nobilis: (Master y Voldie)
Nunca me sentí tan bananera como hoy. Tan, pero tan bananera, que se merece un post público y todo.

Yo voto en una escuela tranqui de Ballester, y voy relativamente temprano para hacer más rápido (o sea que me toca con casi todos los viejos del barrio). Ya fui tres veces antes y nunca tuve un problema.

Hoy mi hermana y yo estuvimos ahí desde las 9:45 a las 11:45. La primera hora y media la pasamos en la entrada del colegio. No es que hacíamos cola en las mesas: no dejaban entrar a la gente al edificio. Y nosotras tuvimos suerte porque por lo menos quedamos en el hall. En la vereda había un caos.

En vez de hacer pasar a la gente por orden de llegada llamaban por número de mesa. A algunas mesas llamaban cuatro veces seguidas, a otras nos tuvieron esperando más de una hora. Obviamente, avisaban adentro y la gente no escuchaba. Más caos.

A todo esto las mesas estaban en el segundo piso. Cada vez que entraba un viejo trasladaban toooda una mesa abajo y después la volvían a subir. A nadie se le ocurrió poner las mesas abajo desde el principio.

Había dos Sargentos García dando vueltas por ahí pero, por supuesto, los que tenían que tratar de calmar a la gente eran una chica petisita y un muchacho de veintipocos.

Cuando por fin llamaron a nuestra mesa resultó que hacía cuarenta minutos que no recibían a nadie. Nadie se sorprendió. Además resulta que subimos en el momento justo, porque ahí se armó en serio. Se escuchaban los insultos desde el segundo piso. Subió gente descompensada. Subió una señora llorando.

Cuando bajamos no podíamos salir. Por fin se les había ocurrido hacer entrar a la gente a la escuela (o la gente se mandó sola, no sé). La gente que esperaba nos preguntaba a los gritos qué mesa se había vaciado porque los fiscales no avisaban. Afuera ya se habían agarrado a trompadas.

Repito: en una escuela tranqui de Ballester, donde nunca hubo problemas, a la mañana temprano. Yo me pregunto... si esto es al principio de la votación, ¿qué va a pasar a la tarde? ¿Qué va a pasar con el recuento?

Y el caos no es el único problema. Mi mamá, que voto en otro lado, tuvo que avisar que faltaban boletas... a las once de la mañana. Prendo la tele: hay denuncias de que faltan boletas por todos lados. Ya arrestaron a un fiscal (a qué no adivinan de qué partido) por tratar de votar dos veces.

Yo no sé ustedes pero a mí me da toda la sensación de que va a ser facílismo que haya fraude.

ETA: Poder Ciudadano denuncia la falta de boletas en la Provincia. O sea, no me lo estoy imaginando.

Profile

laurus_nobilis: (Default)
Laurus Nobilis

January 2013

S M T W T F S
  12345
6789101112
131415 16171819
2021 2223242526
2728293031  

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios