Screw Sharks, Think Of The Dolphins!

So I was going through the junk folder on my oldest email account, just to see if I was missing anything, and I found this petition: "The Cost of Shark Bait Soup: Dolphins Chopped Up And Skinned Alive."  The hysterical summary cries out about the sadful sadness that is the dead dolphins, butchered by those horrible fishermen.  They just don't appreciate these amazing creatures!  Also something about havoc on the ecosystem.  The dolphins, though!  The dolphins!

Seriously.  The first paragraph of the petition's description reads, "Shark fin soup comes with a price. And we're not talking the thousands people pay to eat it — we're talking the mass killing of sharks, the disruption of our oceans' ecosystem, and the brutal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of dolphins used by fishermen as shark bait."  The other two paragraphs, however, focus exclusively on the fate of the dolphins, and the petition itself is asking the Peruvian government to better enforce the ban on dolphin meat.

I didn't sign the petition.  Normally, I'm a sucker for petitions.  I know they don't actually have any real effect, most of the time, and they are an easy way for someone to pretend to be an "activist" without actually doing any real, meaningful activism.  But sadly, I'm guilted into signing them pretty easily.  A corporation has done something mean!  I must take a stand, or else I am supporting them!  An animal is being abused?  I must sign this, or else I will be as bad as the people abusing it in the first place!  Et cetera, et cetera.  But I didn't sign this one.  In fact, I was kind of offended by it.

For one thing, they don't ever mention which kind of dolphin is usually being slaughtered.  It makes me a little suspicious.  After all, while there certainly are endangered breeds out there, the bottlenose dolphin, for example, isn't endangered in the slightest.  Neither the petition nor the article it links even throws in a sentence like, all dolphins are killed, regardless of endangered status!  Also, dolphins are kind of dicks.  I admit, I've got a bit of my own personal bias going on too: dolphins are just so universally adored, but I just don't see how they are any cuter or more endearing than another type of animal, and after a lifetime of hearing about how they're so sweet and friendly and spiritual and they have such a connection to us and "My spirit animal is a dolphin because I just love dolphins" I just got kind of annoyed by them.  I don't actively dislike dolphins or anything, they just don't register as special to me the way they seem to for everyone else.  

Which leads me to what is probably the main reason I didn't sign the petition: it was just obsessed with the freaking dolphins, and it completely ignored the worse industry: shark fishing.  Even though the petition's page starts out by directly mentioning shark fin soup, which kills a huge amount of sharks annually, it's the freaking dolphins that matter.  They're as bad as dolphins, taking an industry that's explicitly about killing sharks in horrible ways and only being concerned with the way it affects the one animal that's popular and cute enough for them to stir up emotions over.  It's killing the dolphins that will ruin the ecosystem, folks! The shark killing is just a little side drama to add to this horrible dolphin tragedy!

You could probably say that sharks are my dolphins: everyone else seems to think they're just awful, but I love them to pieces, and the shark fishing industry just breaks my heart.  The dolphins are getting off easy here.  The article the petition links to even says, "the dolphin is hauled on board and almost immediately dies on the deck of the vessel."  Bleeding profusely, sure, but at least it dies right away.  Compare the poor sharks; a lot of the time, the fishermen don't even kill them before cutting off their fins, and they just toss them back into the water to sink down and die, eaten by predators or drowning without their fins propelling water through their gills.  And I can't think of any non-endangered shark breed subjected to finning off the top of my head.*  Great whites, endangered.  Hammerheads, endangered.  Mako sharks, probably endangered, I can't remember.  Whale sharks and basking sharks, both endangered and greatly sought after.  If the petition really cared about the plight of amazing creatures, it would be objecting to the entire practice of shark finning, not just the way shark finning also includes the death of "cute" animals like dolphins.
*Not to say that there aren't any; I can pretty much guarantee that there are plenty I'm not thinking of.  Just not off the top of my head, like I could with the dolphin thing.

But nope!  Hey Peru, get to work on saving those dolphins!  Those cutie-patooties are the real victims of the shark finning industry!  Assuming this is that magical unicorn petition that actually does have an effect on the real world, what would happen if it worked?  Peru would stop people from hunting dolphins, sure.  But it wouldn't stop anyone from hunting sharks, or from using a different animal as bait.  This petition isn't about animal rights, it's just about dolphins specifically, because people have decided that dolphins alone are worth protecting, but sharks aren't cute enough and "the ecosystem" is too broad and vague to have an emotional impact.  Look at Flipper!  He's always smiling!  Quick, pass a law!

Disclaimer: I'd just like to say, for the record, that I'm not an animal rights activist.  I strongly disapprove of animal abuse, and I love just about any critter that isn't a bug.  I absolutely think there should be laws in place to protect animals, especially endangered ones like the various sharks and dolphins mentioned in this post.  But I also approve of keeping animals as pets, and of using them when it's convenient, I approve of animal testing (look, it's sad that animals get hurt over it but I want to know that my makeup and medicine is safe for living things before it starts getting tested on humans!), and I approve of hunting.  In fact, I think hunting is more humane than animal farming.  At least my moose had the space and freedom to run around and live, and it's not stuffed to the moosey gills with steroids and hormones.  Basically, just because I disagree with how limited this petition is, don't lump me in with those Peta freaks.  

Update: I was on Wikipedia and remembered this article, so I looked up shark finning!  Turns out that of the dozen or so species listed on the page as being commonly fished, only about three of them are non-threatened: blacktips, blues, and tigers.  Well.  They're "near-threatened," so still not great that they are being hunted, but they're still classified as "least concern."  

Disney's Frozen

So I went to see Frozen the other day.  The Snow Queen (which Frozen is very loosely based on/inspired by, and I am linking it because surprisingly most people I've tried to talk to about the movie have never actually read or even heard of Hans Christian Anderson's longest and one of his most famous stories) has always been my favourite fairy tale, ever since I was a kid.  When I found out a few years ago that Disney was making a film based on it I totally geeked out and I've been waiting for it in eager anticipation ever since.  At least until I saw the first trailer and lost all hope in a just and fair world.  I mean, look at this crap:

Oh joy, obnoxious non-human sidekicks, how original.  I can't wait to watch a movie full of that snowman's horrible voice squawk out gag-worthy one-liners while the big dumb caribou tries to eat his nose and they have horrible unfunny slapstick scenes all over the place.  The other trailers did equally terrible jobs of selling the film, because I just looked some up and they made it look like utter crap.  I'm really glad now that I only saw the one above and not any of the others, because aside from looking awful, they spoil some great jokes and some neat scenes in the film.  If this had movie bombed, I'd blame the trailers completely fucking over a good thing, not the movie itself.

Anyway, I went to see it anyway (because there was no way I was passing up any version of The Snow Queen, especially a Disney version, no matter how they butchered it), and was very pleasantly surprised.  It was actually pretty fantastic!  Not like the trailers at all!  There's still some stuff that I think could have been done better, but a lot of it really exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations.  I'm probably going to start going into spoilers while I write this, by the way, just in case anybody is worried about that stuff.  I forgot to mention it earlier -- sorry!  At least I remembered before I actually said any spoilers.  Anyway, movie talk.  Pleasant surprises!  Go!

There's the music, for one.  I didn't realize this would be a musical.  Well, I figured that as a Disney princess movie there would be a few songs thrown in, but Frozen was a real straight-up musical.  How do I know it was a real straight-up musical?  Well, it's because musicals are the only movies I can watch once then immediately have to watch again.  I downloaded the soundtrack when I got home, but it wasn't really the same because while the songs are still good, it's also a really, fantastically visual movie.  For example, when I went looking for that godawful slapstick trailer to post above, I found they'd also posted Idina Menzel's show-stopping number that I felt was really the centrepiece of the film's soundtrack.  Listening to it alone on the soundtrack has a very Wicked feel (because duh, Idina Menzel), but I didn't notice it quite so much in theatres because of how fantastic I thought all the snow and ice stuff was, plus I was thinking of her more as the character of Elsa and not as the actress Idina.  Watch:

How great is that?  It's a good song, I really liked it on its own, but the song paired with the visuals of Elsa blossoming into the Snow Queen, finding the beauty in her powers by sending gorgeous works of snowflake art spinning around, creating a swirling staircase of frost, and raising a massive palace of aurora-gleaming ice from the mountain and the air itself.  It's one of my favourite scenes in the movie, because it's just such a spectacle.  Mind you, not all the music was great.  I found some songs to be a little grating; for example, Anna's first song, where she is asking Elsa if she wants to build a snowman like she did before.  It's very cutesy, a bit too much so, and some of the lyrics are rather uninspired and don't make the characters all that impressive; for example, "Do you wanna build a snowman?" "Anna, go away!" "Ooookay byyyyyye."  The way the two words were dragged out sounded pretty bland, and it made Anna seem like the least determined person ever.  She desperately wants her sister back!  But as soon as her sister is all, no go away, she's like gosh ok what else can I do.  And growing up with siblings, let me just say I wish it was that easy to get an obnoxious kid to scram.  

Another good surprise was the characters.  The obnoxious sidekicks from the first trailer aren't obnoxious at all in the film!  In fact, they're pretty endearing.  The reindeer doesn't do any slapstick bullshit, as far as I remember, and while the snowman -- I think his name is Olaf?  Or Oglaf, but I hope it's not, for any google-happy kid's sake -- is goofy, sure, but it's not the grating in-your-face goofy that it was in the trailers, it's more...I dunno, I want to say understated but it's really not.  And instead of just being dumb one-liners he's actually got some really funny bits!  And a lot of the time he's not supposed to be funny himself, really, but more setting up for someone else's funny.  For example, when he's singing his I Want song, the song's a joke, sure, but the real joke in the scene belongs to Kristoff, at the end.  I won't spoil it here because I liked it, even though I think one of the trailers might have done already.  Neither of them get as much screen time as the trailer I saw seemed to imply, and what time they do spend onscreen they usually act as actual comic relief, bringing a bit of lightness and humour to an otherwise heavy part of the movie.  Compare Jar Jar Binks, one of the most famously annoying Adorable Non Human Sidekicks In A Kid's Film characters, who had long scenes of him being unbearably annoying and dragging the film down.  No, Frozen did it absolutely right.

Of course, the characters were also one of the things I didn't always agree with.  For one thing, the original fairy tale had such good side characters!  I was so looking forward to meeting the clever Princess, who has read every book in the world and when she decided it was time to get married, she turned down every suitor until she found someone who was only interested in her mind and knowledge and not her face or her riches or anything.  Or the robber girl!  She was just so rad, she's basically just the hero of another story; she shows up as a kid with her mother and the rest of their band of thieves to kidnap Greta (the girl in the original story, I'd say she's Anna in this but she kind of isn't, the Disney version is hugely changed), and steals her horse and her clothes and everything, and she's kind of like an anti-hero; she sleeps with a knife and threatens her pet reindeer with it for a laugh, and threatens to kill Greta, but then when she hears Greta's story she's all "Well that sounds like a pretty awesome adventure! You know what, you go and get on with your bad self, go save your boy if you really think he's worth it" and gives her back her fancy warm clothes (but keeps her fancy muff and instead gives Greta her mom's bulky old mittens, because she's amazing and takes what she wants) and lets her reindeer free on the condition that he will help Greta get to the Snow Queen's palace, and off they go.  And then at the end of the story she shows up again, riding Greta's stolen horse all grown up with a pair of pistols strapped to her hips because she'd decided to wander the world and find her own way, and she's just like "You did it!  You go girl, if I'm ever in your town I'll stop by for a visit" and rides off into the sunset.  But I guess the story was so changed in Disney's version that they couldn't fit them in, or didn't think they suited the tone of the movie or whatever, I don't know -- the point is, they weren't there and that makes me sad because I loved them so much when I was younger.  The Snow Queen was really just full of awesome ladies, and it bums me out that Disney's version didn't have them.  There was a lady for everyone!  There was the good but sad magic woman who wanted to keep Greta, so she tricked her into staying in her garden out of loneliness.  There was the aforementioned genius Princess and the badass robber girl.  There was the Snow Queen herself, who I always loved; she wasn't really a villain, not really.  At least I never got a sense of evil from her in the versions I read.  She was impossible and otherworldly and had a completely different set of morals; she invited Kay to come with her out of loneliness, I thought, and I don't believe it ever would have occurred to her that it was wrong.  After all, she's an ancient and powerful fairy queen who sees mortals live and die in misery all the time, who would miss the little boy who caught her eye?  But whatever.  The story I remember wasn't the story Disney was telling, and that's okay even if I'm sad I never really saw it, because the original story really was just too religious to go over well now.  Let's talk about the character problems that are in the story Disney was actually telling.

For the record, spoilers are going to start here, for reelzies.  I really did like all of the characters in the movie, at least for the first half.  I didn't have any real problems with the characters themselves.  My problem was really where they paired them up or dealt with them at the end.  For example, Anna and Hans, her prince.  They meet in the beginning of the movie and over the course of an evening fall in love and decide to get engaged.  Everybody gives them crap over it, though; Elsa refuses to give her blessing because they'd only just met (which upsets Anna, who grabs her glove off and accidentally reveals her hidden powers to everyone, setting the main drama of the film in motion), and later on Kristoff gives her a hard time over it too and is all, I don't trust your judgment!  Who gets engaged to someone they only just met?  Well...Disney princesses do.  That's why it worked for me.  In the context of a Disney film, especially one of this style, meeting cute and falling in love and knowing you are truly Meant To Be is the norm.  And Anna and Hans were really adorable; he was a super-cute dude, they had a chemistry-filled song about falling in love with each other, he was responsible and helped her kingdom and tried to save her sister after the whole snow thing went down.  So I was really surprised when Hans turned out to be a bad guy in the end.  It really felt like more of a cop-out than a twist, not least because it made a lot of his earlier actions not make much sense.  For example, his plan all along was to marry Anna and have Elsa die in an accident so he could inherit the throne through Anna.  But if that's the case, why try to save Elsa from the Weaseltown dudes when they invaded her palace in the mountains?  If he never loved her, where was all that chemistry coming from in their song together?  And if he's so brilliant he can just come in and take over the kingdom as easily as he did, why was he so dumb as to leave Anna alive in a locked room in her own castle, just assuming she'll drop dead, then wander out and be all "Oh yes, she died (just don't go to look at her ok) and we totallly got married without any witnesses and I have no proof but that's so totally how it went down you guys, and again she is just so very dead in that locked room over there, no need to check and please ignore all knocking or cries for help."  The apparent moral of "you probably aren't really in love with that dude you just met at a royal ball who sang a love duet with you" doesn't really work out very well in a Disney film.  It feels like a last minute change they made in order to set up Anna and Kristoff as the main couple, since they spend most of the film together.

And I realize I'm getting into very shippy territory here, but I don't think they really work out all that well together, either.  Well, they're cute, I guess, and the romance is very light.  But they seemed more like friends for most of the film, with a few ham-handed "he totes has feelings yo" scenes here and there, and I really thought Kristoff would meet and fall for Elsa, the Snow Queen.  It makes sense; his immediate reaction to seeing her beautiful ice stairway and palace is to shed a tear, because as he says, ice is his life (he sells it for a living).  Of course his reaction would be one of admiration before one of fear; he is very well aware of the beauty of ice and snow, and is struck speechless by it the first time he sees anything she's made.  I was really looking forward to them meeting properly for the whole film, and it...it just never really happened.  I don't think they had a single conversation.  Bummer.

But there was another thing I liked!  They kept the shards of ice in the heart/eye from the original story.  Well, the original story actually had shards of glass made by the devil to make things ugly, but I've seen the ice version before too so it works out ok.  And they didn't keep it completely true, but they had the "ice in heart freezes it" thing, and part of the drama at the end is Anna trying to find an act of true love to thaw her freezing heart.  The characters went looking for true love's kiss, and I was sitting in my chair going, "Man, wouldn't it be great if the act of love wasn't romantic?  Elsa loves her sister, she could give herself up and risk being locked away and losing her newfound freedom in exchange for a chance at saving Anna."  And the movie subverted both itself and my expectations; the act of love came from Anna herself, sacrificing herself at the last minute by running away from kissy Kristoff in order to save Elsa from Hans' blade and turning to solid ice right then, so his sword shatters on her frozen hand.  I really liked the idea of the act of love coming from within rather than without, because it shows how powerful love can be.  I kind of liked how Anna saved herself, but then I was like, can it really be "she saved herself" if she did it by sacrificing herself?  There are a lot of narratives out there about how women need to be loving and self-sacrificing, I'm not sure if this one needs fanfare.

Another problem I had with the films were the character designs.  Don't get me wrong, everything was very pretty!  But seriously, everyone looks identical.  Elsa, Anna and their mom have completely interchangeable faces (which, it has been pointed out to me, look basically like Rapunzel's face in Tangled, because Hollywood is only interested in having pretty white girls around and can't figure out how to make them both pretty and look like individual people at the same time.) and it's kind of dull to look at.  If you saw them without the hairstyles or colouring to distinguish them, would you be able to tell them apart?

Courtesy of this tumblr...I think.  I really don't understand how tumblr works, tbh

Another thing I regret about the film is how little I feel like I know the characters.  Compare other movies; in Beauty and the Beast we know Belle spends all her time reading and being a weirdo with her inventor dad.  In The Little Mermaid, Ariel is obsessed with the human world and spends all her time collecting human artifacts and being a weirdo about boys with legs.  Tiana in The Princess And The Frog has a hell of a work ethic and spends as much time as she can working and reading cookbooks and being a frog, which is pretty weird.  In The Aristocats, the kittens spend their time studying high-class stuff like painting and music, but are still kids and would rather play.  The kitten Marie likes to be very feminine and thinks of herself as a lady, while her older brother Toulouse wants to be big and tough like an alley cat.  In Lilo and Stitch, Lilo's main character trait is what a weirdo she is, doing strange things like making weird dolls and practicing voodoo, and she loves to hula dance and take photos of random tourists.  My point here is that I don't get anything like that from Elsa and Anna.  Elsa spent years alone in her room -- what did she do in there all that time, aside from "have magic ice powers"?  Anna ran around the castle....talking to paintings, pretty much.  She rode her bike down the stairs once.  I have no idea what their lives are like or what they do.  What are their personalities like, how do they change once they aren't all alone any more?

One thing I really took away from this movie was, I want more.  Like I was saying earlier, I'd love to see what Elsa did when she was locked alone in her room most of her life, afraid of herself and of what she could do.  Did she become the well-read princess of the original story?  I can imagine her room full of shelves upon shelves of books as she tried desperately to lose herself in fact and fiction in order to distract herself from her hellish, lonely life.  Or what about Anna?  Did she read too, or did she run around bothering the servants all the time?  Did she go outside?  She must have, because she had a horse when the movie started.  Why would she have a horse and know how to ride if she wasn't allowed to leave the castle?  Or how about what happened after the film; did Elsa ever tell Anna that the reason she hid her powers was because she hurt her?  Did Anna ever remember?  How did they deal with suddenly having so many people around; after all, they aren't used to social interaction after being kept shut in for most of their lives.  Does Elsa retreat to her ice palace when she's feeling overwhelmed?  Did Kristoff ever mention that he saw them that night when they brought Anna to the trolls for help?  Basically, I just want all of the fanfic ever, pretty much, because I just didn't get enough character interaction in the movie, and the stuff that I did get was good enough to show me that it would be worth seeing more of.  It might be a little early to say this (and I might be jinxing it, considering Disney's past track record with the subject), but I'd like to see a sequel where we get to know everyone more.  And maybe Elsa and Kristoff will get together in the next film....ah, I kid, I know that a Disney princess is paired for life.  Still though.  It'd be neat.

Rudolph The Rat

So, we have a Christmas rat in the house.  I've named him Rudolph, in the spirit of the season.

Artistic interpretation of Rudolph, except not.  It's just a random Christmas rat picture I stole from Google Image Search.

Sorry for stealing, The Dapper Rat.

He got in a few days ago.  I know, because I'm a complete night owl so I was the only one awake all night to see him.  And I saw him all right, because he was freaking all over the place.  First I heard something moving in the kitchen from my seat in the living room, so I get up and walk down the hallway just in time to see a dark thing scurry across the way from the kitchen door to dad's office.  "Okay," I think to myself, "So we have a mouse."  No biggie.  We live kind of far back from the street, a little into the woods, so we get mice on a regular basis.  Especially in winter when they are looking for someplace warm and full of food to snuggle up in during the cold weather.  In fact, we'd just gotten rid of a mouse or two in the past week with sticky traps.  Personally, I hate the things; I can't stand hearing mice squealing in terror when they're trapped in one, and pretty much all you can do with sticky traps is either crush the mouse to death (we use wine bottles) or, if the poor thing is unlucky, you don't notice it's there so it dies of thirst over a period of days, all the while struggling and screaming and biting at itself in a futile attempt to escape.  Unfortunately they are easily the most effective type of trap.

Anyway, I thought nothing of it at first, but Rudolph wasn't exactly shy, so I realized pretty quickly that it wasn't a normal mouse in the house.  I caught another glimpse of him as he ran behind a cupboard later, and I thought "That seems to be a bit bigger than your average mouse."  Later on I'm back in the living room, sitting on the sofa with my laptop on my lap, and I see something out of the corner of my eye.  I look up just in time to see his tail flash by in the gap between the garbage can and the chair; it's long, dark, thick and held at least an inch off the ground.  I don't know a lot about rats, but as an animal lover I've happily played with friends' pet rats and none of them seemed that big.  But it was most definitely a rat's tail.  Next time I go into the kitchen, I see his adorable ratty face poking out from behind a bag before he takes off.  Later on I get a properly good look at him (and he is huge) when he climbs up onto the tv stand to explore...about five feet away from me.  I guess he figures that as big as he is, he can take anyone, especially the short person on the sofa.  To be fair, he probably has a point.

Anyway, clearly something must be done before Rudolph starts feeling at home.  I spent most of that night chasing after every noise I heard with a bit of pipe in my hand, stomping and shouting at him.  I have no idea how my family slept through it.  I didn't have any proper rat traps, but I had a few mouse-sized sticky traps so I was hoping they could do the trick.  No luck.  I set one behind the bag and in front of the drawers, where I saw him before, and not fifteen minutes later I hard thrashing and the bag rustling in the kitchen.  But when I get there the bag is already knocked over and the trap gone.  I pull out the drawers (they are a plastic set on wheels, we are theoretically still renovating the kitchen) and yep, it was hauled underneath them, no rat inside.  Damn.  Later on, when I catch him trying to go at the big garbage bag (successfully tearing it all to pieces before I can chase him off) I take the ineffective trap and put it by the bag to ward him off, using his freakishly large intelligence against him.  We both know the trap won't actually stop him...but he knows it is a trap.  It must have worked, because he stayed away from the bag after that.  The next day I go to Canadian Tire with Dad and we buy half a dozen rat traps.

The big ones.

We set two as soon as we got home, then promptly lost the bag.  Grammy was spending the night that night, so I stayed up later than usual (or rather, as late as I normally do, but intentionally this time) both to be around to help her if she needed it and to listen for Rudolph and keep him from eating my sleeping grandmother's face Compsognathus-style should he show up.  I heard him rattling around a lot and I think I caught a glimpse of him once or twice, but nothing like the night before.  The next night my brother Sandy hears him; he was int he front of the house, and I was in the living room at the back.  He comes tearing down the hallway like a shot and vanishes into his bedroom, bellowing "MOM SAID I COULD!"  I figure out what he's talking about when he comes out and runs off with a bow and arrow; clearly a Rudolph situation.  I haven't got the pipe at hand this time, so I grab the death stick (an electrified tennis racket I use for flies, a gift from my mother last Christmas) and follow behind.

We don't catch Rudolph, because rats are quicker than people looking for weapons to kill rats with, lucky for them.  But we do find the Canadian Tire bag with the rat traps in it, so we set a bunch.  Two around the front of the house, where we keep hearing him.  One behind the silverware drawer, where I saw him that one time.  One in the attic where Sandy thinks he heard him and where we found a dead bird that Rudolph may or may not have been eating.  One in the bathroom behind the tub, where my parents think he might have gotten in by squeezing around the pipes.  One underneath the record player; I haven't seen him over there yet, but mice like that area as we've caught a few in the sticky traps below there, so we might luck out with Rudolph.  I feel like there's another one or two that I have forgotten, but I don't think there actually are.  I'm just imagining things.  Anyway, we rat-proof the house as best we can and post a list of the traps on the fridge so nobody breaks a finger digging too deep in the food cupboard under the microwave and go to bed.  The next day when I get up somebody's scribbled "RAT IN BATHROOM TRAP" but I checked and the trap has been sprung but there's no rat in it.  I think he set it off and someone heard that and wrote it down without checking to see if it actually got him.

I am hoping we catch him before Christmas.  I don't want Rudolph getting into and ruining my Christmas candy or anything.  Sandy had to get rid of his Christmas stocking last year because a mouse chewed a hole in it.  Not during Christmas, I mean, but over the summer when he had it put away.  And Dad is already sick of dealing with rodents getting into the garbage box down the driveway and ripping the garbage bags up and spreading trash everywhere, we would rather keep that out of the house if at all possible.  If we do catch him I will post updates and possibly pictures, if I ever find my camera cable to connect to the computer so I can actually take my photos off the camera!

Rise of the Guardians

Yeah, I watched that tonight.  Rise of the Guardians was actually somewhat better than I was expecting.  I vaguely remember seeing the trailer in theatres.  I don't remember my exact reaction, but I remember being pretty unimpressed and convinced that it was a must-miss.  I gave in today after a few friends recommended it, and I was pleasantly surprised.  It wasn't mind-blowingly amazing, but it was okay.  And that's way better than I thought it would be.

I'm not gonna go into any detail explaining the plot here, by the way.  I can't be bothered, really.  It was a good plot, so there's no fun to be had in really mocking it, but it wasn't an incredible plot so there's not a lot of gushing I could do either.  So if you're curious, either watch the movie yourself, look it up on Wikipedia or resign yourself to a life of never knowing.  I really don't care.  This isn't a review, all I'm doing is rambling about a few of the reactions I had during the movie.

First off: the character designs.  Some of them were really cool.  Santa was awesome.  The Tooth Fairy was really neat as well.  I loved Santa's Naughty and Nice arm tattoos, and his very Russian-badass portrayal.  His outfits were way cooler than the traditional red-with-white-trim santa suit -- the red-with-black-trim coat was quite striking, actually -- and I liked how he wasn't really fat, just big.  It was an interesting portrayal of a very classic, iconic character.  The Tooth Fairy was adorable, really birdlike and enthusiastic, and she had just the prettiest eyes.  Her little fairy helpers were cute too!

I didn't realize until after the movie was over and I was discussing it with my sister exactly how offensive the Easter Bunny was.  During the movie all I thought was "Oh, he's....not very interesting.  Kind of boring, really."  And then later on I'm like, "Holy shit, was that racist?  Or something?  Is there a world like racist that refers to countries and cultures rather than race, or does it all fall under racism?"  But yeah, it was something, all right.  The Easter Bunny had an Australian accent, and tribal tattoos or something, and, you know, he's a rabbit.  That super-invasive species that ruined everything in Australia and is still causing hella problems.  Man, that was a bad choice, Dreamworks.  Shame on you.  Think better next time.

Jack Frost's design was...ehhhh?  Overall I guess I liked it -- I mean, I liked his face and his staff and mostly I liked his movements, even if they weren't always as creative as I would have liked.  But his outfit...ugh.  So boring.  He starts out with an interesting enough outfit, right in the beginning -- it's like a cloak that reflects light rather interestingly in the moonlight, and reminded me of frost.  Clever!  But then fast forward a few hundred years and he's running around in...a hoodie.  Okay, fine, a hoodie with frost on it, but still.  How dull can you get?  That's part of the reason I never liked the trailer, I think, the character just looked too bland to be interesting, and his outfit was too modern and casual to make any impression about his personality.

And the Boogeyman, or Pitch Black.  Wait that's a terrible name, I'll just stick with Boogeyman.  His character design was baaaaaaad.  Like, really bad.  Well, more like really boring, but for a villain that's baaaaaaad.  Come on! The guy is darkness itself, he moves through shadows and controls nightmares -- you could have had so much fun with that!  Like the evil lady in Sinbad, that was a kind of dull movie but she was just so cool, her movements and actions and everything, it was just wow, you know?  You could have channeled some of that for the boogeyman here.  His body could have shifted with the shadows, changing shape and size, slipping away one minute then towering above everyone the next.  Or he could have stayed perfectly still most of the time and the scenery would move around him, how neat would that look?  And even without the change in movements, he looks so dull.  Just a plain black robe, plain black hair, nothing distinctive about him.  Why not clad him in shadows, so his robe melts into the scenery around him, or make his facial features subtly change depending on who he's talking to and what he wants?  He could have been made so much more creepy than he turned out to be.  I find that usually it's the villain that makes a film for me, and the Boogeyman being such a let-down was really part of why I found Rise of the Guardians a little lacking.

Another thing that bugged me during the film was how the children's belief in the Guardians worked.  As a kid I never really believed in Santa or the Tooth Fairy or anything, and if I ever did it would have been when I was very young, too young to remember.  But it seems to me that a child who really believed wouldn't immediately dismiss those beliefs as soon as one little thing happened.  One night of teeth not being picked up led to the Tooth Fairy immediately losing her powers -- what?  Wouldn't the kids' initial reaction be more "What, why didn't she come, what happened, why?" rather than "Oh, no quarter, guess she was never real!"  Or no eggs in an egghunt, or no presents at Christmas.  Either the non-believing parents would have put out at least a few eggs or presents of their own, so the kids wouldn't immediately lose faith, or the parents would realize that eggs and presents and tooth money shows up without fail and thus the Guardians are kind of undeniably real.  Also, a single night of bad dreams led to children everywhere losing all their faith in the Guardians?  My god, what sort of idyllic fantasy world is this?  Oh no, I had a nightmare last night!  Time for an existential crisis.  IS THERE NO GOD?!?!?!

And finally, the barefoot thing.  Jack Frost is barefoot through the whole movie, even in the parts that show his life as a normal human.  At one point some kids run outside in the middle of the night, stopping to grab coats and hats but for some reason not shoes -- the one thing you really, really need when you're running out into the snow.  What is the deal?  Movie, why do you not understand cold?  Well, maybe not.  Early on it shows kids celebrating a "snow day" when there's maybe a light sprinkling of snow -- not even enough to cover the grass!  If a city thinks that less than an inch of snow is significant enough to shut down schools, why would the kids have sleds?  They clearly don't get enough snow to use them. You are weird, movie.  All of this?  This is why you are only pretty good instead of awesome.  Try better next time, okay?

The Tinder-Box, by Hans Christian Anderson

I love old fairy tales.  They're amazing.  They're nothing like modern fairy tales, because old, original fairy tales are delightfully dark.  One of my favourites is Hans Christian Anderson's story of the tinder box.  The "hero" is just so gleefully evil and the story doesn't seem to realize at all.  It serves as an example of how fairy tales don't necessarily need a moral, or if they do have one it tends to be a moral for terrible, terrible people.  Shall I tell it to you?  I think you'd like it.

The Tinder-Box

One day a soldier was marching along a road.  He was all alone, because soldiers march alone, I guess.  He had a pack on his back and a sword on his hip, because "he had been to the wars, and was now returning home."  I love how that's phrased.  "Oh, I'm just gonna pop off to the wars for a bit, I'll pick up some milk on the way back!"

The soldier meets a witch on the road.  Supposedly.  What actually happens is he meets an ugly old woman, and assumes she's a witch because she's old and ugly.  She stops him as he passes and says, “Good evening, soldier; you have a very fine sword, and a large knapsack, and you are a real soldier; so you shall have as much money as ever you like.” 

“Thank you, old witch,” said the soldier.  So some old woman stops him and goes, "Hey, you're a soldier: I'm gonna give you money!" and he replies with "Thanks, hag."  Not only does he just agree, like he thinks everybody should give him as much money as he wants and she would be weird not to offer, but he doesn't even hesitate to call her a witch right to her face.  Classy guy!

But the "witch" doesn't seem to mind that the soldier is a giant cock, so she explains how he will get the money.  She tells him to go up to the top of a nearby tree, because it's actually hollow and at the top there is a hole that will get him down deep into the tree.  She'll tie a rope around him so he can get down and she'll pull him up.  In the ground under the hollow tree there is a vast hall lit by three hundred lamps (the lamps are not important to the story, nor is the vastness of the hall; it seems a little improbable to have a giant room lit by hundreds of lamps underneath a tree.  Fairy tales do not always make sense.) with three doors.  They are locked, but the keys are in the locks, so they can be easily opened.  It's almost as if they have no locks to begin with.  How convenient!

The no-proof-that-she-is-a-witch woman explains that behind the first door, there is a room with a large chest sitting in the middle of the floor.  On top of that chest sits a dog with eyes the size of teacups, but the soldier need not fear it for the not-witch will give him her apron to spread upon the floor.  Then he must grab the dog and place it on her apron.  The dog will stay there, and the soldier can then open the chest and take as many copper pennies as he wants, for the chest only has copper pennies.  If he does not want the copper pennies, though, he can proceed to the next room.  It is the same, except the dog sitting on the chest has eyes the size of millwheels, and the chest is filled with silver.  And again in the third room, where the chest has gold coins and the dog is "very dreadful; his eyes are as big as a tower," but agian, just grabbing it and putting it on the old lady's apron will keep him from being a bother.

Is it just me, or are the dog descriptions really weird?  I mean, I guess the first two, with eyes as big as teacups and millwheels -- okay, those are both round, I guess.  So either the dog is of a size to match the eyes, or they just have bizarrely odd heads.  Whatever.  But the last one is just...what?  "As big as a tower" is a terrible description. What does that even mean?  How big of a tower?  Do you mean the diameter of its eyes is the same as the height of the mysterious tower?  Or does it mean like, around the tower, not the height?  Are his eyes the shape of towers?  Damn, I want to see this dog.

Anyway, back to the story.  The soldier says, “This is not a bad story, but what am I to give you, you old witch? for, of course, you do not mean to tell me all this for nothing.”  Yeah, you ancient hag?  You're so suspicious, what with being old and ugly and probably evil because of how old and ugly you are.

“No,” said the accused witch, who is being very patient with the shitty guy she's talking to, because I would have said to hell with him ages ago. “But I do not ask for a single penny. Only promise to bring me an old tinder-box, which my grandmother left behind the last time she went down there.”  The soldier agrees, and the old woman gives him her apron and ties the rope around him, and he climbs up the tree and lowers himself through the hole, deep down beneath the tree into the great hall.  He goes through the first door.

It was just as the witch had described.  There was a dog with eyes like teacups, sitting on top of a large chest.  "You're a pretty fellow," said the soldier, seizing the dog and placing him on the old woman's apron.  He then filled his pockets with the copper coins from the chest, because I guess he forgot that there was silver and gold in the next two rooms.  Hey, maybe he's just a really nice, selfless guy who never takes more than he needs to survive!

Oh, wait, no, because then he goes to the next room and meets the dog with millwheel-eyes, and does the same thing as in the last room.  He tells the dog, "You had better not look at me in that way, you will make your eyes water," (I guess he thinks he's witty?) puts the dog on the apron, dumps all the copper coins he collected and filled his pockets and his knapsack with nothing but silver.  Then he goes to the next room with the chest of gold, because he can't plan ahead. Go to that room first, you idiot.

Third room.  This dog was really hideous; his eyes were, truly, as big as towers, and they turned round and round in his head like wheels.  SHOW ME THIS DOG.  I WANT TO SEE HIM.  What the hell does "truly as big as towers" even mean!?

“Good morning,” said the soldier, touching his cap, for he had never seen such a dog in his life. But after looking at him more closely, he thought he had been civil enough, and really?  You're a total douche to an old ugly woman on the road who's offering you all the money you can carry in exchange for a simple favour, but a big ugly dog deserves your manners.  Really, this guy is a class act.  He puts the dog on the apron, like all the others, and opens the chest.  Dumping out all the silver he got from the last room (why did he take it in the first place?) he fills his pockets, knapsack, cap, and boots with gold, so he can barely walk.  At this point when I first read this story, I had assumed that it would be working up to a moral about greed and taking more than you needed to the point where you were physically hampered.  It doesn't, though.  I thought I would tell you now, so you don't go through the story with misconceptions.

Now that he was filthy stinking rich, he goes back to the entrance and calls up the tree, "Pull me up, you old witch."  Seriously, dude, she has made you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.  Maybe you should ask for her name or something, at the very least.

The woman asks, "Do you have the tinder box?"  The soldier replies, "No, I declare I quite forgot it," and goes back to fetch it.  Yeah, right.  Forgot it like a fox, probably.  He was hoping he could con the witch -- oh shit, now I'm doing it.  He was hoping he could con the old woman who has never actually shown any signs of being a witch other than being old and ugly, into letting him dump his cash somewhere and then come back for a second go.  Greedy fuck.

So when the woman sees through his scheme and makes sure he does the work she's paying him for, she pulls him up out of the tree.  Remember, he's loaded down with as much gold as he could get away with.  The old woman is doing more work than he is here, hauling his greedy ass up a hundred feet to the top of the hollow tree.  All he had to do was move a couple of dogs and grab a wooden box, and he barely managed to do that right.

Once out of the tree and standing safe on the road, with his pockets, backpack, hat and shoes filled with gold, the woman asks for her tinder-box.  "What are you going to do with it?" the soldier asks.

"That is nothing to do with you," she told him.  "You have the money, now give me the tinder-box."


“I tell you what,” said the soldier, “if you don’t tell me what you are going to do with it, I will draw my sword and cut off your head.”

“No,” said the witch.  So the soldier cut off her head.  That's nice.  She gives him as much money as he can carry, she only wants him to fetch her grandmother's tinder-box in return, and because she won't tell him what she's going to do with her own private personal property, he straight-up murders her and keeps it for his own.  You are loaded head-to-foot with gold coins, you lunatic.  What the hell does it matter what she wants to do with her grandmother's tinder-box?

Then he kept her apron in order to tie up all his ill-gotten gains, put her tinder-box in his pocket, and left her corpse lying in the road as he walks to the next town.  When there, he buys a feast of all his favourite dishes, and all the fine clothes he could want, so that he became known as a fine gentleman.  He is never brought to justice for the cold-blooded murder of an old woman on the road.

He became popular in the town because of his wealth, and people came and spoke to him frequently and told him of all the sights to be seen in the town, and of the king's beautiful daughter, the princess.  "Where can I see her?" he asked, but was told that she was not to be seen, ever.  She lived in a great copper castle, full of walls and towers, both of which are to be expected in a castle.  But she was not allowed to leave, and only the king was permitted entrance into her castle, for there was a prophecy that she would marry a common soldier rather than a prince or a king, and her father could not bear the thought of his daughter marrying so low.

The soldier very much wanted to see the beautiful princess, but could not get permission to enter the copper castle, so he tried to put her out of his mind.  He had a very pleasant time in the town, going to the theatre and riding in the king's gardens and giving a great deal of money to the poor, which was very good of him, for he remembered what it was like to be without a shilling before he brutally murdered the nice old lady who gave him all his money.

The soldier was quite rich now, with his fine clothes and many friends who called him a fine fellow and a real gentleman, and this made him feel very good about himself.  But even a great amount of money is not infinite, and as the soldier spent and gave away a great deal daily, and received none coming in, he found himself at last poor once more, with only two shillings to his name.  He was forced to leave his elegant rooms and live in a small poor room in the attic, where he had to clean his own boots and clothes and (gasp) even mend them with a large needle.  None of his friends came to see him, because they were as shallow as him and had no need of him now that he was poor again there were too many stairs to climb.  One dark evening he found he did not even have a penny to buy a candle.  Suddenly he remembered that there was a piece of candle stuck in the tinder-box, which he had killed the old woman for and then forgotten about completely.  Your hero, ladies and gentlemen, the man who can murder an old woman in cold blood, steal her property, and then forget about it entirely as soon as he finishes wiping the blood from his sword.

He digs out the tinder-box, but as soon as he struck flint and steel to make a spark, the door to his room flew open and there stood the dog from beneath the tree, with the eyes like teacups.  "What orders, master?" said the dog.

“Hallo,” said the soldier; “well this is a pleasant tinderbox, if it brings me all I wish for."  He tells the dog to bring him some money, and the dog left, returning in a moment carrying in his mouth a bag full of copper coins. The soldier very soon discovered after this the value of the tinder-box. If he struck the flint once, the dog who sat on the chest of copper money made his appearance; if twice, the dog came from the chest of silver; and if three times, the dog with eyes like towers, who watched over the gold. The soldier had now plenty of money; he returned to his elegant rooms, and reappeared in his fine clothes, so that his friends knew him again directly, and made as much of him as before.  Now that he was rich again, he was a man worth knowing.  In most fairy tales, you would assume that such fair-weather friends would be rejected by the righteous hero, who realizes that when they abandoned him in his time of need that they were never true friends to begin with.  But our protagonist is just as shallow and mean as his so-called friends, so they all get on quite well with no hard feelings.

After a while, the soldier remembered the beautiful princess who was never seen.  He thought it was very odd that she was kept shut up in her copper castle, because what was the point of a beautiful woman who was never seen?  Clearly a lovely woman can only exist to be put on display for other people's pleasure, and her own feelings and desires would never enter into the equation.  The soldier wondered how he could get a glimpse of the princess, for he was very curious, and felt he was entitled to anything he wanted since he had money and magic dogs at his beck and call.  So he struck a light from the tinder-box and summoned the teacup-eyed dog.  "It is midnight," he told the dog, "Yet I should very much like to see the princess, if only for a moment."  The dog disappeared instantly, off to kidnap a princess because the hero is not-so-secretly the villain of the story, and before the soldier could even turn around the dog returned with the sleeping princess on its back.  She was so lovely that no-one could think she was not a princess, because that's how princesses work in fairy tales.  If you see an unbelievably beautiful woman, better bow because she'll be a princess.  The soldier could not help but kiss her when he saw her, for he was a "true soldier" and could not help himself (here, have some statistics on rape in the military).  Then the dog ran back with the princess; but the next morning, over breakfast with her parents the king and queen, the princess told them of the odd dream she had, where she had ridden on the back of a strange dog and been kissed by a soldier.

"That is a very pretty story indeed," said the queen.  Fearing the prophecy of her daughter marrying a common soldier, she had one of the old ladies of the court sent to the princess's bedside that night, to discover whether it was truly a dream or if it was something else.

The soldier longed very much to see the beautiful princess again, so that night he summoned the dog to fetch her and to run with her as quickly as ever it could.  But the old woman pulled on "water boots," whatever they are, and ran after just as quickly as the dog could run.  Hey, this old woman is badass.  I hope the soldier doesn't behead her.  When the old woman found that the dog carried the princess to a large house, she took a piece of chalk (which she carried around in her apron for just this sort of situation!) and made a large cross on the front door, in order to remember the place.  Then she went home to bed.  Without trying to look in to spot the princess and see if she was being murdered or raped or whatever, because hey, big dog carried her off to some stranger's house, she's probably fine.  So I guess she isn't that badass.  Still though, grandma can run.

The princess was lucky though, I suppose, because she was not rapemurdered that night.  Actually I don't know what happened to her when she was passed out in the sociopath soldier's room, the fairy tale sort of skips that part.  Not really a good sign.  But the dog carries her back to the castle in one piece, and in leaving the soldier's house the dog noticed the large cross on the door.  So, being a smart magic dog, it took another piece of chalk (where the hell is all this chalk coming from?) and marked every other house with a similar cross, so the old woman could not find the right door.

The next morning, the old woman took the king and the queen and all of the officers of the household, to see where the princess had been.  "Here is the house," said the king, when he came upon the first marked door.

"No, my dear husband, it must be that one," said the queen, pointing at the next door which also had a mark.  "And here is another mark, and another!"  And they saw that there were crosses on all the doors in every direction, and knew it would be useless to search any farther.  But the queen was a very clever woman who could do much more than sit in a carriage and wave.  That night she took some silk and cut it into squares, and sewed a neat little bag.  She filled it with flour and put it around the princess's neck, and then she cut a small hole in the bag so that the flour would be scattered on the ground as the princess went along.

During the night, the dog came again and carried the princess on his back, and ran with her to the soldier, who loved her very much having met her three times now, with the story giving no indication that she was awake for any of these visits.  He wished he were a prince so that he might have her for a wife.  The dog never noticed the flour spilling from the bag, though, leaving a white trail all the way to the soldier's apartments.  Therefore in the morning the king and queen found out where their daughter had been, and the soldier was taken up and put in prison (which is where the murderous lout rightly belongs, not that the story cares).

Oh, how dark and disagreeable it was as he sat there, and the people said to him, “To-morrow you will be hanged.”  I don't know what people.  Presumably the other prisoners, though I have no idea how they could find out the soldier's sentence without the soldier finding out at the same time.  But whoever these people were, it was not very pleasant news, and besides, he had left the tinder-box at the inn and so his situation seemed altogether hopeless.

The next morning he could see through the iron bars over his little window, how all of the people were hurrying out of the town in order to see him hanged.  The shoemaker's boy, in his leather apron and slippers, ran by so fast his slipper flew off and struck the wall where the soldier sat looking through the bars.  "Hallo, boy," he called.  "You need not be in such a hurry, for there will be nothing to see until I arrive there; but if you will run to the house where I have been living and bring me my tinder-box, you shall have four shillings.  You must run quickly though, and put your best foot forward!"  The shoemaker's boy liked the idea of four shillings, and so he ran very fast and fetched the tinder-box, which he gave to the soldier just in time; just as the boy returned and handed over the tinder-box, the king's guards came to escort the soldier to the gallows.

Outside the town a large gibbet had been erected, round which stood the king's guards and several thousands of people. The king and the queen sat on splendid thrones opposite to the judges and the whole council. The soldier stood on the ladder; but as they were about to place the rope around his neck, he said that an innocent request was often granted to a poor criminal before he suffered death. He wished very much to smoke a pipe, as it would be the last pipe he should ever smoke in the world. The king could not refuse this request, so the soldier took his tinder-box, and struck fire, once, twice, thrice,— and there in a moment stood all the dogs;—the one with eyes as big as teacups, the one with eyes as large as mill-wheels, and the third, whose eyes were like towers. “Help me now, that I may not be hanged,” cried the soldier.

At his command, the dogs fell upon the judges and councillors, seizing them by the limbs and tossing them many feet into the air so that when they fell down they were dashed to pieces.  That's right, they were thrown so high they broke into bits when they hit the ground, like glass dolls or something.

"I will not be touched," said the king.  Wishful thinking, probably.  And ineffective, because the largest dog seized him as well as the queen and threw them after the others.  Seeing this, the guards and all the people were very afraid, and cried "Good soldier, you shall be our king, and marry the beautiful princess."

So they placed the soldier in the king’s carriage, and the three dogs ran on in front and cried “Hurrah!” and the little boys whistled through their fingers, and the guards presented arms. The princess came out of the copper castle, and became queen, which was very pleasing to her. The wedding festivities lasted a whole week, and the dogs sat at the table, and stared with all their eyes.

The End.

The moral of this story: Kill everyone who opposes you in order to become rich and scare the population into giving you ultimate power, and everything will work out happily for all involved.

As delightful as this entire story is, I think my very favourite part is right at the end, with the princess.  Just imagine the story from her point of view.  She has a few odd dreams, her mom makes her wear a bag of flour to bed, and then the creepy dude from her dreams shows up at her castle and the entire town is insisting she marry him, because he's after killing the king and queen so they want him to be the new king, which can only happen if she is married to him.  Oh, and he's got three dog-monsters with freaky eyes with him too.  Well gee, why wouldn't she want to be sold off, without any input or warning, to the guy who murdered her parents and a dozen other people, and terrorized the people into naming him king in order to spare their own lives?  But her only reaction is, "Oh cool, now I'm the queen!"  Classic fairy-tale logic.  I love it.

I tried to read Kilala Princess yesterday.

It's pretty bad.  Kilala Princess is a Tokyopop manga licensed by Disney about a girl named Kilala who is weirdly into Disney.  And this is coming from a Disney fan.  She's almost obnoxiously obsessed with it.  She has a Mickey Mouse patch sewn into her uniform, and when the teacher calls her on it the idiot acts like she doesn't realize the teacher is mad, because omg Mickey is so cool!  She sees a dude asleep and goes "I should kiss him, maybe he is a prince!"  She has a weird cartoon sidekick that the manga tries to pretend is a pet mouse, but seriously, that's not what mice look like.  You're not fooling me.  I've seen Mickey Mouse.

It doesn't even have gloves!

Also, her school has some weird princess fetish.  Part of the plot is how the school has a Princess Contest where one student gets to wear the super special school tiara, because what school doesn't have that?  And Kilala's best friend Erica is the favourite to win the Princess Contest and become the school princess, and I really don't think whoever wrote this knows how princesses work.  Like, at all.  Princesses are not just ladies who wear tiaras and pretty dresses, and princesses aren't chosen by elections and contests.  Unless the prize for a contest is to marry a prince, in which case, yeah, okay, maybe that would work.  But that's not how it's set up in the manga, so fuck all of you that's not how princesses happen.

The series was described as "Kingdom Hearts for girls," because apparently girls hated Kingdom Hearts.  It's about Kilala running around meeting Disney Princesses and hanging out with some dude who's looking for the "seventh princess" who is clearly Kilala but I guess we're not supposed to realize it even though she can make the magic "tiara" (which is not a tiara, it is a ridiculous tiny crown, and it looks almost as stupid as Twilight Sparkle's Element of Harmony tiara) do magic stuff in the very first chapter. The author clearly does not think much of the cognitive capabilities of the readers.

So I think what happens, is the plot is a half-hearted Kingdom Hearts ripoff where the main character has to go hang out with Disney characters because of reasons.  I'm saying I think, because I could not actually bring myself to read much past the first part, with Snow White.  It was just that irritating.  Apparently it was after the events of the movie, except Snow White was still hanging out in the dwarf cottage cleaning and cooking because...nostalgia, I guess?  And the evil Queen comes back to life, because magic!  And then she turns into her ugly form because...because she did that in the movie!  Who cares if she did it for a specific reason in the movie, in the manga she becomes an old hag in between panels just so she can be an ugly villain.  And she makes another poison apple to threaten Kilala with!  Except, it's not actually poison, it won't make her sleep or die or anything, oh no.  Instead, it will make her.....UGLY!  That's right, the evil Queen who tried to hire a woodsman to cut out her daugher's heart and then poison her, only wants to make the main character ugly here.  Except not "only" ugly, she described her ugly-making apple as so much worse than her sleeping-death apple, and then agrees to trade the magic tiara of magic in order to get Snow White to eat the apple.  Because being ugly is worse than death.  I know that Disney's always leaned on that mindset, but it's so jarring that they'd outright say it like that.  It's around here where I gave up on trying to read this.  It's just a really shitty story that relies on the popularity of Disney characters to make up for its lack of...well, lack of pretty much everything that makes a good story.  Kilala has no characterization other than her obsession with Disney, for example.  And the plot, from what I can tell, seems to be a bland shallow thing that only exists in order to throw Kilala into the worlds of random Disney Princesses, because they're the only reason anyone would read this crap.

Also, it looked really weird, with one character being your average shojo girl with generic anime characteristics, and the other being fucking Snow White.  Even considering that the anime-style shit was inspired by old Disney cartoons, it looks really odd juxtaposed like that in the story.  The Disney Princesses are all done in a fairly similar style to one another -- if you want to make a comic about a girl who meets them all, why can't you draw her in the style that would fit?  But I guess that would take more effort than just drawing another Shojo Magical Girl who looks the same as every other Shojo Magical Girl ever created, with a slightly different hairstyle.  Not different as in, it's unique and visually distinctive or anything, oh god no.  Just different as in, you can tell at a glance that she isn't Sailor Moon, and that's all you need.  I'm honestly not usually annoyed by anime and manga characters all following the same style, particularly when I realize that what I'm reading or watching is pretty deep into the established genres -- like Kilala's huge shiny eyes and disproportionately big head (which is part of why the ridiculously tiny crown-not-tiara looks so fucking stupid, it's a dinky little spike-circle perched on top of a giant balloon with eyes) are your average shojo-style.  I've seen character designs more original and not so fused to the genre styles, but I've also seen ones that are much worse.  Kilala is strictly average.  And the art's pretty good, actually.  I mean, it doesn't stand out as really amazing or anything, but compared to, say, the Labyrinth manga, it's fine.  But when it's right next to Disney's Princess styles.....eh.  It doesn't look right.

Anyway.  This is getting long, so I should wrap it up: Kilala Princess is kind of shit, and you should not waste your time reading it unless you enjoy making fun of things that are kind of shit.  Which I actually enjoy a lot, but I still probably won't try to read this again unless I'm really, really bored.  So you should probably not waste your time with it.  Unless of course you're so obsessed with Disney Princesses that you'll mindlessly devour whatever cheaply made, overpriced merchandise Disney slaps a tiara on, in which case you are exactly the demographic this manga is aimed at.  So...good for you, I guess?  You can read it here and save your money for another Rapunzel colouring book or something.  Have fun.

JennaMarbles, why you gotta slut-shame? D:

Oh, Jenna.  I think you are so cool.  I loved your sports-bra video, and your dogs are adorable!  But girl, I gotta disagree with your "Things I Don't Understand About Girls: Slut Edition" video.  Because slut-shaming is wrong, and I want to speak up against it whenever I hear it going down.

First thing right off, you seem to think that being a slut is a bad thing?  Except you're kind of flip-floppy on that.  You say that you know that the word slut has some negative connotations, but that you think being a slut is a choice.  Which, yes, it is a choice!  It is the choice to have lots of sex.  But you kinda trailed off there.  You acknowledge that "slut" has negative connotations....then never say whether or not you agree with the negative connotations.  So I'm gonna assume that you think being a slut is a bad thing, because overall you're being very critical of slut-ness*.  That's not cool!  So you don't wanna have lots of casual sex, that's cool.  Neither do I!  But some people do, and that's okay.  It's their life, it's none of my business if they want to have casual sex!  In fact, more power to them, because sex is fun and there's nothing wrong with wanting lots of it, from lots of people.  So let's stop trying to say it's bad to do it, okay?
Oh look, you do think being a slut is bad, you say so at the end of the video!  Maybe you should have said it here too, just to clarify things.

Next, you talk about one night stands.  You don't get why people want them, pretty much.  Because girls have body issues, and boys are dangerous!  Except maybe you should wonder why your insistence that everyone has body issues should stop people from doing what they want.  Maybe people don't have body issues as bad as you think they do?  And even if they are as bad as all that, it's a good thing that body issues don't stop people from going after what they want (like sex).  Besides, what could be better for body issues than getting ass-fucking-naked in front of someone and seeing how somebody else finds your body to be totally awesome tonight, instead of standing six inches from the mirror and hyper-focusing on every pound and pimple until you're so convinced at your hideousness that you never ever undress in front of anybody ever.  Sure, it's better to realize how awesome you look on your own and learn to love your body because it's gorgeous rather than because other people like it, but sometimes that's hard and it's nice to take a shortcut to feeling totally hot.  Doing one of these things does not automatically negate doing the other thing as well.

And you say boys are dangerous because what if the stranger is into rape or murder!  You should not go home with him but instead google his name and get with him after that!  Except, you know, a dude is not going to say on his Facebook wall, "Hey tonight I'm gonna go to the bar and find a lady to take home and rape and murder!"  The vast majority of rapes and murders are committed by people known to the victim.  Googling his name and finding out where he went to high school will not suddenly let you know whether he's a safe dude to sleep with.  And saying that you should not be a slut and go around sleeping with people just in case somebody turns out to be a rapist/murderer, is just another way of saying "if you are raped/murdered, it is your own fault because you were a slut."  And that is not cool at all.  Don't go victim-blaming, it is never ever the victim's fault that somebody else is evil and attacked them.  If anybody ever thinks that a victim is ever to blame for their rape, then they can just fuck right off.  Seriously.  Go away, get off my blog, you are not welcome here.

Now we've moved on to the "stupid sluts" part.  Yeah, I wish more people would admit that any sexual behaviour is technically sex, even if they want to put special importance on the penis-in-vagina kind.  But sex means something different to everybody, and you shouldn't judge people just because their definition is different from yours.

I literally made a D: face at the pregnant-slut part.  What!?  Jenna, Jenna, why is it so important to you who the fetus's dad is?  Why does it have to make you feel weird that you don't know, or that you don't think that the mom-to-be knows?  Guess what, who the dad is maybe isn't all that important.  Single parents can raise kids fine, and the real father is never the guy who donated some genetic material but the guy/guys that are actually there for the kid and give it a person to look up to, as a father-type person.  But not having a father-type person is not inherently bad, because there are so many people who have been raised by just moms, or by two moms even!  It's really none of your business that the pregnant lady slept with lots of people, so "feeling weird" about it is kind of intrusive, especially if feeling weird about it means you later go online and tell the world how terrible you think they are for making you feel weird.  Just be happy that the mom-to-be is happy about her mom-to-be status, ok?

Please don't assume that all sluts are making bad decisions, or are having lots of sex because of a lack of respect for themselves or something.  Casual sex is not inherently a bad decision, it's just a decision that some people make that you or I would not make.  It's a different decision.  And it's really insulting to say that people only choose it because they have no self-respect.  Have you never read sex-positive feminist blogs?  Most of the sluts I am familiar with have self-respect coming out of their ears!  How many people you have sex with does not necessarily correlate to absolutely anything other than, you know, the number of sexual partners you've had.  And possibly the amount of sex you've had?  But there are lots of people who have had lots of sex with a few partners, so I dunno.  I'm not really a sex mathematician.  Sexematician?  Mathemasexian?  There's gotta be a pun for this.

I'll grant you a few points, Jenna.  It's important to practice safe sex.  Use a condom, people!  STDs are bad!  It's a dick move to have sex with a guy when you know he has a girlfriend, because it's wrong to hurt other people like that.  Don't let people pressure you into having sex you don't want (ie, rape), and don't feel pressured to have sex if you only want to have sex because it's cool .  Have sex because you want to have sex, not because cool people have sex (while I have not met anyone who has done this, I'm not going to say that nobody ever did because hey, there's a lot of reasons people have had sex, how should I know them all).  And having friends around who can help you from getting into trouble by, say, trying to stop a creeper from taking advantage of you if you've had too much to drink or somebody slipped you something is awesome.  Or being a person who is willing to help strangers from being taken advantage of like that!  But don't judge people because they sleep with what you think is too many people.  Other people's sex lives are none of your business, and it's wrong to slut-shame people.  There's enough of that in the world already, we don't need more poison in the blow gun dart of sexism.

But I am not mad at you, Jenna.  I'm just disappointed, parent-style.  Like I said at the beginning of this post, I think you're cool and I like a lot of the videos you've made.  I still think you're cool!  But I also think that you've succumbed to a lot of very negative messages that lots of other people have also internalized regarding sex and women's sexuality in particular.  You say in the video that you love when people disagree with you and start discussions, and I sincerely hope that you listen to the discussions that your video started and see what made your video so sexist and problematic that the internet kind of exploded at it, even if you don't change your mind about any of the subject matter.

PS: I could not help but notice that your entire video was aimed at slut-shaming women.  I know that the video was made as a "things I don't understand about women" thing, but I gotta help but wonder if your opinions on slutty guys are just as toxic as your opinions on slutty women?  Ladies have gotten the short end of the slut stick, you know.  When guys sleep around it's just what guys do, but if women do it then they are demonized and labelled sluts.  Even when people try to shame a man for sleeping with lots of ladies, it is pretty much always a much milder shaming than a woman would get.  Just something to think about.

Thank You, Mighty Penis

Moderating a dating site is fun.  You get to see all the crazies.

Today a profile was flagged that was hilarious.  It was some older dude with a billion "tips" for "girls" on how to "get" a "man."  Gee, dude, do you think the reason you need to use a dating site is because you feel the need to instruct women on how they're Doing Everything Wrong before they even get a chance to talk to you?

The first "tip" is to look for commitment qualities instead of sparks, because "Notice how most couples, after the first few months, barely converse and have no passion outside the bedroom."  First, why is it more important that a girl look for a guy who will Stick Around than it is to find a dude she has Sparks with?  What's the point in dating a guy for his commitment potential if you have no chemistry?  And maybe she doesn't want a dude who will Commit To Love Her Forever And A Day.  Maybe she just wants a short-term guy to have fun with.  You don't get to decide how women pick who they want to date, and how they want to date them.  Second, that doesn't sound like most couples to me.  That sounds like a dude who has had a lot of shitty relationships and is projecting like a motherfucker.  Especially since how do you know how other couples act in the bedroom.  Busted.  Just because you're shit at relationships doesn't mean everybody else is.

The next tip is....not actually a tip.  There are a few like this.  He's just all, "Dating is a game!  Guys do stuff to get girls.  Maybe they'll be jerks! Irresponsible people are irresponsible!"  Oooh, helpful.

Tip number three is insulting to women and men.  It's a recurring theme in this list.  Apparently, men are simple and want a simple woman -- sorry, simple girl.  Not once does the list ever refer to a woman as a woman, it's always girl.  Anyway, Simple Guys want a Simple Girl and "notice how most girls with dating problems and most on dating sites are the adventure, party, corporate job, and extroverted ones."  That's right, ladies, if you ever want to have fun or talk to people or, like, have a job or something, that means that you can never ever get a Good Man.  Sorry!  That's just what the list says, and I'm sure you can tell that this advice is all pure gold.  Gold, I tell you!  Also I swear to god this paragraph ends with "How do you please a man? Sports, food and sex. If you want a long conversation that's not about sports, cars or video games, talk to your friends."  Yup, every single guy who ever existed liked all those things and only those things, and they've never ever been able to have any kind of conversation that did not include them.  I've never in my entire life met a single dude who did not play video games, follow sports, or care about cars.  Just like how I've never met a woman girl who liked those things!  Pfft, you want to talk?  That's what women girls are for.  (Hey remember the first tip when he complained that after a few months in all his relationships in everybody's relationships, the couple never converse any more and are only passionate in the bedroom? I think I just figured it out!)

Tip number four!  "Girls want a Man? It goes both ways, Men want a Lady."  Those uppity bitches only want equality "until the bill comes," and if a dude says he likes girly things or is not a manly man then girls will run in the opposite direction! So why shouldn't guys only want girlie-girls who cook and clean and stay in the kitchen!  Now, to be fair to the list-writer, he does say that women girls are allowed to be tomboyish and swear and like fights and sports and drink alcohol and work out.  Of course we're allowed to do that!  But if you do, "don't expect to get a good guy.  If you want to be treated like a Lady, act like one."  He also blames the skyrocketing divorce rate on how girls aren't acting like Ladies any more.  It's all our fault, girls.  Sorry.  Every relationship that ever failed is because you were just too dudely.  

Tip five, "Too many girls think it's all about them. This isn't a Womans World, there are 2 genders, 2 way street. If you want us to respect your body, then respect our wallets."

I actually can't really figure out what he's trying to say here.  I mean, I get what he thinks he's trying to say, that women are all gold-digging whores who take offense to being called whores and that is somehow a bad thing, but....what?  We know it isn't a Woman's World (by the way, this is the only time the word woman shows up in the entire list, I did a ctrl-f search), that's why women make seventy cents to the dollar, rape is ridiculously under-reported, women are under-represented everywhere from the media to the government...and somehow, not being raped or sexually assaulted or harassed is equal to going dutch on dates.  According to this list.  How is this dude single?  I just can't figure it out.

Tip six.  Real Men don't cheat, lie, tell you what you want to hear, or act all "bad ass" because only insecure dudes do that!  (Well, that's not true.  I know lots of really confident, narcissistic dudes who cheated and lied and flirted all over the place.  Just because you don't like the way they act, doesn't mean that they hate themselves.)  Real Men are [insert every single positive attribute you can think of here].  I don't see the point of this tip.  "Jerks are assholes!  Good men are awesome!"  Woah, thanks!  And then the tip continues by saying most girls can't handle Real Men so they go for Boys who cheat and lie.  Yeah, that's it, us women are just so flustered and intimidated by really cool guys that we just throw our hands in the air and date assholes. It has nothing to do with the fact that the world is not actually separated into Real Men and Boys Who Suck, but rather into People Who Have Both Positive And Negative Qualities.  That can't be it at all.

Seven.  "Girls dislike whiny, serious, judgemental, bitter, negative, impatient guys (yet girls do those more than anyone) yet girls like guys who are drunks, chaotic and play games."  One, you are a dude.  You do not get to say "Girls like _____" with any credibility if you are not, in fact, a girl.  Two, even if you were a girl, you could still not say that with any credibility because not all women are the same.  I've said it before, women are not a monolith.  Yes, some women like men who drink, are "chaotic" (whatever that means -- maybe he's thinking of Harley Quinn and the Joker), and play games.  Plenty don't.  Some women also like whiny serious judgemental bitter negative impatient guys when plenty don't.  Also, nice potshot at women there, "girls do those more than anyone," yeah right.  You can really feel the hate-on he has for ladies, can't you?  He's being pretty whiny and bitter and negative and judgmental   Then he says, "If you can't tolerate impatient, tempers or seriousness you'll never handle a marriage; men are naturally temperamental and impatient (and smelly lol)...just give them time."  Hear that ladies?  If your man never makes you laugh, and throws a tantrum if dinner is late, he's a keeper!  Dodge that casserole plate he's throwing at your head and thank your lucky stars you had the Internet Nobody here to tell you how to find a Good Man!  And if his impatience and temper are too much for you, don't break it off and file a restraining order after he gives you a black eye.  Just give him time!  Thanks, Single Bitter Dude On A Dating Site!  And remember, dudes, all men are naturally tempermental and impatient.  You were just born that way.  It's not character flaws that some of you have and some of you don't.  It's an inherent part of Being A Guy.

Number Eight: It's All About Sex.  Apparently we're not fooling guys when we "hide it and play innocent."  Every woman girl ever wants sex, there isn't a single woman girl who wants to wait for marriage or is asexual or something.  And if the dudes aren't any good at sex, why us heartless ladies just toss them and look for the next guy instead of teaching them how to be good at sex like we're supposed to!  (It's all part of the Feminine Rulebook, your job is to teach men how to please women, not to look for your own pleasure.)  And if you're good at sex you can treat a lady like dirt and she'll keep coming back!  Also, uh... also, "std risk is a media scare."

Dang, this guy is a piece of work.  I'm not even going to talk about how fucking stupid that is.  I'm just gonna go on to number nine, "Why are many guys jerks?"  According to Dumbfuck, as he shall henceforth be known, it's because "being nice/honest gets them rejected."  Yeah, that's for sure.  I hate nice, honest guys.  In fact, the second I find out a guy is nice or honest, I reject him on the spot.  Oh wait, no I don't because that's really fucking stupid.  If a guy is actually nice, he would not turn into a jerk because a girl rejected him.  He would be a jerk in the first place who was pretending to be nice in order to get a girl, and who showed his true colours after she rejected him and he didn't need to pretend any more.  Actually nice/honest guys, when they are rejected, are not rejected for being nice or honest.  They are rejected because they don't have much in common with the girl, or because she likes someone else, or they smell funny, or she just plain isn't attracted to them, for any of the billion possible reasons a person can use to decide not to date someone.  And guess what?  It's not a crime to reject people you are not attracted to.  I am not contractually obliged to date Nice Guys because They Deserve A Girlfriend.  Then Dumbfuck says that girls go with bad boys and it's their own fault if they get hurt, because they can't change a jerk.  Unless she is giving him time to change like you recommended in Tip Number Seven, Mister Can't Keep His Bullshit Straight.  And apparently, guys have emotions too!  They just hide them because they know us bitchy women will judge them if we find out!  Lol.  Actually, we probably won't.  Us girls tend to like our guys having a sensitive side, or many of us do at any rate.  A lot of guys only show their emotional side to their girlfriends, which really fucks them over if they break up.  And not because that fucking bitch went and made fun of him for crying or told all his secrets to the entire world or anything, but because he can't show his emotions to anyone else.  Do you know who's policing the whole expressing-emotion thing with guys?  It is the guys.  Men hide their emotions from each other, because they judge each other.  Don't blame this on the girls, Dumbfuck, this is a patriarchy thing.

Anyway, this is a pretty long list, so I'm gonna show you tip number ten and then post the rest of them later.  Tip number ten is surprisingly not-awful.  I mean, it's not some insightful piece of wisdom or anything, but it's somewhat less completely outrageous than every other tip so far.  "Physical attraction is important but the more you get to know someone the more attractive they become."  That's actually pretty sweet!  And true, too.  Lots of people are kinda average in the face-pretties, but when you meet them they're completely gorgeous because their personality is just that awesome.  Of course, Dumbfuck being Dumbfuck, he had to put his text-foot into his keyboard-mouth with the end of his advice.  "If men are all about looks, why are many of you still single and why do you see so many slim guys dating big women?"  That cuts both ways, asshole.  Why do you see so many hot chicks with average-to-ugly guys?  Or with poor guys, or guys with small dicks?  How come every sitcom couple on TV is the ugly guy/hot wife combo?  Dumbfuck has taken this one piece of perfectly good advice that applies to everyone, and shown off his true colours by slanting it so that it only applies to women.  Because girls are trashy hoes who only like hot guys, and need to be taught how to find and keep the elusive Good Man.  Don't worry, the rest of his advice is just as hilariously bad.  I'll show you exactly how bad it is tomorrow or this evening or something.  Later, peeps!