It's Not Easy Being Green

Who can tell me who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year? Off the top of their heads? Without having found out because of the Obama thing? Does anyone know anything about what the prize entails, or how the committee who awards it researches and makes their decisions? Can you think of someone you know of that you think really, honestly deserves it this year?

It's making me really angry that we're all commenting on whether or not Barack Obama "deserves" the Nobel Peace Prize, based on our pop politics and shallow understanding of how it works. Hell, I don't know a thing about the system, but I do know that Obama has proven that he wants to work hard to try to achieve peace. He's achieved a lot just by being a symbol of progress and change, let alone his actual work to unify people. He's probably made some mistakes, but I'm going out on a limb and guessing that pretty much everyone who's won the Nobel Peace Prize has. It seems to me that the backlash against him is because he's popular, and we don't seem to think that people who are popular and well-known and well-liked should win this supposedly prestigious award. It's meant to be people we've never heard of who are working to do good in the world without any of us knowing about it. Broaden your horizons, people. Open your minds. If you go out and look up how the system works, what it entails, and the work of every person who's ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, then you can have a say in whether or not you think he deserves it. If you're basing your opinion on the fact that he's popular and the Nobel Peace Prize is not, just give it a rest.

Green Queen

The America-centric nature of fandom on the Internet is really pissing me off lately. It sucks that most good fandom comes from the States, and anything not from the States is from England, and Australia mostly just makes shit right now, but every fan all over the world loves good fandom. I just find it really frustrating and patronising the way America treats non-Americans in general, but one would think that, on the internet, people would be more open-minded. My best buddies on my flist come from all over the globe. It's our international community, where we can talk to people from EVERYWHERE about the things we love. Why is that hard for people to understand?

I was laughed at on Jake Smollett's Facebook for not knowing what grits were (not by him.) I just saw this rather patonising comment on Whedonesque:
"I've been seeing the Aussie's tweet about the show though :) - they like their Mr Whedon!"
Discussion questions all over different communities are unnecessarily America-centric. And then we have the added insult of not being able to stream TV shows online, of not getting to see Dr. Horrible at the same time as the States, of not contributing towards ratings even though we contribute towards the profit margins. Is it not bad enough that we're at a disadvantage just by distance? That half the time, the shows we love don't air in our countries? I mean, is it even the MAJORITY of fandom that's American?! Plus nearly every single one of our favourite shows has an Australian invader working on it...think about it.

Okay, I need to cut out the late-night rants. I developed a theory on James Marsden: he keeps being directed by men who are threatened by his all-around AWESOMENESS and therefore relegate him to being the almost-ran behind far less awesome guys.

ETA: Go vote for Misha as Mr. Twitter Universe or whatever. Does anyone know if "Jared" and "Jensen"'s Twitters are legit? Or why any of those twits beat Muhney?

Green Queen

Not a real post, I desperately want to get to bed, but my favourite icon maker made icons, and then there's this:

The Incredibly Condescending, Sexist Girls' Guide to Comic-Con (first sentence: "Comic-Con. It's not just for nerdy guys anymore.")
The Jezebel rebuttal ("Headdesk Powers Activate".)
The io9 rebuttal.

Most insulting moment of the original article for me: The 'Where the Wild Things Are' segment's main draw? Mark Ruffalo. Not the incredible movie this is shaping up to be, with its beautiful trailer and interesting director and beloved childrens' book. The guy who will probably appear for a very small part of the movie as the kid's father. Uh. Yeah.

If you stick around long enough in the original article, it does get to plot somewhere after the halfway plot, with 'women who kick butt' as the VERY LAST segment (Chuck and Dollhouse, fyi.)

Clearly the LA times writers have never visited LiveJournal. ontd_startrek has, I believe, 10 male members to 600 female ones. Fandom is one of the only spaces where men and women can enjoy some level of equality. Fuck them for trying to take that away from us.

Also, in response to the Pixar-for-girls article from a while back, cool ladies' movie titles. WIN.

Green Queen

1. The Australian Channel Ten ads for Women's Murder Club make me furious. Some bullshit about 'the murder show with legs' and calling them chicks, and the image at the end of the commercial is a pair of women's legs. One of them says that the coroner 'seems like an ordinary housewife' (!!) and then suggests she somehow isn't a good wife and mother because she comments on a corpse's bikini wax. All the ads end with 'the best way to catch a man is with a woman', by which stage I've usually flicked to another channel because I can no longer take the bullshit I'm hearing. I can't even count the number of things wrong with what the ads are saying. The concept is somewhat offensive to begin with; that if you've got four women in various law-related professions it's something worth making a big deal out of, that they're automatically sexualised just because they're women; but the ads make it so much worse.

2. The episode of NCIS that aired tonight (and had Mama Petrelli and the Yellow-Eyed Demon in it, so yay!fandom collision anyway) had a character that transitioned from a man to a woman. (Sorry if that spoiled anyone, but it's kind of important for my rant, and this was a very old episode.) The reasons for the transition weren't exactly kosher, but even with that the concept was handled so appallingly that by the end of the episode I hated everyone except McGee, who probably only didn't offend me because he didn't get a chance to talk about it. Everyone referred to her as him, stating 'she's a he!' several times. DiNozzo kissed the woman, not knowing who she was, and then Cate said 'what does it feel like to have a man's tongue down your throat?' (or something to that effect.) Even Abby said the idea of having your 'plumbing turned inside out' was icky. Any discussion of actual trans people was thrown out the window, it was awful.

I told my sister about it and she floored me by responding that they were right, it is gross, and that trans people 'should just get over it and be what they're born.' At first I tried to talk to her about it (probably somewhat angrily, admittedly, since I was completely shocked) but then she screamed about me about how it was her opinion and just because it was different to mine didn't give me a right to argue with her about it and how she didn't care about my 'fucking opinion'. I had to leave the room, I was so shocked and angry. It's probably just ignorance and she doesn't actually know much about it, but the fact that she could be dismissive of someone else's experiences like that floored me. I mean, the fact that anyone can say summarily that this doesn't exist without experiencing it themselves is like...men commenting on childbirth, something I can't abide in the first place. Basing an opinion on the fact that it gives you a squicky feeling rather than any actual fact is just lazy and stupid. AUGH. SO ANGRY.

On a related note, last night I saw ( Orlando )

2.5 out of 5

Green Queen

I cannot believe what has happened with the Isaiah Washington vs. T.R Knight thing and the venom it's brought out in people in any comments I've read about it. HOW can you rationalise a slur against one minority by using a slur against another, or justify what Washington did by saying the backlash is racism? One minority is not more important nor more oppressed than another. I can't believe the things I'm seeing, people going on about how black people have it so easy/so hard and a few years ago EVERYONE was saying 'faggot' and the new political correctness is stupid and gay people are sickening anyway and gay people are higher up the freaking totem than black people. WTF. Just because it's a black man who made the slur? How different would it all have gone if it'd been Patrick Dempsey who'd said all the awful things Washington's said? Ugh.

I don't give a shit what anybody else says, I love Zac Efron.

Apparently there's a steamy guest appearance on Torchwood next season that's going to blow your socks off. Most of you will already know who it is, but if you don't like casting spoilers, don't look.

A very sad article about Adrienne Shelly, writer/director of Waitress who was murdered last year.

Impatient Harry Potter fans to skip to last page. That's what my sister does. It baffles and infuriates me. That's defeating the point of storytelling! I kind of like spoilers for other things and I can understand liking spoilers, but I can't understand this sort of thing. Also, there's a list of the chapter titles for Deathly Hallows floating around on the internet that I refuse to read. There's also this:
Girls will race through the novel quicker than boys, taking about 30 hours to finish.
WTF. The longest I took was 9 hours, on Order of the Phoenix; Half-Blood Prince was 7, so I figure it'll probably be around 7-8 for Deathly Hallows.

This EW OotP article cracked me up. I love the relationship Gary Oldman and DanRad have with each other. There's a pretty picture there too.

Rupert Grint is cool. Get it? Ice cream? Cool? He don't say much, but what he does say is awesome. I still love Craig Ferguson. Also, I don't know whether I just missed the boat on this one since it was so long ago, but Rupert participated in some sort of hilarious skipping experiment in January of last year. He's so pretty on The Sauce.

( A thought about the Order of the Phoenix movie and Sirius's death )

I can't wait to see the movie again on Tuesday, I really can't. And the book is so close I keep having visions and dreams of myself reading it. In a week I'll have already read it a day ago. That's insane. Harry Potter's story will be finished.

I've seen three new movies in the last two days.

1. ( Dial M for Murder )

7 out of 10

2. ( Ghost Ship )

5 out of 10

3. ( Breakfast at Tiffany's )

8 out of 10

( Daily Dom Dose )

6 days - if you like dark, handsome, rich-looking men with passionate natures and too many teeth
Green Queen