Kiri ☂ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
taotrooper) wrote2005-02-08 09:01 pm
taotrooper) wrote2005-02-08 09:01 pm
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Aaaaah, the cat talks!
Bleach 18. They left Ishida! <3 And the dorkiness was delicious, I laughed so hard. I'm sooo going to by based on that mental picture when Watanuki and Spinel meet in the London plot bunny...
I posted Odd Family and my first "kiss" atthe pit ff.net, just for the heck of it. I'll contribute to the expantion of Clow/Yuuko to the ignorant and/or not!LJer masses [insert evil laugh]
I started reading a new manga of the terror genre: D.Gray-Man. The art is so bizarre, the plot is good. It's sort of mixing Fullmetal Alchemist with Chrno Crusade, but weirder and creepier. It's about exorcists and apocalypse.
Let's hit the next rant. You're still on time to get a rant by me about any subject. Just tell me about it and I will. I need an excuse for procrastination!
Requested by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laurus_nobilis, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff stereotypes:
Well, I think it's Jo's fault. If you write something from a character's point of view, you see the world from his/her eyes. So if the character has limited relationships to certain aspects, or if s/he's biased, that's gonna be reflected. Harry is a Gryffindor, so we just keep seeing them 24/7. And Rowling herself insists that, from all the houses' qualities, she values courage the most. 90% of the "bad guys" are from Slytherin, so the other (badly done) spotlight is for them. They're also seeing from an outsider's point of view, so it's a distortioned mirror, or we hope it is. Because the "Slyths are all mean or evil" cliché is fully supported by canon, but I digress. Going further, I don't think Gryffs are saints either. They're proud and full of themselves, at least the mayority. But I'm digressing again.
The point is, with all the attention to the main character's house and its rival, there's no place to meet the other two houses (because THERE ARE more houses) like we should be. As a result, 3/4 of the fans want to be either on G or S, since the others seem crappy and not-so-hip. And the bullshit and bashing begins.
Badger, bagder, mushroom, mushroom
I'll start with the 'Puffs, because they're the most attacked and understimated of all.
Well, the first one that attacked the house in canon was Draco Malfoy, snobbish extraordinaire and slashers' favorite boytoy. If he had been sorted there, he'd leave; those were the first words associated to Hufflepuff. So we immediately get the idea that, whatever Hufflepuff is, can't be good for you. Sadly, that's a Slytherin idea, hence it *shouldn't* be taken seriously, unless you are as snob as Mr. Malfoy.
But a page or two later, Hagrid, the only -and biggest, no pun intended- link we have to the wizarding world, confirms Draco's prejudice. And it's a good guy! A Gryffindor. A good friend of the main character. A member of the Order of the Phoenix. But still, he agrees Hufflepuff sucks and all the losers get sorted there. And the message sticks to Harry's and the readers' minds.
Then, when we finally get to know what Hufflepuff is about, the cliche is too rooted to the readers to care. So they're loyal. What about that? Gryffs seem loyal as well AND they're brave! It's better being there, then I'll be brave and loyal!
Yeah, then I guess Pettigrew is arat fly on the wall.
And the fact badgers are not as cool-looking as, I don't know, lions or snakes, doesn't help either. At least, before the dancing badgers flash video XD
And the fact Helga Hufflepuff said she'd teach them all gives us the feeling she had to deal with the ones rejected by the other three bastards.
So the Hufflepuff cliché is: "They're lame losers. If you don't fit any house, you'll be there as this is the fill house. Since they're not brave, they're cowards; since they're not ambitious, they're naive; since they're not smart, they're dumb. Hard-working and loyal are not cool qualities, that's not l337."
Bitch, please. Hermione is smart, and she's no Raven. Percy is ambitious, and he's no Slyth. Neville is loyal, and he's no Puff. So cut the crap, kthx. The sorting hat is not the ultimate psychoanalyst.
Famous (cliched) Puffs (not my opinion, other people's)
# Abbott, Hannah: apart from her famous pigtails, and being a prefect, what else about her? He rarely talks.
# Bones, Susan: we know she's Madam Bones niece, and had her parents killed by Death Eaters, and that's it. She doesn't have a lot of lines.
# Diggory, Cedric: Aha, the proof not every Puff is useless! Brave, athletic, noble, popular, attractive. And he was not in Gryffindor! Suck that! [I daresay he can't be stupid at all (Fred is jealous), if he was a prefect. So perfect Jo had to kill him quickly, because no Puffy can be cooler than the hero *rolls eyes*]
# Finch-Fletchley, Justin: past through the snakes and basilisks incident, seems a bit of a muggle snob for fandom, as he was going to attend Eton. But we don't know him a lot.
# Macmillan, Ernie: too pompous and extra responsible, he earned lack of sympathy from readers for his theories of doom about Harry in CoS. [I believe he's a Huffleclaw, particularly.]
# Smith, Zacharias: annoying and obnoxious, he has to (badly) reply to anything. A lot of people see him as Hufflepuff!Draco, but I disagree. He's even more annoying, IMHO. [If being a jerk is an obscure requirement for Slytherin, he might be a Hufflerin.]
Clichés apart, I respect Hufflepuff's philosophy a lot. I believe loyalty is underrated. And besides, I'd prefer to deal with that stereotype on my shoulders waaaay before than dealing with Slytherin's. But then again, I'm more loyal than ambitious, and more of a loser than machiavellically evil.
Lust without measure...
I'm afraid this won't be as prolific as the previous rant. Ravens are less discriminated, and their clichés are more hidden.
Intelligence and thirst for learning has always been associated with nerds, geeks and freaks. And that's not exactly popular. Especially in basic education. How many times we've seen discrimination towards smart people on real life, movies and teen dramas? I remember a "Daria" episode where Quinn (Daria's popular sister) wrote a rather good essay and at the end she tried to convince her friends she had copied the whole thing, because being smart is so not hot.
So just from their motto, Ravenclaw could be either an elite house full of prodigies, or a convention of geeks who only read and study. Curiously, the ravens we get to know in canon are not either. But they do have their own freak girl, though.
Sadly, Raven girls, except for Luna, are rather superficial and easy. And I'm not only talking about Cho *cough*whore*cough*. Padma and Marietta are... er, no comments. Penelope is an interesting case, as we don't get to know her a lot, but she can't be that demanding if she was dating Percy, the king of dorkiness. But still, we only get to know her as that: a love interest. I wonder if she left him after school...
Either way, not seeing the intelligence anywhere yet in these gals.
We haven't truly met a Raven boy like we should be, but the ones we do know well can be described in one word: "horny". No, seriously. Roger Davies's first appearance was when he was, um, intimate with Fleur at the Yule Ball. And let's not forget his marvelous smooching sounds at Harry's first date. And he did asked Cho out. God, that guy thinks with his penis, doesn't he? And now we're at it, Michael Corner seems to be cutted from the same mold. He dates Ginny and, after she dumps him for being an ass (probably involving insulting Gryffindors), he runs to console Cho. Ugh, are all the Raven males so playboys? I reaaaally hope Anthony Goldstein and Terry Boot (who seems to have Raven's values high at least, unless he was trying to flirt with Hermione), his mates, are not like him.
And then there's Luna. With housemates like these, no wonder she's teased and lonely. I don't want to talk about Luna because I love her dearly and I can't be objective. But the fact she's isolated by her fellow Ravenclaws, so she has to resort to trying to befriend with DA Gryffs can be disturbing. They don't seem to be that nice. Then again, everyone from every house is mean or cruel to her, but hiding her belongings from her dorm must be the work of Raven girls.
In short, except for old Professor Flitwick, and Luna -who's quick-minded, inside of all the insanity and crack-, we have yet to see a truly clever Ravenclaw in canon.
Gaaaah, this was so long!
I posted Odd Family and my first "kiss" at
I started reading a new manga of the terror genre: D.Gray-Man. The art is so bizarre, the plot is good. It's sort of mixing Fullmetal Alchemist with Chrno Crusade, but weirder and creepier. It's about exorcists and apocalypse.
Let's hit the next rant. You're still on time to get a rant by me about any subject. Just tell me about it and I will. I need an excuse for procrastination!
Requested by
laurus_nobilis, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff stereotypes:Well, I think it's Jo's fault. If you write something from a character's point of view, you see the world from his/her eyes. So if the character has limited relationships to certain aspects, or if s/he's biased, that's gonna be reflected. Harry is a Gryffindor, so we just keep seeing them 24/7. And Rowling herself insists that, from all the houses' qualities, she values courage the most. 90% of the "bad guys" are from Slytherin, so the other (badly done) spotlight is for them. They're also seeing from an outsider's point of view, so it's a distortioned mirror, or we hope it is. Because the "Slyths are all mean or evil" cliché is fully supported by canon, but I digress. Going further, I don't think Gryffs are saints either. They're proud and full of themselves, at least the mayority. But I'm digressing again.
The point is, with all the attention to the main character's house and its rival, there's no place to meet the other two houses (because THERE ARE more houses) like we should be. As a result, 3/4 of the fans want to be either on G or S, since the others seem crappy and not-so-hip. And the bullshit and bashing begins.
Badger, bagder, mushroom, mushroom
I'll start with the 'Puffs, because they're the most attacked and understimated of all.
Well, the first one that attacked the house in canon was Draco Malfoy, snobbish extraordinaire and slashers' favorite boytoy. If he had been sorted there, he'd leave; those were the first words associated to Hufflepuff. So we immediately get the idea that, whatever Hufflepuff is, can't be good for you. Sadly, that's a Slytherin idea, hence it *shouldn't* be taken seriously, unless you are as snob as Mr. Malfoy.
But a page or two later, Hagrid, the only -and biggest, no pun intended- link we have to the wizarding world, confirms Draco's prejudice. And it's a good guy! A Gryffindor. A good friend of the main character. A member of the Order of the Phoenix. But still, he agrees Hufflepuff sucks and all the losers get sorted there. And the message sticks to Harry's and the readers' minds.
Then, when we finally get to know what Hufflepuff is about, the cliche is too rooted to the readers to care. So they're loyal. What about that? Gryffs seem loyal as well AND they're brave! It's better being there, then I'll be brave and loyal!
Yeah, then I guess Pettigrew is a
And the fact badgers are not as cool-looking as, I don't know, lions or snakes, doesn't help either. At least, before the dancing badgers flash video XD
And the fact Helga Hufflepuff said she'd teach them all gives us the feeling she had to deal with the ones rejected by the other three bastards.
So the Hufflepuff cliché is: "They're lame losers. If you don't fit any house, you'll be there as this is the fill house. Since they're not brave, they're cowards; since they're not ambitious, they're naive; since they're not smart, they're dumb. Hard-working and loyal are not cool qualities, that's not l337."
Bitch, please. Hermione is smart, and she's no Raven. Percy is ambitious, and he's no Slyth. Neville is loyal, and he's no Puff. So cut the crap, kthx. The sorting hat is not the ultimate psychoanalyst.
Famous (cliched) Puffs (not my opinion, other people's)
# Abbott, Hannah: apart from her famous pigtails, and being a prefect, what else about her? He rarely talks.
# Bones, Susan: we know she's Madam Bones niece, and had her parents killed by Death Eaters, and that's it. She doesn't have a lot of lines.
# Diggory, Cedric: Aha, the proof not every Puff is useless! Brave, athletic, noble, popular, attractive. And he was not in Gryffindor! Suck that! [I daresay he can't be stupid at all (Fred is jealous), if he was a prefect. So perfect Jo had to kill him quickly, because no Puffy can be cooler than the hero *rolls eyes*]
# Finch-Fletchley, Justin: past through the snakes and basilisks incident, seems a bit of a muggle snob for fandom, as he was going to attend Eton. But we don't know him a lot.
# Macmillan, Ernie: too pompous and extra responsible, he earned lack of sympathy from readers for his theories of doom about Harry in CoS. [I believe he's a Huffleclaw, particularly.]
# Smith, Zacharias: annoying and obnoxious, he has to (badly) reply to anything. A lot of people see him as Hufflepuff!Draco, but I disagree. He's even more annoying, IMHO. [If being a jerk is an obscure requirement for Slytherin, he might be a Hufflerin.]
Clichés apart, I respect Hufflepuff's philosophy a lot. I believe loyalty is underrated. And besides, I'd prefer to deal with that stereotype on my shoulders waaaay before than dealing with Slytherin's. But then again, I'm more loyal than ambitious, and more of a loser than machiavellically evil.
Lust without measure...
I'm afraid this won't be as prolific as the previous rant. Ravens are less discriminated, and their clichés are more hidden.
Intelligence and thirst for learning has always been associated with nerds, geeks and freaks. And that's not exactly popular. Especially in basic education. How many times we've seen discrimination towards smart people on real life, movies and teen dramas? I remember a "Daria" episode where Quinn (Daria's popular sister) wrote a rather good essay and at the end she tried to convince her friends she had copied the whole thing, because being smart is so not hot.
So just from their motto, Ravenclaw could be either an elite house full of prodigies, or a convention of geeks who only read and study. Curiously, the ravens we get to know in canon are not either. But they do have their own freak girl, though.
Sadly, Raven girls, except for Luna, are rather superficial and easy. And I'm not only talking about Cho *cough*whore*cough*. Padma and Marietta are... er, no comments. Penelope is an interesting case, as we don't get to know her a lot, but she can't be that demanding if she was dating Percy, the king of dorkiness. But still, we only get to know her as that: a love interest. I wonder if she left him after school...
Either way, not seeing the intelligence anywhere yet in these gals.
We haven't truly met a Raven boy like we should be, but the ones we do know well can be described in one word: "horny". No, seriously. Roger Davies's first appearance was when he was, um, intimate with Fleur at the Yule Ball. And let's not forget his marvelous smooching sounds at Harry's first date. And he did asked Cho out. God, that guy thinks with his penis, doesn't he? And now we're at it, Michael Corner seems to be cutted from the same mold. He dates Ginny and, after she dumps him for being an ass (probably involving insulting Gryffindors), he runs to console Cho. Ugh, are all the Raven males so playboys? I reaaaally hope Anthony Goldstein and Terry Boot (who seems to have Raven's values high at least, unless he was trying to flirt with Hermione), his mates, are not like him.
And then there's Luna. With housemates like these, no wonder she's teased and lonely. I don't want to talk about Luna because I love her dearly and I can't be objective. But the fact she's isolated by her fellow Ravenclaws, so she has to resort to trying to befriend with DA Gryffs can be disturbing. They don't seem to be that nice. Then again, everyone from every house is mean or cruel to her, but hiding her belongings from her dorm must be the work of Raven girls.
In short, except for old Professor Flitwick, and Luna -who's quick-minded, inside of all the insanity and crack-, we have yet to see a truly clever Ravenclaw in canon.
Gaaaah, this was so long!
no subject
I agree that the stereotyping is partly JKR's fault, because the exceptions (Cedric and Luna) only appeared very late into the books. And though its obvious that Cedric represents the Hufflepuff values, I bet readers who aren't interested in Ravenclaw won't even see that House's traits in Luna. But they *are* there: there's what you said about her being quick-minded; she certainly has an open mind; and she wants to learn (even if the things she wants to learn are stuff nobody else would care about ^_^). Personally, I love the fact that the really smart Ravenclaws we've seen are the two quirkiest ones. ^_^
I wonder what's with all the others, though. More than the Smart House, it looks like the Hormonal House. ¬_¬
Still, the 'Puffs get it worse... At least Luna is cool, and *alive*.
The sorting hat is not the ultimate psychoanalyst.
XDDD
no subject
I agree Luna is a complete Ravenclaw ^_^ And I think the smartest people in the wizardy world has to be at least a bit kooky (I mean, Dumbledore is a genious, and he's crazier than a billy goat). Almost everyone in chocolate frog cards have lost their marbles. So Luna being like that is a good sign XD She's just misunderstood like whoa.
Flitwick rocks, he does. Yeah, he gets shadowed by McGonagall, Lupin and Snape, and his class is a little understimated, but he's awesome. I loved him in OotP, when he joined and teased Unbridge with Minerva. That rocked, go Mr. Filius! He still is my third favorite teacher, and I'm so glad he's Ravenclaw's head of house. I want him as a grandpa (er, or grand-grandpa or whatever)
I still have my hopes Boot and Goldstein are not jerks. I sooo need to have a young Ravenclaw male rolemodel on the books...
More than the Smart House, it looks like the Hormonal House. ¬_¬
Word! Not even Slytherin is so horny... canon-wise, I mean O_oUu