girlofprey

I haven't done a proper Livejournal post in about a fortnight, it seems. Wow.

In real life, I have been mostly tidying my bedroom, finally. I got my service worker to come over and sit with me while I did it, despite mum's objections. Mostly it was just him sitting there while I sorted through stuff, and decided what to keep and what to throw away, which was probably not very fascinating for him. At one point he sat and counted how many DVDs I was throwing out. And we had an odd and involved conversation about William Roache. But it's nice to finally have it done, and to throw out things I don't want anymore, even though I hate doing that. Also I hoovered things that haven't seen a hoover in years, I don't think. All I have to do now is put up some of the pictures I've been keeping in a stack by the desk, go through some old soap mags and throw most of them away, and maybe decide what to do with the big stack of boxes I'm keeping by the bed. Basically I'm keeping them because if I decide to move again, which I probably will do at some point, I may as well move things in the boxes they came in and which fit them. That seems like the best course of action. But it only seems like maybe I could keep them in a better way than stacking them up beside the bed.

But anyway. Mostly it's just nice to have some space in my bedroom again, and a place for everything to live in.

And there's also been some trouble with my nephews. A few weeks ago my MN, the one who's meant to be having anger management therapy at some point, was in trouble the other week because while playing out he and another boy ended up fighting with a little girl, to the point of kicking her in the head, pushing her down a small hill, and one of them holding her down while the other one hit her. Apparently she had a footprint on her face. Her mother came round, and my sister apparently said she nearly ended up fighting with her, and in the end the police got called. And my MN laughed at them. But they made it pretty clear that in a few years, if he did the same thing, juvenile detention was a very real option.

To be honest I don't know how to feel about it. I mean obviously it's horrible, but there's not much I can do about it. He's meant to be having this therapy anyway, and he got grounded for it. Apparently to begin with my MN said the girl hadn't done anything before they hit her, but then it turned out there was some story about my MN building a den, this girl and another boy asking him to play with them and he said yes, but then decided to stay in his den, so they came in and wrecked it. Which still isn't okay, I know, but is mildly better than him and another boy just attacking a little girl over nothing. And then apparently a week later my sister and MN, and possibly the rest of the family, were over at the little girl's house with her mother, having dinner, and with the mother apologising for how she reacted and calling the police. So I don't know. Hopefully my MN can get some therapy and just get this behaviour under control a bit.

Fandom-wise I have mostly been obsessing over Justin Hammer from Iron Man 2, shipping George Gently and Bacchus from George Gently even though I don't quite know how, but I love Bacchus' hair and when he is protective, and obsessing a little bit over the Lego Movie. The Lego Movie.

Basically I could better put up with and enjoy the film's message of 'everyone should be able to play with whatever Lego they want and be as creative as they want, there should be a place for all types of creativity in playing', if the Lego company weren't doing shit like bringing out special PINK sets for girls with 'girly' interests to play with. Not that I think it's bad to have feminine interests represented. But you don't have to code it so hugely. Because that's almost like you're telling Certain People what Lego they should and shouldn't be playing with, for Business reasons.

And what was their gender representation like in the actual film? There was one main female character, and though I loved her and thought she had an actual character which is always nice, her role was still 50% love interest, there to inspire Emmett to be creative and try to impress her. And as other people have pointed out, there are whole scenes where Emmett just objectifies her, rather than listening to any of the plot- and world-relevant things she has to say, and the fact their 'love story' revolves around stopping her settling for an 'asshole' while a nice guy is right there is super weird considering current gender politics. I actually really liked Wyldstyle and Batman's relationship, and would have preferred it if they'd ended up together, just realising they don't have to be obsessed with being special and cool all the time, and that you can work as a team in your relationship as well as the rest of your life. Also, Batman wasn't even that much of an asshole to her. Even in the scene on the pirate ship I found it really hard to tell if he was just going off with Han Solo to steal a hyperdrive, which would mean he was thinking of the team all along. kasjdjkasd. Basically Emmett was either saving her from an asshole, or taking her off a perfectly decent guy because the plot demanded the hero get the girl, and both are super weird.

And I know Princess Unikitty was sort of a female character too. But she was also a fantasy creature that wasn't even human by Lego standards, and I feel like I'm seeing that a lot with female characters nowadays. And as for the 'real life' women, in the family that turns out to be the main core of the film? The mum is a voice offscreen that tells the dad and son their dinner's ready, and the little sister (also offscreen) getting to play with Lego's is very much made out to be a bad, destructive thing. Why can't she just play with the pink lego's by herself, am I right guys?

Uhhhh. I didn't want to make this review because basically I am sick of complaining about things. But it's SO ODD, and they missed basically every opportunity to live up to their own anvilicious message. Also the only character of colour we saw was the first and only character to permanently die, and they made a LOT of weird jokes about him being blind. Not as weird as the ones in the Lego Movie videogame! But still weird.

But I did really enjoy it, it was really funny and the animation was really good, and all of the voice acting was pretty much amazing. I honestly kind of hated Liam Neeson before this film, because he did that weird film about wolves and I find most of his roles quite smug and his voice really grates on me. But by the end of it Good Cop Bad Cop was my favourite character, and now I kind of love him? Also they let him actually use his Irish accent, which makes his voice instantly bearable, and maybe that was the problem I had with it all along. A CURSE ON EVERYONE WHO TRIED TO MAKE HIM SOUND AMERICAN, THE FAULT IS YOURS.

Also I kind of loved President Business, because Will Ferrell, and sort of ship him with Bad Cop. But that is it's whole other paragraph because:

I've recently discovered what actual fandom is like on Tumblr, and I don't think I like it, oh my God. Maybe it's just not for me, or maybe it's my own fault for getting into it with a fandom as odd as the Lego Movie, but. I have never seen so many people projecting so many of their issues onto fictional characters so intensely, and fighting with each other over it. Also it's filled with people who write in text too small to read and have music autoplaying whenever you open their Tumblrs. And people who wonder if it's morally wrong to sexualise children's toys in a children's movie in the first place. askdjajlad Tumblr.

Other than that I have mostly been researching medieval England for a fic I might write for Dragon Age, mostly as a way to procrastinate writing it I think, and then throwing the whole thing out anyway because Dragon Age itself can't seem to decide which historical period it's set in; they have magic so being specific about technology doesn't make much sense; they did bizarre things like having pumpkins growing in Ferelden even though it's meant to be faux-England and there is no faux-America that we know of; and Ferelden isn't even an island country, so looking up which plants are native doesn't even make that much sense anyway. Plus they just plain old made up some new plants like Deathroot and Elfroot anyway. Plus in the medieval period people were already sailing around moving plants and technology around anyway, so there's not much point being that rigid about it. It has been fun researching stuff, and it gave me some vague ideas, but eh. I think we'll count this one as a hodge-podge anyway.

I still do have complete my Origins replay with the different decisions I want to make, and the DLCs, and then a Dragon Age 2 replay (sigh) so I have the backstory I want for when Inquisition comes out though. Darn.

And the soaps are all kind of terrible at the moment, and have decided that killing young women off is totally the way to go and how to get ratings. So.

But on the plus side, it's March, so my self-imposed ban on Creme Eggs and easter sweets is over, and it'll be my birthday in about four weeks. Yippee. Also it's Pancake Day on Tuesday. THE MOST WONDERFUL DAY OF THE YEAR.