Best. Line. Ever.

[commodorified]

Are people seriously arguing that an insurance company should be able to avail itself of a conscience clause? Shouldn't it be made to demonstrate a conscience first?

Also, it appears that someone has produced, and fandom has fallen neck and crop for, a movie which is conspicuously lacking in (or at least lacking in conspicuous) race- and gender- fail.

So of course it has children fighting each other to the death.

*sigh* I'll be over here, listening to Cabin Pressure and rereading Austen. Or writing Now We Are Forty: Eeyore's Lament. Or something.

ETA: AND being genuinely happy for the rest of you. I'm mildly wistful, not actually feeling hard-done-by or wishful of harshing the squee.

Comments

[staranise]

My actual thought: "Well, that's depressing. BUT WAIT. Is that the Virgin Mary snuggling an otter?"

WHY YES. Yes it is.

[commodorified]

INORITE?

My Recreational Dyslexia moment of this month was earlier tonight when I misread a performance schedule on fajrdrako's door as promising a performance of Ötterdämmerung.

For which I now yearn with all my heart.

PS I am most willing to share the icon.

[staranise]

:) Can you share where the icon comes from? That's practically deserving of a pilgrimage.

[commodorified]

I made the icon, but as far the the original image, um, somebody linked me directly to it and by the time I opened the tab the provenance was shot to Hell.

[ursamajor]

Sadly, I have to dispute that. There was definitely Hunger Games racefail, both in the casting process (though at least they cast the two explicitly black supporting characters with black actors, even if this was to the DISMAY OF WAY TOO MANY PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T THINK RUE AND THRESH WERE BLACK AND THAT A BLACK PERSON DOESN'T MATCH THE "INNOCENT BLONDE-HAIRED-BLUE-EYED ANGEL" THEIR BRAINS CONJURED UP WHILE COMPLETELY IGNORING THE TEXT DESCRIPTION OF RUE) and in the reactions to the movie.

http://www.racebending.com/v4/faq/questions-about-other-campaigns/#hungergames
http://www.racialicious.com/2011/03/25/why-the-casting-of-the-hunger-games-matters/
http://www.racialicious.com/2011/05/19/shady-business-as-usual-jennifer-lawrence-steps-out-as-the-hunger-games-heroine/
http://www.racialicious.com/2011/11/15/yes-there-are-black-people-in-your-hunger-games-the-strange-case-of-rue-cinna/

These last two links focus on a specific spoiler event in the movie and peoples' reaction to it, as well as tying it into current offscreen events, and they sent me into a blinding rage for a good part of Monday afternoon:

http://jezebel.com/5896408/racist-hunger-games-fans-dont-care-how-much-money-the-movie-made
http://disgrasian.com/2012/03/how-the-killing-of-a-fictional-black-child-exposes-how-we-feel-about-the-killing-of-a-real-black-child/

So yeah, sorry, but anybody who's seen the Hunger Games movie should at least know that it's not a magical sparkleicious racefail-free postracial love deathfest.

[commodorified]

As above, I lack and will continue to lack my own knowledge.

Most of the fannish talk I've seen about the movie so far seems to fall (in the matters of race and gender) somewhere between "they could have done better for sure but it didn't *suck*" to "based on the first movie, I am cautiously pleased" and pretty much everyone seems to think the books did really well.

I knew about the Fail in the reactions, which is definite Fail but seems, if anything, to have improved fannish opinion of the movie on the reasonable grounds that anything that pisses off that many racists must be doing something right.

[ursamajor]

*nod* I figured I'd give the spoiler warnings for anybody reading commentary on driveby :)

I'm still trying to unpack my own reaction a bit, tbh - because I am still irritated that the casting calls for the main characters of The Hunger Games were strictly "Caucasian," not "Caucasian or any other ethnicity," but I'm not *angry* to the same degree that I was re The Last Airbender movie casting, for example. And these are both series I adore. Maybe A:TLA a little more - I did spend a good part of this weekend watching the first two episodes of Korra rather than go out and watch The Hunger Games ;) And I would've thought that as a person of mixed race, I would be especially excited about the possibility of having a fellow person of mixed race playing a character whose description and background portray her as mixed-race, even if so far in the future that "biracialness" isn't a big deal because the vast majority of people in The Seam look - well, not blonde-haired, blue-eyed, 21st-century-idealized-white. I mean, to get Jennifer Lawrence to look how she does in THG, they're having to do the same spray tan and hair dye things they were doing to the actor and actress selected to play live-action Katara and Sokka. I'm not sure why I've either forgiven or forgotten this to enough of an extent that I'm still considering going and seeing The Hunger Games in theatres, whereas nobody could've paid me enough money to have done that for The Last Airbender.

[sporky_rat]

They didn't spray tan Jennifer Lawrence, she's too pale for that to have been. They did dye her hair and she does look like my cousins who live coal mining country except for her teeth, but whatever on that.

I just want to remember that it could have been far, far far worse.

[fajrdrako]

I volunteer to proofread Now We Are Forty. I remember it well, grasshopper.

[metaphortunate]

I would read Now We Are Forty!

Yeah, I want to see Hunger Games, really I do, because it sounds good and also to be in the fannish zeitgeist? I'm just not sure I'm up to watching kids beat each other to death with bricks right now.

[mme_hardy]

I am grumpily considering not going to the movie because it is notoriously shaky-cam, which triggers my migraines, sigh.

I read all three books for the first time last week, and was shocked by how grippy and spare they are. But not to be consulted if you have the quite reasonable squick our hostess mentions, or if you're in the need of even moderately cheerful books.

[recessional]

I will join you in feeling wistful; although I did watch and enjoy the movie, I can't play with the other kids much on this one for personal reasons. *shares tea?*

speaking of otters

[beable]

(Or rather: as others up-thread were speaking of otters)

Have you already seen this?

Otters that look like Benedict Cumberbatch: http://redscharlach.tumblr.com/post/19565284869/otters-who-look-like-benedict-cumberbatch-a

[krait]

So of course it has children fighting each other to the death.

Hey, that sounds like being a kid as I remember it.

(Mostly kidding. I had a pretty idyllic childhood in many ways, despite being an outcast.)