Hullo Intranets! Lots of things happened in the three weeks since I last checked in (obviously)! In an effort to not bore you with the details, I'll cut every topic so that you can pick and choose from the tl;dr at your leisure!

( 1. I got fired! )

( 2. We had family visiting! )
( 3. I almost had a boyfriend! )

In summary, my real life these past few weeks has been made of failure, and I took it the way I always take it, which is by escaping from it by acquiring a new fandom. Which brings me to points 4 and 5. Please be warned that from here on out, there be SPOILERS.

( 4. I watched Doctor Who! )
( 5. I watched Torchwood! )
( 6. I read Victory of Eagles! )
( 7. I watched the Avatar finale! )
( 8. I watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog! )

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. MY LIFE, THIS JULY. Also, I managed to see Get Smart and Iron Man twice, missed The Dark Knight's opening week and instead saw the UNBELIEVABLY BAD MAMMA MIA. DON'T SEE THIS MOVIE UNLESS YOU ARE SOME SORT OF MASOCHIST. ACTUALLY, I THINK I HAVE TO GIVE THIS ANOTHER CUT JUST TO ADEQUATELY EXPRESS HOW HORRIBLE THIS MOVIE IS.

( 9. I watched (and hated!) Mamma Mia! )

So anyway, if you have learned anything from this epic post, it is that you should avoid the majority of Mamma Mia! at all possible costs. And that I am most certainly not dead. Now I am going to go help get ready for my mother's annual birthday party/family reunion/picnic in the park which is taking place tomorrow. The theme this year is "Sunday In The Park With George" which we have cheerfully corrupted into parasols, polka dots, and picnic food. What can I say, it makes my mother happy.

HARRY POTTER HAS BLACK HAIR. BLACK. AND DAMN YOU FANFICCERS AND FANARTISTS WHO WOULD DEPICT HIM OTHERWISE.

There is a true and obvious difference between black and brown, even dark brown. I have no idea why this is such a huge peeve of mine, but it fills me with rage whenever I see it done.

/rant. At least it was quick.

You know what I really hate? I really hate scanlation sites that have forum-based downloading and require potential downloaders to jump through innumerable hoops before anyone can even touch their downloads section.

Of course, I always try their mIRC channels first, but on today's particular scanlator's channel, they didn't have any of their own releases available. THAT MAKES NO SENSE. So I trudged over to their forum thinking, "Oh Lord, what trials must I go through to obtain this manga?" Luckily, this particular forum operated under a password system that only required you to ask before you could receive. Which I suppose is fair enough. Except that on the downloading threads there was all this stuff about "DO NOT SHARE WITH OTHERS OUTSIDE THIS FORUM OR WE WILL STOP SCANLATING THIS MANGA AND REMOVE ALL DOWNLOADS," as well as "COMMON COURTESY REQUIRES THAT YOU LAVISH PRAISE UPON YOUR DOWNLOAD AND SCANLATION PROVIDERS." I was perfectly ready to adhere to the first rule and I dunno, felt decent enough today to actually leave brief thank yous once the downloads started. But then the first chapter finished downloading.

CHRIST CHILD IN THE MANGER, WHAT UTTER CRAP. I DON'T CARE IF YOU ARE THE ONLY SCANLATOR PROVIDING THIS LICENSED MANGA, YOU DO NOT GET TO LEAD ME THROUGH ALL MANNER OF INCONVENIENCE AND GUILT-TRIPPING ONLY TO LEAVE ME WITH THIS UTTERLY BELOW PAR PRODUCT.

The overall scan quality of the pages are bad. There are dark spine shadows. The text is blocky and pixelated. The translations are hardly proper English and frequently incomprehensible. There are even multiple cases of using white to edit out the original text in the nearly black spine label shadows, showing how little effort the editors must have put into maintaining consistency in their own work, putting aside completely what little regard they're showing toward maintaining the quality of this objectively very pretty and cute manga. I would not be surprised if the editors were working in MS Paint.

Normally, I really have no problem with a sub-par scanlation. Hell, I'm hosting a sub-par scanlation of Time Stranger Kyoko (although what I downloaded makes TSK's kind of sub-par look like high-resolution professional editing). The thing about that scanlation though is that its scanlator isn't COMPLETELY PRETENTIOUS ABOUT AND ZEALOUSLY PROTECTIVE OF WHAT THEY ADMIT IS THE PRODUCT OF AMATEURS. I easily obtained TSK and am free to distribute it so long as I leave in the credit pages, which I am perfectly willing to do.

I don't really have a point, other than, you know, WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET OVER OURSELVES? I just needed to rant a little.

As a general rule of thumb, there are only two things that bother me about the Harry Potter fandom. The first thing has deserted me in my BLINDING RAGE over the second. This second thing happens to be that, even though "Warnings" is a commonplace inclusion when beginning a story -- in much the same way that "Rating" and "Disclaimer" are socially accepted and often necessary -- many people feel no inclination to warn about things that could actually have any bearing on the reader's sensibilities.

I am not picky. Seriously, I have been reading fanfic for so long now, there is very little left that phases me. There is only one thing that I really cannot stand to read, and for some reason, it is the one thing that nobody warns about. That reason, most say, is that it ruins the ending. I say, I do not want to read a story where one of the main characters dies at the end. I hate character death. I hate it most when said character has been fighting to build a relationship and then, instead of being left alone to take advantage of the happy ending they have earned, the author kills the character off, thus taking all of my emotional investment and smashing it into teeny-tiny, heart-broken pieces.

( That being said, I will now fly into said blinding rage, complete with superfluous usage of capital letters and inflammatory four-letter words. )

Anyway, I suppose that's all the catharsis I'm going to get. What a lovely way to spend a Sunday. *scowls*