Rant meme, swunked from Curia Regis. (See, Falc? It's not always you every time!)

[fpb]

1. Comment with any subject that you would like me to rant on. (Note that I may not have an opinion on your subject, and if I do, it might be different from yours.)

2. Watch my journal for your rant.

3. Post this in your own journal, so that you may rant for others.

Comments

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

Oooh, boy. *rubs hands*
This is gonna be fun.

And your rant topic for today is....

Smutty fanfiction.

(I figure you don't need my incentive to rant on serious topics.)

[jennilee.livejournal.com]

1. Take your pick: swearing, marijuana, ranting itself, reality tv shows, Catholic doctrine vs. Protestant doctrine (in a very broad manner), people who can only speak one language

Never heard the word "swunked" before. :P

[falco-conlon.livejournal.com]

Awww, but I have the best ones!

Nothing for you to rant on right now. Maaaaaybe later.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I made it up. I thought it sounded better than "gacked", and don't tell me that's not made up as well.

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I thought of a better one for you. (Take your pick between this and smutty fanfiction.)

Schools that ban Harry Potter from their libraries.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

What's to rant? Morons! Rant over. Honestly, I cannot even bring myself to believe it happens. HP novels have the approval of the Vatican, for pity's sake! What more do you want?

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

*thinks*

Woe, the problem is that you already rant on serious topics.

Hmmm, how about your opinion on Snape/Harry. *grins* I promise I won't be offended if you say that it is the most horrible ship that ever existed. (I'll just try to convince you otherwise)

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

Yes! Something I agree with you on!

[beckyemerson.livejournal.com]

Pro-choice Catholics

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Snape/Harry... well, in a sense it is a bit more credible than a lot of other ships one hears about. (Such as one I wrote about for fun, Lucius/Tonks.) Snape is one of the youngest teachers: there isn't the huge distance in age and the unattractive idea of old bodies on young ones that a lot of the teacher-student ships involve. And both Snape and Harry are deeply damaged people, the kind (everybody get ready to be offended), that, in my view, do tend to become homosexual. All the same, there is an unsurmountable problem: Snape is simply utterly unattractive. He is designed to be so. Even a gay Harry would have more or less his pick of partners, and he would not go for a guy who is both personally surly and physically graceless. Of course, I have written favourably of several fics that featured a sexy Snape (such as Shadowycat's), but that was because they were well written, not because I find the ship at all credible.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Ooh yes... give me a little time, will you? I have a lot of thing to say about that particular, er, item, and I would like to do it properly.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

OK. What I will do is dedicate a brief negative notice to each of your subjects.

swearing
Well, I regret to say that I have been known to let fly myself... let fly with a vengeance. Of someone with my ghastly temper and living in the difficult conditions I do, you would expect it, I suppose. But that does not make it right, and, more to the point, does not make it any less ugly. Swearing is not big and is not clever: our parents always told us that, and they were right. Even supposing invective to be necessary (and it rarely is), a multiplication of f-words and s-words does nothing for it. If you really want to insult someone, how much better is the way of an inventive MP of old: "When self-indulgence in food has reduced Lord X to his current shape, continence in sex involves nothing more than a sense of the ridiculous." Tell me, what annihilates your enemy more effectually - calling him/her a "fucking bastard/bitch" - or saying something like that?
marijuana
Ah, yes, I certainly have something to say about it. Let me preface this by saying that I am against the outlawing of drugs, on grounds mainly of double standards - we do, after all, accept one of the most ruinous and addictive drugs, namely alcohol. But at the same time, I have no more time for marijuana than I have for drunkenness, and that is based on personal experience. The stereotype of the joint-smoker is the mellow, stoned hippy; well, I must be unlucky in my pot-heads, because every of them I ever met has been both surly and paranoid, unpleasant to live with, and often manipulative with it. Whether it is that weed attracts a particular kind of person, or whether it stimulates that kind of bad attitude, I don't know; but I do know that I have no reason to think any good of it. Intoxication and addiction are never good news.
ranting itself
Can you think of an easier and cheaper way to make yourself look good before yourself and others? Take something; denounce it. Straightaway you are a campaigner, a crusader, a man in a cape. You don't have to do anything to change your own attitudes, to improve your life, to seriously do anything about the evil, yourselves; just denounce it to others. And the larger, vaguer, and more distant, from yourself, the better. To denounce a war crime that is taking place at the other end of the world - or that took place two hundred years ago - is so much easier than to try and break your addiction to junk food, or your problems with relationships, or your porn habit.

and here's the rest...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

reality tv shows
They take the worst features of mankind and make money out of it. They exploit the masochistic need of the protagonists to show that they exist at all, and the voyeurism of a public that wishes to see things that debase them (as the debasing of a human being debases us all). Personally, I find the processes involved so vile that I have never managed to bring myself to watch more than a piece of an episode, and that was in Italy where it involved a beautiful actress I had had a crush on long ago. And I watched the rest of the celebs involved gang up on her and force out. This is the sort of behaviour these shows encourage.
Catholic doctrine vs. Protestant doctrine
Well, how can I speak of that which does not exist? There is no doctrine that a Protestant body has not held or denied at some point; there even are bodies like the Jehova's Witnesses and the Mormons, who, while visibly Protestant, are not actually Christian at all. Protestantism is not a doctrine: it is an attitude. It is the attitude of the person who, coming upon a doctrine or religious practice which s/he does not understand, immediately declares it unsound. On the other hand, Catholicism certainly is a doctrine. It is even too much of one, as anyone who has a look of the Catechism of the Catholic Church knows. But it is also an attitude: the attitude of someone who, having inherited a huge body of doctrine developed by a community of saints and sages down twenty centuries, even where s/he does not understand or even sympathize, accepts it on the witness of the Church (i.e. of our shared historical past). It follows, by the way, that, now that the Protestant churches have existed for centuries, there are a lot of Protestants - perhaps the majority - who have the Catholic attitude of trust in the common past, if not the Catholic doctrine.
people who can only speak one language
Of course, it may not be your choice. It may be a misfortune. But if it is a matter of choice (as it is, for instance, for the majority of Britons), then it is rude to the majority of the world, arrogant, and profoundly self-damaging. To speak another language is not only to have an extra instrument, but to be open to a slightly different way of seeing the world, to new experiences, and last but not least to new people. And it is nice. My German is nothing to write home about, but I will never forget the bright, incredulous, grateful smile of a group of German tourists in Rome, when I answered a question from them in a few broken words of their own language.

Re: and here's the rest...

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

Wow. You know, I'm surprised to find I agree with you on most of the above. Well, I don't have an opinion on Catholic vs Protestant doctrine, (would be a bit hypocritical of me if I did). I think swearing is occasionally called for, and I know too well the satisfaction of sometimes letting loose. Still, I've gone to a lot of trouble to clean up my speech - I used to swear really unnecessarily, and I'm sure it didn't do anything good to my image. I share your views on pot, though I can come up with a lot more to say about it, and again, I'd be slightly hypocritical to denounce it completely. And ranting, as well as being a cheap way to make yourself look good, can just be a good way to blow off steam. As such, I'm up for the occasional rant, and don't even try to tell me that you're not. :) And as for speaking one language - well, being able to speak two is nice, and useful, and it makes it easier to understand both other languages, and the ones you speak. But not everyone has a knack for learning a second language, especially if the only practice you get with it is at school.

And I couldn't agree more on the subject of reality TV shows. Big Brother, a fascinating psychological experiment? Give me a bucket.

[becomethesea.livejournal.com]

The DaVinci Code :)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Hooooooooo boy... Have you ever struck gold with that one! Give me a leeetle time...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Hello. Rant finished and published. Hope you like.

[jennilee.livejournal.com]

What's to rant? Morons! Rant over.

Oh dear. Thank you for making me actually laugh out loud. I am in pain and laughing helps.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear, I'm sorry to hear you are in pain. Want to hear a few jokes, see if those make you laugh?

Re: and here's the rest...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I'm up for the occasional rant, and don't even try to tell me that you're not
Actually, the whole passage was addressed largely to myself.