Appeal of Crime Shows

I love crime shows. I LOVE crime shows, but I don’t know why. Whether its a comedy like Psych, Castle, Monk, or BOnes, or psychological like criminal minds, there’s just something I find fascinating in how crimes are committed and murders are solved. It is rather fascinating. I have always loved mysteries, and started watching Law and Order at a young age. My dad has always found the shows disturbing and unrealistic, and sure. They can be a little cheesy at times, but there is something nice about knowing that the murderers are always caught. My favorite shows are ones that incorporate humor into the stories, so i was surprised I liked Criminal Minds so much it is very dark in its story telling and complicate psycho analysis. It’s really  good, and it makes me wonder why I like it so much.

The Raven King Review

This year, one of my favorite book series is coming to an end. It is called The Raven Cycle, and it is so much more than it seems.

When I first read the blurb on the back, I put the book down. I was then told it was really good so I read the blurb again. And put the book back down. Finally, after an hour getting frustrated with my library’s reading selection, I picked the book up again and decided to read it. That was either the best or worst decision I could make.

See, the blurb makes you think it will be all about a Miracle Romance™ with some kind of love polygon. I thought the book would be a total sausage fest, and it also makes the book seem like it takes place in some fantasy land, or 1900s New Orleans (okay, that's not really a bad thing). The blurb forgot to mention, however, that Blue isn’t actually drawn the Aglionby students because of any dark or mysterious reasons. It’s because one of them asks her out. The romance between main girl and boy isn’t the center of the plot either. The supernatural mystery of the ancient beings sleeping beneath the small Virginia town of Henrietta is the focus of the plot. While the main narrators are a girl and three guys, there are many female characters in the books. An all female house of psychics, a US senator, an all-knowing older sister, a secretive aunt, a pink wearing criminal, and a few others who may be spoilers.

The reason this book is so devastating, though, is that the main boy will die. It’s on the back of the book, it's in the first chapter, it's mentioned every other chapter. He will die. And the way he finds out is so sad. It’s guaranteed this last book, The Raven King, will make me cry. On that note, I recommend you read it. The depths of everyone's personalities and how their past affects them is so well written. There’s gay and bi characters. All the pieces of the plot are like puzzle pieces, and fall into place perfectly. Everything is hinted at, and every sentence means something. I feel like I could tell you exactly what will happen in The Raven King, if I only knew how to put the puzzle correctly.

The book was great, and enough was left a mystery that it wasn't completely satisfying, but everything came together in the end in a way that made sense.

Daredevil

Wow. So I watched Daredevil season 2 and. Wow. I have some mixed feelings, but overall they’re positive. I think. It was difficult to watch Matt and Foggy’s relationship degrade, and even harder to watch Matt and Karen’s newly formed relationship get destroyed. I just want everyone to be happy but, if it means interesting developments will happen next season, it’s okay. The plot twists were all pretty good, the only plot twist I saw coming was  in that last scene in the finale. That was just too predictable. All the others seemed pretty surprising. The imagery was beautiful, and all the renaissance painting references were so cool, I love easter eggs like that. I felt, though that, at times, too many plots and subplots were going on at once. Certain aspects got convoluted and lost, so they lost their impacts.
Dan Seitz wonders if season 2 is hiding another villain. “Comics readers are probably already giddy, but for the non-comics fans among you, when Elektra and Bullseye square off in the original comic, he kills her with, you guessed it, a playing card. It was what cemented Bullseye as not just another gimmick villain, but a genuine monster. He also has a long and nasty history with the Punisher, since Bullseye works primarily as a mob hitman. Rumors have gone around for a while that Bullseye would turn up this season, however they remained unconfirmed and it seemed the Punisher was going to be the primary foe Daredevil would face. But if Elektra turns up, and she’s committing assassinations, don’t expect Bullseye to be very far behind.”

Whatever happens, I am super excited for season 2.

books and bullying

          This school's bullying problem mainly stems from privilege. It lies in an upper middle-class part of town. In AP Psych, our class was asked whether poor or middle class (and up) people do more drugs. The majority of the class thought poor, when the reality is that Drugfree.org found that those with a higher income have a higher drug rate. After a fight at the school, people started suggesting “ghetto” students be kicked out.. The students at this school are raised in a bubble they have no interest in popping. They  are ignorant of how ignorant they are, and it leads to minorities at this school getting bullied, or jokes about friends that are charged with negativity, or gossip that leads to rumors and hate, or deciding that your opinion is more important than someone’s life.             Some students argue that they are not the cause of the problem, so they shouldn't have to receive punishment in the form of assemblies, lectures, and guest speakers. They argue that not everyone at Kennedy is prejudiced or ignorant. But the reality is that bullies don’t always realise they are a part of the problem. They push the blame on others, because they don’t realise those little things they say to maintain power really do count as bullying. After all, according to Psychology Today, bullies cover any low self-esteem they have with defensive egos. The only way to reach every last one is to talk to every student.

The solutions given to students who are bullied have been found to not work. Ignoring harassment, telling the perpetrator to stop, or telling them that the bullying hurts their feelings, and walking away do not fix the problem. A Penn State study found that having a peer intervene and support a student being harassed is the most effective way to help. It was also found by the Journal of Adolescent Health that while bullying isn’t the sole cause of suicide, it does increase risk of suicide by 250% and reported suicide attempts by 340%. Support for students

Teachers and faculty  need to address this school's problems with privilege and mental illness. They need to teach respect,and they need to single people out, not continue with their vague be kind to others mantra. They need to talk about the mental illness, and the prejudice, and the ignorance that runs rampant at this school. Bullying does exist at Kennedy, addressing the sources is the only way to fix it.

Movies and bullying

Had you asked me a month ago if there was bullying at Kennedy High School, I would have said that it didn’t exist. Sure, students at this school could gossip and insult. A lot of them don’t realize that what they say impacts people, but is it bullying?I didn’t think so. Recently, a student committed suicide. I didn’t know her, but her death affected a lot of my classmates. I was surprised to find out that she was a fairly popular student, and she was a victim of cyberbullying. According to the CDC, 19.6% of high school students are bullied and, of that 19.6%, 14.8% is done via cyber bullying. That means three quarters of high school bullying happens online.This is where all those anti bullying videos go wrong. They always portray outcasts with no history of depression or other mental illness getting bullied by the “popular kids” and even trying to kill themselves.

Teachers don’t know how to handle bullying anymore. Kennedy has a bullying problem, and it’s in no way the “traditional” kind. It’s not bratty kids beating each other up like in the eighties movies, and it’s not students getting messages on their Myspace page like in those early 2000s PSAs. Everything’s outdated. Today it’s gossip, and slurs, and online drama. It’s people that are either too wrapped up in themselves that they don’t understand what they are doing has consequences, or it’s people that want to exert power over others because they themselves feel powerless. Studies done by the CDC show that bullying puts both the victim and the bully at greater risk of developing mental health problems. When the school had its anti-bullying assembly, not only did it not mention mental health, it also forgot to address suicide. It rendered the entire assembly useless. The bullying victims that kill themselves are mentally ill. They have problems outside of someone making fun of them. Telling someone is helpful, but only if that person does more than just tell the bully to stop.  If all thats happened is a scolding, you’re putting a band aid over something that requires stitches.

         

Books these days

Lately I have found it hard to find young adult books that actually sound good. They either sound unoriginal, cliche, or meaningless. I think the best way to express my frustrations is in a list.

1. Love triangle. When this is in the book description, I put it down immediately. It is so cliche at this point to include this unsuspenseful who will she choose drama to a story. It’s overdone and boring, and so I immediately set the book back down when I see it.
2. I also can’t stand the chosen one trope. Do you realise how old that got after Harry Potter? All the others with similar abilities to the main character mysteriously die or something. Or there's some prophecy that only a special snowflake can fulfil.
3. There's also the not like other girls theme that shows up. The female character will put down other girls, talking about how unique she is, describe her make up routine immediately after puting down girls that wear make up, etc. She also has colorful eyes.
4. The brooding male character. Ugh. A tragic backstory used to excuse his behavior. Love at first sight because he and the female character are connected somehow. Emotionless, distant, and super hot.
5. White characters. Everyone's white. If it's a fantasy novel, it's about a Western culture and everyone's white. If it's modern day, it's about America and everyone's white. If it's sci-fi, dystopian, whatever, everyone's white. Unless you are explicitly looking for a book with not white people, you could randomly pick a book and it would be white. And if a race isn't given for a character, they are presumed white by everyone else.

Young adult novels need diverse characters that don't rely on the same old tropes over and over again. Diverse characters and plots that don't read like 500 other books are what's needed to save these stories

Metropolis

I recently watched the incredibly long and confusing silent film metropolis. It's about a world where  the wealthy  live above ground and the working class lives below ground  Manning deadly machinery. When feeder meets the beautiful Maria, some kind of religious messiah. She wants someone to be the mediator between the classes. Why she can not be that person, I don't understand. But, anyway. Rotwang turns his robot sex doll into a Maria look alike. She leads the working class to destroy the machines. After they realise this means the demise  of their children, they burn the false Maria alive. Feeder becomes the mediator. The end. Weird right? And it was 2 hours long. The visuals were beautiful and realistic, considering it was the 1920s. The acting was overdramatic but pretty good. The Pink Floyd album setting the tone throughout the movie was awesome, and I can not imagine the film with classical music anymore.

Unbreakable Kimmy schmidt

I was really disappointed with how unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt handled political correctness with Titus. Instead of saying don't be insulted by everything, it should encourage cultural exchange. Japanese people don't care if you dress like a geisha. They like spreading they're culture. Tina fey is just trying to excuse her own blackface. She should be ashamed. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is such a pure, fun show that having the writers try to excuse racism is just terrible. If they had only talked about cultural exchange, and how not everything has to be insulting, it would be ok, but the only reason Tina Fey included that bit is because she has been criticized repeatedly for wearing cultures like costume.

Zootopia

This movie lived up to all my expectations.  I loved the animation, it was so beautiful, and the message was so clear. The discussions about race and prejudice and stereotypes, and how people use social Darwinism to excuse racism, is so well done, I loved the movie. I actually saw it on Easter, which I thought was really fitting because rabbits. All the puns in the movie were great, and shakira with her booty short wearing tiger back up dancers was so funny. This movie was a fantastic addition to the Disney vault, and I hope they release more movies like this one. A plus plus plus plus. Such a great movie. I have high expectations for Moana, and hopefully Disney can meet them. 

Emma

This was the harder of the two Jane Austen books I read. I don’t think it was the vocabulary or subject matter, it was the writing style. It seemed like it was different than Pride and Prejudice somehow. More complex. I had to put the book away for a while and come back to it  after reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. I did like the character Emma, though. She was kind of awful, but her loyalty to Harriet was very admirable, even if the results of her meddling weren't always the most ideal. The forward stated that Jane Austen wanted to write a character only she could like, and as soon as I started reading Emma I saw what she meant. Emma is loyal, but she is also nosy, and judgmental, and classist, and overly confident in her own abilities. She convinces Harriet that she has to marry above her standing, leading her to turn down the proposal of the guy she winds up marrying in the end. She assumes the reason for Jane Fairfax’s return was to avoid an affair. And then inadvertently spread the rumor. She is flawed, but she grows some, and I really like realistic characters like her that are just a little bit annoying and meddlesome.

One thing that confused me, and this was in Pride and Prejudice as well, was that Jane Austen named a few characters Jane, i'm assuming after herself. I know she originally published her books anonymously, so it was probably for herself. Jane Fairfax and Jane Bennet are similar, I suppose. Both are reserved, Bennet more so, and both are considered to be rather perfect and good by others. Jane Austen isn’t like that at all, judging by her writing and description in the forward. I suppose she may have written the characters like that for the humor then.

I liked Emma for the most part, but it was a rather slow read, and rarely did the story contain actual surprises. It was good, but I prefer Pride and Prejudice.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Going into this, I had heard many good things about Khaled Hosseini and his books. When I started reading it in school, many people stopped me and told me it was a good read. I have to say, I agree with them. Throughout reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, I found myself comparing what occurred in the book to my prior knowledge of Afghanistan and its complicated history in the last half century. Seeing the war from the perspective of two women shown a light I had not imagined possible on the story. I found myself hoping leader after leader would be successful in governing Afghanistan humanely. I even found myself cheering on the Taliban for a brief amount of time.

The story of Mariam and, later Laila, was all together moving, interesting, and frustrating. I felt Mariam’s sorrow and regret after her mother’s death, I was intrigued by Laila’s home life, and I was frustrated as time passed by while Laila and Mariam remained trapped in Rasheed’s house. The flow of the story never stagnated, watching Laila and Mariam age so quickly while so little progress occurred was what frustrated me. I don’t know how anyone can live like that, spending so long playing a game of cat and mouse. Sneaking around your husband, the police, the children... it was difficult to read that bit. Mariam’s arrest and detainment was satisfying. Not because I thought she should be arrested, or imprisoned, or executed, but because she was at least free from Rasheed, and free from that fear.

I found this book to be a quick and satisfying read, and liked the switching between perspectives that began about a third of the way through the book. Hosseini managed to explain a complicated history, an emotional narrative, and story of survival in a very readable way, and in only 400 pages.

The men who built America episode review

The second episode of The Men Who Built America focused on Andrew Carnegie’s rise to power and his fall in popularity. It details Carnegie’s development of better steel manufacturing, his rivalry with Rockefeller, and his doomed partnership with Henry Frick. The documentary starts with explaining how Carnegie began working odd jobs for Thomas Scott, a businessman working in rail, when he is twelve years old. He becomes Scott’s prodigy and begins taking initiative in investments of his own. When Scott asks him to build the first bridge to span the Mississippi river for the railroad, Carnegie realizes he has to do something different to create a mile long bridge strong enough to withstand the currents of the river. He begins looking into steel, and comes upon method to forge two weeks worth of steel in fifteen minutes. Carnegie immediately begins pouring money into the steel bridge and, while initially expensive, it proves to be smart because quickly others are wanting to replace rundown wooden bridges with steel ones. While his business grows, however, the profits from the too many rails go down. Thomas Scott passes away in ruins after Rockefeller backs out of a deal. Carnegie blames Rockefeller for his mentor's death and escapes the recession by repurposing his steel for building materials. He then plans to become even wealthier than Rockefeller. He makes the mistake of hiring Frick to do that. Frick is efficient and calculating, but immoral and spoiled. His dam leads to 2000 people dying when it breaks, and he sets Pinkertons on striking steel workers, leading to even more deaths. After, Carnegie is left to pick up the pieces, donating and investing money to improve public opinion.

Batman vs Superman

This was such a strange movie. First off, until someone told me gotham was meant to be chicago, I thought metropolis and Gotham were right next to each other, with the ease the characters traveled between them with. Wonder Woman was so awesome, I just wish she did more in the beginning of the movie. Superman was being super ridiculous and quite the hypocrite, because all his talk about vigilantes applied to him, as well. When it came down to the big Batman and superman fight, I couldn't figure out why superman didn't just say that lex luther had his mother. It would have stopped the fighting immediately. And why was Bat fighting Super man? Because the wheelchair guy blew himself up? Actually, it was because superman killed innocent civilians, not just criminals. Why did Lex Luther hate superman? Vigilante justice couldn't have been the sole season, because that is exactly what Lex Luther wound up doing. You don't frame a guy for all this stuff, dig up aliens, resurect things, all because you don't want aliens on the planet. Why was that politician lady distracted but her grandmother's ice tea right before getting blown up? Why didn't the movie address some of Batman's classism, only fighting the poor but not the corrupt one percent? What happened to Robin? Why was batman interested in Lex Luther in the first place? Who was that time traveling guy and how was he relevant to the story? This movie had great visuals, and lots of potential for Justice League, but as a stand alone movie it falls a little short.  It was very confusing, and a simple plot would've helped significantly. I just have so many questions.