9th Musing: Female Protagonists (especially in YA)

As I am an avid reader, I obviously come across many female characters (as that is our topic of today's midnight), but rarely are they ever satisfactory! Ironically I've noticed they're least annoying, which is to say, lovely, in the average middle grade book and only semi annoying in the average "adult" book. As for the YA (young adult) section, they are absolute book-ruiners. In teen books there are generally a select few personality types authors choose to use:

1. The melodramatic "I'm just so in love with him" type. Instead of giving you examples, I'll tell you to look at any romance, especially that of the paranormal subgenre. Bella Swann is our captain here.

2. The girl who tries to be tough and "badass" but just ends being a #1 (see above). I'll say that Tris Prior from Divergent is the poster child for this. (Though I admit I feel bad, as I couldn't decide whether I liked the book or not and I really liked the idea, it just seemed like it was written in the tone of every other teen book, and I wasn't a fan of Tris, though I really loved the guy that came in (go figure), and a few other characters as well, though I think she killed off too many people, run-on sentence, run-on sentence, run-on sentence....)

3. The girl who must be snarky at every moment and find some smart-ass comment at any given time. I mean, I love snarky/sassy!--but when it's done CORRECTLY! For example, Diana Ladris from the Gone series does it perfectly and she's a wonderful three-dimensional character. However, Sophie Mercer was great in the first book Hex Hall but in Demonglass, she was a little too much.

4. They're just meek and blend in with the wall paper. Usually they end up becoming brave and do stand up for themselves, but their personalities are still quite plain to me.

Now I feel a little bad because I did like those books (excluding Twilight--that one is a literary shame, which I probably will continue to reiterate when it comes up). In high fantasy, however, the women are all just sort of these boring, maternal blobs! We need more Hermiones and Diana Ladrises (as far as grey characters go) and Kate DeVrieses (oh what a brilliant character she is <3 ) and etc.
Does anyone agree with me? (As not many people read this I don't expect actual comments but mental concurrence is nice too).

8th Musing: Religion

(Hello, I'm back! Did my followers miss me? All two of you? Actually I'm back here because my friend reminded me to write, so I'm writing! I just lack good subject material in general lol)

On to the main topic...

For me, this whole subject of religion has become quite ironic recently. I was possibly as cynical as anyone could be about religion, especially Christianity (and I'm very sorry if that offends anyone reading this, but it's true). I tended to ridicule most religions, finding them stupid, irrelevant, wrong, a waste of time, the list could go on. However, as I watch 7th Heaven (middle of fourth season!) while I continue to work on an Aerith cosplay :3 I feel like I'm slowly being converted. It's really weird actually because my opinions are slowly shifting all the way to the other side. No matter what religion they talk about on that show (in the rare occasion they discuss one other than Christianity), it always sounds wonderful. Judaism, Buddhism, etc. (though I've always liked Buddhism even if I couldn't agree with it on some points). My views on Catholicism haven't changed a bit, but the show put everything else in a new light. I realize that it isn't the religion I couldn't stand, it was the corruption made by people willing to use it for war, amassing wealth, blaming others, etc. In its purest form, the reason for its creation, Christianity seemed far more loving and accepting than it does now. (And of course, good old Reverend Camden sticks to those ideals). I think about everyone I know will find it weird if I suddenly decide to join a church. I've been the furthest thing from atheistic, though I've also been the furthest from religious. I have a more spiritual mindset. Perhaps it is the spirituality I hold in my beliefs that first crafted the religions in their incorrupted form.

Just some thoughts that passed through my mind.

7th Musing: Proper Usage of Yaoi! My ranting--no flames allowed

So being an avid fan of manga, anime, video games, and the like, I come across a lot of yaoi in fanfiction and it annoys the heck out of me, to be honest. Usually when I complain, people agree with me, but then there are the "you're against homosexuality? You're a terrible person!" So clarifying things right away, I am definitely not against it, I support love in any shape or form as long as both partners are happy (I'll just keep it as that because, well, that's a whole other topic to delve into, which I probably won't unless I'm actually interested in pondering it).
I guess I'll zero-in on Kingdom Hearts, a video game. Two best friends (and that's it!). The main character all but declares his love for the girl in their little trio and she returns his feelings, which is one of the reasons why the other (heterosexual) character is jealous of the protagonist: because he's also in love with her. Now when I'm trying to find a good story on ff.net, it's all yaoi pairing the two guys together, which, honestly, ruins the whole story for me because, aside from thinking the protagonist and said love interest are quite cute together, these people are twisting the characters' actions and making the whole story about them secretly being in love with each other.
Now a few I wouldn't mind, but when there are hundreds of them and it's hard to just find a good old friendship story (and don't even get me started on two other main characters who are like brothers because they also fall in love with a girl, the third member of their group). I think yaoi can be good if it's canon like Magnus Bane and Alec, and I love Jakotsu---he's one of my favourite characters in the whole show, or Dekka and Brianna, though this one is sad because the latter is straight.
Basically, I'm just saying: use it properly, people! The author wrote it a certain way for a reason! Stop twisting their words and prior actions. Like I said, I can understand some yaoi when the author doesn't intend it, but it's inescapable now to the point where I can't find anything else for my favourite stories. *sigh*

6th Musing: School Systems

Random daily update: (Two of them actually. One, today I repeated something that sounded very familiar to my friends and then I realized it's because I wrote it, but it was quite true. The friend who reads this laughed at me, but I realized I should just have stock-phrases from here in my head now :/ )
(Second: I just finished an amazing (beautiful!) book called Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe).

So I guess since I haven't had many ideas, here's one that tends to circulate in my head sometimes, especially because one of my friends is really bent on changing it. And that would be the school systems of...well, more than one country. And this will be a shorter post too.
I'll be simple.
Here's what's wrong:

Standardized testing
Grades
Favoring memorization over free-thinking and opinions
Forcing students to learn certain subjects past certain grades.
Required reading (by board members, most of whom have never been educators) and have you read The Song of Solomon? Besides emotionally scarring its victims--readers--it teaches me nothing except that the author has mental issues. To be fair, the last two pages were quite good. And I will never forget the time we had to read 150 pages about a man in prison and it consisted of him talking about what he ate at his meals and how grueling and mind-numbing it was to lay bricks for hours. For a few pages he would talk about his family and how they thought he was a spy, but the rest discussed what I wrote a sentence ago.

There's more, but those are the biggest problems as far as purely education goes. So I think there should be a mass reform.
1. Once students know that they hate math or language or any other subject besides writing (because they'll have to do this their whole life anyways), those subjects should not be required because that time otherwise wasted could be devoted to refining their real skills.
2. There should be no grades. Tests are a terrible way to measure intelligence, which renders grades irrelevant to a person's skill. Einstein failed math.
3. A council of current teachers will decide what books to read and they're not all terribly boring, they know books that are both enjoyable to read and those which contain valuable teaching material.
4. Just get rid of standardized testing, it's a waste of time, energy, and really just to fuel America's place in the worldwide competition of "which country has the best students?"

Just some of my thoughts. Also...I lied about this being a short post.

5th Musing: Out of Musings (but somehow we get to sci-fi)

So I sorta skipped a day of musings and with my sincerest apologies, I must also say that I have no musings at the moment! But then I thought: Ah! What a paradox this is!
Because really, I am musing about the fact that I have no musings. If I had musings, I could muse, but if I had none then I could muse about how I could not muse.
And that is how this post has the word muse (or a word in its family) 9 times in 5 lines. That should be some sort of record.
But while we are on this topic of paradoxes, I must say they, especially those of the temporal sort, are some of my favorite things about which to theorize. It's because I watch things like Doctor Who and the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (you can't forget Final Fantasy VIII in addition to that).
I warn you there are spoilers ahead!!

With Doctor Who we could talk all day about paradoxes, so I'll just talk about MoHS. So in the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (like I said: spoilers coming up). The main character's just minding his own business, trying to turn the world back to its original way and then the crazy girl who we thought disappeared like 15 episodes back randomly comes in and stabs him in the back (literally). So while he's writhing in pain and she's making sure he doesn't make it out alive, two saviours step in and save him. One of them is obviously the main character from the future with his friend, a time-traveler, though they only reveal his silhouette and voice. After the second time watching (and reading a couple of forum posts), I realized that he was only alive at the end because his future self saved him. But how did that future self get out alive?  Technically that future self shouldn't have existed.
Or what about that story where this man wanted to see how a building burned down so he went back in time into that building and knocked down the lantern that started the fire. So basically, he caused what he wanted to witness.
So I have to wonder: if time travel is possible (and I really do believe it is, we just haven't achieved the means yet), could these ever happen?
And what about time loops? How many times have you lived this day if it turns back so that you can't remember? In the Endless Eight (MoHS again), they all felt a strong sense of deja vu. Now whenever I feel that, I get creeped out because I think of time loops.
I'd like to find out how much of this is possible and how to achieve something like this because, really, I believe that manipulating time is a possibility, we're just not advanced enough.

4th Musing: Acting

At the risk of this being a topic not many people aside from me will care about....I don't really care, so just wait for tomorrow's post or something.
So basically, one of my dream careers (of many) is to be an actress (film preferred over theatre) and my recent college level theatre class really inspired me to become more serious about it. There is a lot of analysis about human behaviour, which is my niche (psychological brain, to refresh your memory) and also how to display certain characteristics on-stage. My teacher is extremely passionate, which is probably my favourite characteristic in a teacher, and she was always telling us to study actors and listen to their tones and watch their body language. It's just so interesting to see how some of the really excellent actors can capture characters so well. Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, and the like can become entirely different people, yet still believable through each one.
Aside from the three mentioned, my list of inspirational actors is as followed:

David Gallagher
Miyano Mamoru
Jun Ji-Hyun (though I've only seen her in one movie--My Sassy Girl--she is fabulous!)
Alan Rickman
James Franco
Daniel Auteuil
Heath Ledger just because he could become a character completely
Robin Williams
Christopher Lee!

Ahhh the list could go on, but those are the ones that sprang to mind.
I recently discovered just how much an actor can change a character even by one word. I was listening to the Japanese version and then the English version of, well, a video game (but they have really top-notch actors--how I miss you, Billy Zane...). Basically one character accused the second character of not having a conscience and turning to the dark side, so the second character replied, "Conscience?"
So when I first heard it in English it was sassy David Gallagher saying it in a sort of disdainful tone. Then we have a non-sassy Miyano Mamoru say it in a different tone, as if he's hurt that his friend suggested he didn't have a conscience and he seemed far more vulnerable than the closed-off English interpretation.
I was about to tell this to my friend, but I feel like I'd given her enough Kingdom Hearts, and furthermore Riku analysis for a lifetime (but it's only the latter, really, that I'm afraid she'll get tired of). So, sparing her, I just explained my little observation and personally just found it fascinating how it was only one word and how two totally different interpretations can be "correct" (and by correct, I mean give the feel of the character).

And with that I bid you adieu until the fifth musing.

Third Musing: What Makes a Personality

(random daily update: I couldn't write yesterday because of a very bad stomachache :P I must say, though, that I should call these ramblings instead of musings. Thank you for putting up with me.
~listening to Yamagami no Mori he from Hotarubi <3)

So I can safely assure that many of my friends would expect this post by now. I guess I'm what one would call a psychology junkie? MBTI, enneagram, Global 5, astrology, quizilla character personality tests, you name it. Some I like more than others (that would be 1, 2, and 4 on that small list) and I use them to obsessively type my friends, characters I like, celebrities, or just people I'm interested in, in general.
As for me, I'm an ENTP, 4w3, and Pisces (Aquarius moon), which happens to be extremely contradictory. (4 symbolizes individualism and loner tendencies while 3 needs success and depends on admiration from others). Pisces is emotional, Aquarius is rational and so forth, but enough about me. I was just pondering that which contributes to one's personality. Personally, I was never much for the theory stating the brain is your being. Despite the opinions of what I like to call narrow-minded scientist types, I believe in a soul and that the heart, not the brain, rules emotion.
I also never understood the people who claimed that children are just a product (or sum?) of their parents. Yes, I've definitely taken mannerisms and ways of interacting with people based on what I grew up with, but I have my own unique personality that's been with me since I was born as does everyone. I like to claim some individuality.
Another thing that annoys me is that my English teacher (though she's actually my favorite English teacher ever and she is amazing, I promise) one year always had us focusing on our identity and while she told us to look deep within ourselves (and present our findings to the whole class twice a semester), we also had to focus on "external identity" such as race, religion, neighborhood, etc.). I can honestly say that I don't care about any of those and they do not contribute to my inner self whatsoever and reading those articles saying that we are also a product (sum?) of these things was equally irritating. Let's go down the list then:
Race: coming in contact with racism can certainly make one's life harder, sure. What else?
Neighborhood: good or bad can determine your life, not your inner core
Religion: can corrupt or improve a person--nothing to do with personality or who someone truly is.

...So that's my $0.02.