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Jun. 29th, 2009 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
damkiannaMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERLIIIIIIIIIN OMG. OMG OMG OMG.
It weirded me out more than I was expecting that they all had voices - I've been looking at pictures of them all for so long without any sound that it was very peculiar to hear them talking. It was like seeing people from the radio show up on TV - they are radio people, okay, they have voices, not faces - except the other way around. Also, I keep getting confused and thinking to myself that the reason Uther is so weird about magic is because he still hasn't forgiven Ethan for - oh, wait, dammit, UTHER != GILES, brain!
I am starting to have a humongous thing for Katie McGrath; obviously they know she's crazy gorgeous, and are working it by giving her all of those most-likely-ridiculous-but-also-crazy-gorgeous costumes. Morgana is clearly miles smarter than anybody else on this show - except perhaps for Gwen (well, okay, and Nimueh, she is also very smart)! Gwen is brilliant, I love Gwen.
Arthur and Merlin, I cannot even be remotely articulate about, I am just all OMGGGGGGGGGG. They surpassed even my wildest expectations - Merlin was so earnest! Arthur was trying so hard to prevent his inner earnestness from showing! They were both kind of idiots! ♥♥♥! I was hoping to one day get to see the chalice episode; I knew approximately how the whole thing went down already, but I still wanted to watch it, and, my god. It was even better than I expected. It was one thing to be aware that Merlin was going to be doing some sweating and murmuring of Arthur's name and a little long-distance day-saving, while Arthur was going to be off adventuring against his father's orders to get Merlin a flower, but. Actually seeing it on my TV was something else entirely. \o/
Not to harsh the squee, but on a rather more serious note: I've been hearing a lot about France and how it's considering maybe banning burkhas. To disclaim, I don't know tons and tons about the issue, or about the context in which it has arisen in France; also, I'm operating on the definitions I learned in my Religion class in high school, which are that a head-covering alone is called a hijab, and that the full-length dress including a head-covering is the burkha/burqa (I'm going to stick with burkha for the time being, as it is the transliteration I'm used to). That said, I'm as much a fan of not contributing to the subjugation of women as anyone, and more than some, and I'm sure there are Muslim women living in France who wear burkhas when they would rather not; however, I'm also guessing that there are Muslim women living in France who choose to wear burkhas because they feel it is a deep and meaningful expression of their faith. In addition, the way a lot of the official statements I've heard have read to me is that a rather large number of white politicians in France are uncomfortable with and even afraid of the Muslim population, and want to ... reduce their fear by proving that they can control what Muslims in France are able to wear? I don't know, I'm not a Psych major.
What this adds up to makes me very uncomfortable, especially when you add in a comment from a bystander that I heard in passing this morning, which went to the tune of, "How can you know, there might be a terrorist under there!" ... Yeah, because if only there were no burkhas, terrorists would be instantly recognizable. Suuuuuuuure.
Generally speaking, I find that the side that allows for more freedom of choice and more safety in making choice, rather than less of either or both, is usually the side I like to be on (there may be exceptions - I can't say for certain that I mind laws banning Holocaust denial, for example); in this case, for me, that means I hope France decides against banning the burkha, as it seems to me to be a movement motivated more by fear than by a genuine concern for the well-being of Muslim women.
Discussions like this always put me in mind of that one episode of 30 Days about the man who goes to live with a Muslim family in Dearborn, MI - the look on his face, when he learned that Islam and Christianity are both related to Judaism, and that the Christian God and Allah are the same god. It was a wonderful episode; I should try to track down the DVD sometime.
It weirded me out more than I was expecting that they all had voices - I've been looking at pictures of them all for so long without any sound that it was very peculiar to hear them talking. It was like seeing people from the radio show up on TV - they are radio people, okay, they have voices, not faces - except the other way around. Also, I keep getting confused and thinking to myself that the reason Uther is so weird about magic is because he still hasn't forgiven Ethan for - oh, wait, dammit, UTHER != GILES, brain!
I am starting to have a humongous thing for Katie McGrath; obviously they know she's crazy gorgeous, and are working it by giving her all of those most-likely-ridiculous-but-also-crazy-gorgeous costumes. Morgana is clearly miles smarter than anybody else on this show - except perhaps for Gwen (well, okay, and Nimueh, she is also very smart)! Gwen is brilliant, I love Gwen.
Arthur and Merlin, I cannot even be remotely articulate about, I am just all OMGGGGGGGGGG. They surpassed even my wildest expectations - Merlin was so earnest! Arthur was trying so hard to prevent his inner earnestness from showing! They were both kind of idiots! ♥♥♥! I was hoping to one day get to see the chalice episode; I knew approximately how the whole thing went down already, but I still wanted to watch it, and, my god. It was even better than I expected. It was one thing to be aware that Merlin was going to be doing some sweating and murmuring of Arthur's name and a little long-distance day-saving, while Arthur was going to be off adventuring against his father's orders to get Merlin a flower, but. Actually seeing it on my TV was something else entirely. \o/
Not to harsh the squee, but on a rather more serious note: I've been hearing a lot about France and how it's considering maybe banning burkhas. To disclaim, I don't know tons and tons about the issue, or about the context in which it has arisen in France; also, I'm operating on the definitions I learned in my Religion class in high school, which are that a head-covering alone is called a hijab, and that the full-length dress including a head-covering is the burkha/burqa (I'm going to stick with burkha for the time being, as it is the transliteration I'm used to). That said, I'm as much a fan of not contributing to the subjugation of women as anyone, and more than some, and I'm sure there are Muslim women living in France who wear burkhas when they would rather not; however, I'm also guessing that there are Muslim women living in France who choose to wear burkhas because they feel it is a deep and meaningful expression of their faith. In addition, the way a lot of the official statements I've heard have read to me is that a rather large number of white politicians in France are uncomfortable with and even afraid of the Muslim population, and want to ... reduce their fear by proving that they can control what Muslims in France are able to wear? I don't know, I'm not a Psych major.
What this adds up to makes me very uncomfortable, especially when you add in a comment from a bystander that I heard in passing this morning, which went to the tune of, "How can you know, there might be a terrorist under there!" ... Yeah, because if only there were no burkhas, terrorists would be instantly recognizable. Suuuuuuuure.
Generally speaking, I find that the side that allows for more freedom of choice and more safety in making choice, rather than less of either or both, is usually the side I like to be on (there may be exceptions - I can't say for certain that I mind laws banning Holocaust denial, for example); in this case, for me, that means I hope France decides against banning the burkha, as it seems to me to be a movement motivated more by fear than by a genuine concern for the well-being of Muslim women.
Discussions like this always put me in mind of that one episode of 30 Days about the man who goes to live with a Muslim family in Dearborn, MI - the look on his face, when he learned that Islam and Christianity are both related to Judaism, and that the Christian God and Allah are the same god. It was a wonderful episode; I should try to track down the DVD sometime.
