#he would like to have a drink every now and then because fx does it and he doesn't get to drink with him bc of the cultivation

[worstloki]

ok ok im thinking about ace fx having a crush on MQ and they're friends it's chill for 800 years and FX is very happy with it because no one is going to take his place with MQ since their relationship is pretty unique and special with all the fighting and working together amazingly and it's not like MQ is going to get a love interest with his cultivation but then XL returns and the book plot happens and MQ mentions switching cultivation paths because XL seems happy not having to worry about the abstinence stuff and it does seem like a troublesome criteria when there are so many other paths open to take on instead BUT FX is like. NO. he keeps arguing on it. he comes up with reasons that make a bit of sense but really he does not want MQ to consider potential love interests because they're not going to be him!! fx doesn't want anything to do with romance either but if mq isn't going to have his vows in the way what's stopping him from being *more* friends with other people? what's stopping him from finding someone to have sex with and obviously that person will mean more to him than FX will? he does not want to lose his friend :(

[aion-rsa]

What We Do in the Shadows Season 3: What is an Energy Vampire Anyway?

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This article contains spoilers for What We Do in the Shadows season 3’s first two episodes.

Boredom, tedious, tiresome, flat. These are not the first words which jump to mind when thinking of vampires or comedy, but What We Do in the Shadows wields them like secret weapons without sacrificing a single laugh or scare. The FX horror farce, which is a series adaptation of the 2014 feature film created by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, follows four vampires. They have been roommates since, well, forever, but one is different from the rest.

Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), Nadja of Antipaxos, (Natasia Demetriou), and Laszlo Cravensworth (Matt Berry), are traditional vampires. They drink blood, a virgin’s if possible. This is usually supplied by their familiar-turned-bodyguard Guillermo (Harvey Guillén). A probable virgin himself, but off limits. Even vampires know not to feed on their own supplier, especially one who has taken down the entire local vampire hierarchy. The fourth vampire does not drink blood. He subsists on the lifeforce of others. He is an energy vampire, and no one is safe from his appetites. Familiars are fair game, and so are the other vampires.

Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) looks like an office drone, talks like an automated menu, and has the presence of an interdepartmental meeting memo. A simple watercooler chat can drain a listener of the very will to live. It’s tasty. The Staten Island vampires have been named head of the entire Tri-State vampire community and Colin, who will be celebrating a major milestone this season, is undergoing a search for self.

You don’t have to look far from Colin to find Mark Proksch, the actor who plays him. In Better Call Saul, he played Daniel “Pryce” Wormald, the ineptly arrogant pharmaceutical connection who was very particular about his baseball cards. On The Office, he played Nate, a proven entity, but not without handicaps, like hearing, vision and cognition. With offbeat roles on This Is Us, Modern Family, Portlandia, Drunk History, Bob’s Burgers, and Adventure Time, Proksch has spent his career playing yo-yos, his first appearance was as a self-proclaimed master.

Proksch spoke with Den of Geek about vampire centennials, television perennials, and freezing his genitals playing kickball in the snow.

Den of Geek: Hello and thanks for doing this, and I wanted to wish Colin Robinson a happy birthday.

Mark Proksch: Well, it’s a little premature, but thank you.

I know the season is building to it, but will you be throwing a big celebration?

Yes. There will be some festivities, Colin Robinson style.

Do you know his sign?

I don’t know his sign. Gosh, that’s a good question. I don’t think he knows it, even.

Is there anything he wants for his birthday?

I think what he wants most is to know where he came from, and where he’s going. He’s in a bit of an existential funk right now. And he’s doing a lot of research about energy vampires. The problem is there’s not much out there on energy vampires because no one likes them. So, there aren’t many books about them. When he goes into the big Vampiric Council library, he can’t find a single word about energy vampires. And that’s probably because they’re so reviled within that community, that they don’t respect the energy vampires, or have any of their books.

You’ve been doing a lot of research on the history, and the nature, of energy vampires, as you said. What do you think, or, what do you call what he is feeding from? Is it Prana? Chi? Neurotransmissions?

Oh, yeah. We haven’t learned. He still doesn’t know. I think he’s feeding on the exhaustion of others. The everyday life exhaustion of others, I think, is what he feeds on.

Does Colin ever contemplate the carbon footprint of the energy vampire?

No, I think Colin’s in for it just for himself.

How come Colin can stand fire, he laughs it off, but he can’t deal with a cattle prod?

Yeah. Tony, you’re poking holes here. I don’t know. That’s, again, a very good question. Why doesn’t fire hurt him, but a cattle prod shocks him? Maybe, because one is energy? I mean, electrical energy, I should say. I guess heat is its own energy.

In the Cloak-of-Many-Nandors episode, how did it feel to hear Kayvan Novak do you? And did you give him pointers? Did he drain you in the process?

Yeah. Well, Kayvan has been doing all of us, since day one of shooting. So, it wasn’t a revelation to hear him do my voice. That said, we all sent recordings to him so he could perfect it. I haven’t seen the episode yet. The night we were filming my scene, it was about 4:00 a.m., it was one of the coldest nights in Toronto. So, I didn’t stick around to hear him do my voice. But I’m sure it’s as good as he was doing it on day one.

There’s a lot more location and exterior shooting this season. Is that more fun? Or is it just another day in a different cubicle?

I love our set. Kate Bunch, who is our set designer, is an absolute genius. And we film in the cold months, in Canada. So anytime we get to be on set, near the fireplace that actually works, is a plus. Filming on location has its limitations. We can’t film during the daytime, because the vampires will be burned up. So, we always film at night, when on location. And it looks like it’s 11:00 p.m. or 10:00 p.m., when in fact, it’s usually 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m. And so, when we go on location, we’re usually shooting pretty unpleasant evenings. So, I’d much rather film on set. Filming on location can be fun though, because you have a lot more interaction with real people. And I think that’s one thing that makes the show really funny, is seeing these idiot vampires dealing in the real world. So, it’s kind of fifty-fifty for me.

Did you have fun in the snowball fights?

Yes. There are a lot of snowball fights, yes.

The last time I spoke with you, Colin had just gotten a promotion and it kind of went to his head. How is it for Colin now, to be in power at the Vampiric Council?

I think, as much as Colin loved having some power, I think his M.O. is really, just fading into the background. That way, he can prey a lot easier. Just trying to mix into the group. Be a spider with his web, in the background. I think that’s how he prefers to prey. And so, even when he becomes part of the Vampiric Council, he still allows others to exceed him in power. And so, this season, when Nandor and Nadja are the heads of the Vampiric Council, he’s more than happy to be the secretary. The most boring job you can have in a council setting, taking the notes.

Who do you think Colin would prefer on the throne, Nadja or Nandor?

That’s a great question. I think he would probably prefer Nandor, because Nandor is so stupid. Nandor is very, very dumb. And so, he, Colin, can get Nandor to do pretty much anything he wants. Whereas Nadja, I think Colin likes Nadja. And I also think that Nadja’s too smart to fall into Colin’s traps.

Does he get a jolt out of things like the heart ripping?

Yeah, I think so. I think he does enjoy that type of stuff. Yeah.

Can you feed off Nadja’s ghost in the Nadja doll?

I can’t. And I think I’ve tried to several times. I don’t remember what made it on air. But there’s been several times where I’ve tried to feed off of the doll, and it doesn’t go anywhere.

Will Colin’s research turn up any famous energy vampires? And have you come up with your own?

I’ll drop in names for energy vampires, every once in a while. I don’t think any of them have made it so far. I mean, I’ve done Andy Warhol, who seems, to me, to have been an energy vampire. Truman Capote. I would love to have Bob Newhart on as an energy vampire, because I think he’s brilliant, and he would absolutely kill it. Yeah, I’ve thrown in some of those names. David Crosby, I’ve thrown in. I mean, the more left field, the better. But I don’t think any of those have gotten in. I don’t think they want to insult people.

When you look back on your character’s past, do you find any trace of Les Nessman DNA?

Only in my acting. I loved WKRP, and Les Nessman was definitely a good energy vampire. Just a great character, and acted brilliantly. Yeah, I’m sure I stole from him. You know, it’s interesting, I mostly watch classic television. And I’ll see something, and I’ll be like, “Oh, that’s where I got that. That’s where I took that from.” I haven’t seen him since childhood, but it made an impression on me that, “Oh, okay. That’s why I do that.” And that becomes very eerie to me, when I realize I’m just a culmination of things I’ve been watching my whole life.

I’ve recently been watching it and was amazed by the physical comedy. Arthur Carlson was a genius. So, tell me about the physical comedy in What We Do in the Shadows. Because you’re using not just you, the actors, but you have the effects, and there’s a lot going on, especially, in the backgrounds.

Yeah. I personally love being able to do physical comedy. And Colin Robinson is so great for that, because he’s so at two with his body. He’s not a physical human being. He’s not athletic, to say the least. And I think it adds an extra layer to the character, when you actually see him physically emote, really. Whether it’s dancing, or playing kickball, he’s very unsettling in his movements. Then when you add in the ability to fly, once in a while, or throw people against a wall, it really becomes a playground that not a lot of shows let you get to do. Explore those extremes of physical comedy. And so, I love it for that reason.

You mentioned being free to emote. In the opening episode, you actually are peeved when you can’t feed off of Nadja and Laszlo, and when they shut you down. Does Colin get drained when the feedees don’t give with the Prana?

Yeah, I think he gets really frustrated. It’s almost like a dog that’s always promised a treat, but never is actually given the treat. I think he becomes furious. And he thinks it’s unfair, I would expect, and thinks that they’re not playing by the rules. His bizarre social rules, in which he should be allowed to feed on whenever he wants. Because he gets to do it all day long at work. Anytime he’s out of the house, he gets to do it. But when he’s in the mansion, they know what he’s up to, and they can shut him down pretty quickly. I think he gets frustrated.

Also, still with the first episode, your toilet duties. They only seemed designed to annoy you. So, when you’re actually annoying yourself, isn’t that like cannibalism?

I don’t know if he’s annoying himself. I think he’s really into what’s going on in those toilet buckets. That’s all. I think he’s curious.

You meet a big fan in the rogue vampire house, in Queens. Does Colin’s reputation precede him? And will we see a growth in his vampire community renown?

That’s a great question. I think his reputation does precede him. That said, I don’t know what the writers have in store in that story. I mean, it would be interesting to see him rise to a level of energy vampire stardom, and how he would handle that. But I don’t know.

Is that a little counterproductive?

It would be in his mind, absolutely. Again, it goes back to him being the spider with the spider web, and just, kind of, hanging out in the background.

Do you think the connection you make with energy vampires is different from the connection traditional vampires make? And might we be seeing something of an underground, within the underground?

I think with the traditional, bloodsucking vampires, I think it’s mostly sexual. For them, they just want to get their rocks off. I think with energy vampires, it’s much more subtle, and a little more complicated. And I don’t know if those relationships could last, the energy vampire relationships. What we saw with Vanessa Bayer’s character, Evie, I think that ran its natural course, as far as romantic liaisons with energy vampires.

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What We Do in the Shadows season 3 airs Thursdays at 10:00 p.m. on FX.

The post What We Do in the Shadows Season 3: What is an Energy Vampire Anyway? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[dpillustrations]

A Discourse on Communication and Storytelling Part II: The Idealization of Nihilism

In my previous post, I outlined the flawed narrative structure of the conclusion of Game of Thrones. I focused primarily on Daenerys and how her story did not communicate effectively what Benioff and Weiss were wanting to accomplish with her, i.e. her becoming “Mad Queen” Targaryen. I then asked what it was that they did communicate through her story. Here is where I would like to begin.

As an artist and visual storyteller, I have become exceedingly grieved and disgusted with a lot of the stories in our entertainment today. Every one of my favorite shows one right after another ended in disappointment for me. I asked myself, why? Why were all these amazing shows, many of whom have exceptional talent working on them, crashing and burning, in my less than humble opinion? I believe the answer is multi-faceted, but I am going to zero in on one aspect for the sake of time and my argument. In short, cynicism and a nihilistic world view have poisoned the storytelling landscape.

I mean I get it. You only have to open your social media or major news page and you can find tons of reasons to bemoan the state of our society, our country, and the world. I understand the disappointment, the bitterness, the seething rage – I get it! I have felt it myself! I know precisely how everyone is feeling because I am feeling it too. I know that feeling of being utterly useless to help or stop any injustice or wrong from happening. The struggle is real. 

However, the struggle is not all there is, and I believe that is the crucial thing to remember because something much more sinister than our own despair is happening, which is that we are coming to love our despair. Our bitterness and anger is becoming a part of how we are defining ourselves every day. Suddenly instead of these ideas and attitudes being recognized as the poison that they are, we drink it like it is sweet nectar. And to me that is exceedingly more grieving than feeling negative emotions in of themselves. We all feel negative emotions, we all feel the pain of life to one degree or another. This is a part of life, but to actually redefine and look upon those attitudes and thoughts as beneficial, glorious, and wise? That is the truly terrible thing.

My own piece entitled: 美  which is the Chinese pictogram for “beauty”. 

Now let us dig deeper into what I mean. If you recall from Game of Thrones Season 4 where Tyrion tells Jaime the story about their cousin Orson Lannister. He describes how in his simpleness, Orson would crush beetles all the day long, and Tyrion became obsessed with divining why Orson was doing this. He felt there had to be a reason, that there had to be some meaning behind what he was doing. Obviously, this story is an analogy. What Tyrion was really expressing was the aged old question, what does it all mean. I will paste the discussion below:

Tyrion: [...] In any case, I found nothing that illuminated the nature of Orson's affliction or the reason behind his relentless beetles slaughter. So I went back to the source. I may not have been able to speak with Orson, but I could observe him, watch him, the way men watch animals to come to a deeper understanding of their behavior. And as I watched, I became more and more sure of it: there was something happening there. His face was like the page of a book written in a language I didn't understand, but he wasn't mindless, he had his reasons. And I became possessed with knowing what they were. I began spending inordinate amounts of time watching him. I would eat my lunch in the garden, chewing my mutton to the music of "kun kun kun". And when I wasn't watching him, I was thinking about him. Father droned on about the family legacy and I thought about Orson's beetles. I read the histories of Targaryen conquests. Did I hear dragon wings? No, I heard "kun kun kun". And I still couldn't figure out why he was doing it. And I had to know because it was horrible, that all these beetles would be dying for no reason.

Jaime: Every day around the world, men, women, and children are murdered by the score. Who gives a dusty f*** about a bunch of beetles?

Tyrion: I know, I know, but still it filled me with dread. Piles and piles of them, years and years of them. How many countless living, crawling things smashed, dried out, and returned to the dirt? In my dreams, I found myself standing on a beach made of beetle husks stretching as far as the eye can see. I woke up, crying, weeping for their shattered little bodies. I tried to stop Orson once.

Jaime: He was twice your size.

Tyrion: He just pushed me aside with a "kun", kept on smashing. Every day. Until that mule kicked him in the chest and killed him. So what do you think? Why did he do it? What's it all about?

Jaime: I don't know.

This here is a perfect encapsulation of what I have observed in so many of our stories of late, stories which by their very nature are asking that aged old question, what does it all mean. Benioff and Weiss have just expressed it with a heavy hand here, while other writers and artists have a more subtle approach. 

To make it clear what I am talking about, I want to draw a parallel between Tyrion’s story and what happened with Daenerys Targaryen. In this story, the audience is Tyrion – we are drawn to the story of Daenerys like Tyrion was drawn to the story of Orson. We were enraptured by her struggles as a character and divining the meaning of her story just as Tyrion sought to know the why of Orsen’s actions with the beetles. I mean isn’t that what we do as fans? We love going online and theorizing with other fans about what is going to happen, why it is going to happen, observing all the details of the plot and character arcs. We love seeking things out! 

I cannot remember where I heard it, but it was in something I watched where they pointed out that audiences love to discover things on their own. They like being able to feel like they figured out something, that they found out something the writer had hidden or perhaps may not have been aware of. There is excitement in exploring the story, just as Tyrion was enthralled with understanding the truth and meaning behind Orson’s beetle slaughter. Yet what happened after all of Tyrion’s study, observations, ruminations, and questions? What happened to us the audience when we came to the end of Daenerys’ story? What happened to all that time and effort spent in watching, theorizing, and discussing? Despite Daenerys’ struggle as the underdog in her own story suffering abuse and pain - despite the awe of witnessing dragons coming to life from dormant eggs - despite all the lessons Daenerys learned as a ruler through her mistakes - all of it came to nothing. Just as Tyrion never divined the meaning behind Orson’s senseless slaughter, so we came to the end of Game of Thrones, having gained no beneficial understanding by our journey. Mad Queen Targaryen. Jon kills her. Orson gets killed by a mule. All the world burns. Beetles die for no reason. The End. 

Tyrion: So what do you think? Why did he do it? What's it all about?

Jaime: I don't know.

Game of Thrones isn’t the only show with these problems. In the FX show Legion, David Haller, the protagonist of the story, is suddenly twisted to become the show’s villain. He’s been Daenerys Targaryen-ed. 

Trish Walker from Jessica Jones Season 3, also Daenerys Targaryen-ed.

This one is from a movie (it isn’t only in tv shows) and it is a little more subtle, but Professor X in Dark Phoenix was suddenly twisted as this arrogant douche who was controlling and manipulative - the “idol” of the X-Men school brought low. The “idealistic delusion” of Professor X as a heroic leader unveiled to show us the true frailties underneath! *GASP*

As you can see within the very fabric of Benioff and Weiss’s writing, nihilism pervades. It isn’t just in Daenerys’ story, but scattered throughout the stories of Game of Thrones - i.e. how Jaime Lannister went from redemption story to dying under a pile of rocks. Yet not only is nihilism pervading, but it is being romanticized, like there is something profound and powerful in its telling - like we are achieving some enlightened ideal in heralding its tenets. Many storytellers, not just Benioff and Weiss, have become just like that whole scene where Tyrion goes underground and discovers the dead bodies of Jaime and Cersei. Observe how the whole sequence was filmed in excruciating reverence, as we watch Tyrion walk through one ruin to the next. It is is a sobering moment, almost holy in how it is filmed - Tyrion’s silent pilgrimage as he approaches the thing he has dreaded most... 

Remember how I mentioned in my previous post that every aspect of the cinematic arts is communicating something? The dialogue, the lighting, the way something is framed, what is shown vs what is not shown, the music, the colors, etc. I would encourage you to rewatch this scene and pay attention to how Benioff and Weiss are wanting you to feel as all these elements are spun together. And when Tyrion does finally arrive, after seeing Jaime’s golden hand amongst the rubble, Tyrion expresses a kind of ritualistic act as he removes the stones one by one, uncovering the truth. Oh, the existential dread! Tyrion weeps and thrashes in the horror and pain of it all! Woe, woe, woe! How powerful, how terrible, how divine!  

Observe the way Jaime and Cersei are orchestrated here. Despite being crushed by an onslaught of incredibly heavy stones and rocks, they are pictured here in peaceful and reverent positions - something akin to a Renaissance painting. How does that make you feel when you look upon it? The gentle, diffused white light, the atmosphere of ecclesiastical reflection - it is romantic, is it not? It is showing a glorified ideal! Behold the profundity of the nothingness! 

Do you see what I mean? There is this glorification of showing the meaninglessness of life, of uncovering “the truth” that this life is full of ugliness and pain, of unmasking our delusions, of showing that there is always “someone behind the curtain”, our idols become monsters, our heroes become villains, it was all a lie, it was all a sick cosmic joke - and this is what empowers us and makes us wise. Oh, look how discerning and insightful we are as we reflect back to you the despair of a twisted humanity!

Me to Writers about how they believe their cynical worldviews are working in their stories:

Now, I am not at all saying that stories cannot speak to the ugliness of this world, because there is truth in ugliness. There is pain, suffering, dread, brokenness, disillusionment, bitterness, anger, hate, and a myriad of dark and terrible things. I am not saying we should only tell feel-good stories where everyone lives “happily ever after”. No, what I am pointing out is an attitude that many storytellers have towards that ugliness. All artists have an obligation to speak to all truth, but there is huge difference between telling a story about ugliness vs making making that ugliness seem romantic. There is a difference between showing how life feels arbitrary and meaningless vs saying life is meaningless and arbitrary. There is such a big gap there.

So, I speak to all storytellers now: you are not profound for making statements about the despair of reality. You are not wise. You are not enlightened. It is easy for anyone to despair. It is much more difficult to rejoice in the face of that despair. It is easy to grow in bitterness and disappointment, much more difficult to believe in hope in the face of that disappointment. It is easy to observe ugliness, much more difficult to discern the beauty underneath, within, and despite it. And so that is what it really comes down to – it is easy to write a story like Daenerys “Mad Queen” Targaryen. It is easy to have her twist her own ideals and dreams into the dying screams of a burning city. It is easy to tell a story where someone falls than it is to tell a convincing and realistic story of redemption. It doesn’t require any work – nihilism is the lazy man’s philosophy. If all is meaningless, if nothing truly has any value, than that means you hold no responsibility to anyone or anything. It means you do not have to change the way you are doing things, that you can coast, lay back, and just watch the world burn. You can pat yourself on the back for being “woke” and not falling for the opiates of the masses. You don’t have to do any soul searching. You do not have analyze your own world view or assumptions. You don’t have to work at trying to understand what life truly means or try to find the purpose amidst all the chaos. There is no truth except the truth of nothing, therefore you are free to do nothing without guilt or shame. Nihilism is one big fat existential cop out! 

Therefore, I say to all artists, storytellers, writers, showrunners, and creators – stop dishing out this crap for audiences to eat and get off your lazy asses and get to work!  

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Hidden Gems of the Silver Screen (And, to a Lesser Extent, the Telly)

It can’t have escaped your notice that the majority of my more recent posts (and fuck knows I’m not posting regularly at the moment) are about movies and TV. The reason for that is pretty simple: 2019 has, surprisingly, yielded some great movies and TV... and also some really torrid shite. On the one hand, films like Ma, Brightburn and The Perfection continue to breathe new life into the horror genre. On the other hand, sci-fi as a cinematic and televised thing continues to ignore its actual audience in favour of sniffing its own farts in a sound-proof chamber designed specifically for next-level virtue-signalling. One thing I will say about the dreck of 2019 is that it’s interesting dreck, at least so far. Another Life, for example, isn’t just bad: it’s mind-bogglingly, fascinatingly bad, as though someone set out to make the worst TV series imaginable and accidentally created a portal to another dimension made entirely of crap.

With all the amazingly wonderful and transifxingly terrible visual media on offer lately, it’s easy to forget that there’s a rich repository of films and TV series from just a few years ago that you’ve probably never watched. You see if you, like me, are a snooty, card-carrying member of the elitist intelligentsia, you probably missed films and TV series that looked dumb as soup on the surface on the grounds that they weren’t worth your time. Luckily for you, I’ve dived nose-first into the detritus of our dying culture, so you don’t have to, and I’ve ferreted out the diamonds from the pig-swill. Without further ado, I’d therefore like to present my list Easily Overlooked Gems.

1. Mandy The phrase “Nicholas Cage stars in a sword-and-sorcery rape/revenge thriller” does not inspire confidence. It’s therefore easy to ignore Mandy and the promptly forget it ever existed. Which is a shame, because it’s kind of a work of genius. The plot is exactly what you’d expect: a cult kidnaps, rapes and kills Cage’s girlfriend, Mandy, and Cage sets out on a mission of revenge culminating in a blood-bath. The nature of the revenge quest is what puts a sting in the film’s tail- or tale, if you’re feeling puntastic. You see, a lot of the bad guys exist in a constant hallucinatory haze after taking a drug that sent them mad after one dose. In order to fight on their level, Cage has to take a dose too. As a result, the world around him slowly but surely transforms into a nightmare landscape that looks like a cross between a D&D illustration and the cover of a heavy metal album and his grubby, personal mission of fury takes on the unmistakable resonance of a Conan-esque hero’s quest. By the end of the film, you have to wonder if Cage has actually slipped into some sort of alternate dimension or if he’s just lost his game-pieces completely. In places, it’s nearly as painful to watch as Landmine Goes Click (crikey, there’s one for the history buffs) but it looks and feels like Beyond the Black Rainbow. Worth your attention just because of how weird it is. I give it a solid four-out-five decapitated rapists.

2. Baby Driver Nothing about Baby Driver suggested it would be a good film: the way it was advertised as a car-chase movie trying to be cute; the stupid title; the fact that it came and went through cinemas like a fart in the night. Which is a shame, because it’s secretly brilliant. It’s a highly stylised crime film populated with the archest archetypes money can buy (to the point where some of the dialogue has a weirdly beat-poetic feel to it). It’s saturated colour palette and off-beat affect actually have something of a full-colour Jim Jarmusch flick about them. The hook, of course, is that the lead character (only ever referred to as Baby, because he’s got a punchably youthful face) has tinnitus and therefore has to listen to music constantly to drown at the buzzing in his head. The practical upshot of this is that a) every single scene is overlayed with surprisingly great and situationally appropriate music and b) he goes through life like he’s always dancing, so his way of moving lends to the film’s easy-going sense of flow. It also explains where his preternatural driving skills come from (I mean, not really, but within the context of the plot): he’s used to sliding effortlessly into patterns and rhythms because of the music thing. All of this could make a terrible film, of course, but execution is everything and, to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, this flick was executed with an astonishing level of panache. I rate it ten out of ten grizzly motor way pile ups.

3. Nightflyers It’s not just films that get overlooked as the tide of culture washes back and forth, like a great big sea of effluent. TV series also vanish unduly into the dustbin of history. Case in point, the criminally underappreciated Nighrflyers: Netflix pre-Another Life sci-fi offering that was actually good. It’s a pretty classic set-up: a group of mismatched wing-nuts on a spaceship, all of whom have secrets that that will threaten to tear them apart while they try to make contact with an alien life-form. What elevates Nightflyers is just how fuck-uped the cast are. There’s an angry British psychic whose spent his whole life in captivity in case he goes full Scanners on somebody’s head, a guy who only ever appears as a hologram for reasons too twisted to explain here, his evil mother whose uploaded her mind to the ship’s computer and gone batshit crazy, a genetic superbeing and a hacker who can send her mind into computers via a dodgy implant and who may or may not be drifting out of touch with the human condition. It’s great. 6 and half billion out of 7 billion monkeys, boiling in the void.

4. Hardcore Henry No, I don’t know who thought that title was a good idea either, but the point is that Hardcore Henry has no motherfucking right to kick as much arse as it does. It was clearly made on a budget that would embarrass a Youtube shampoo commercial, but it just flat-out rocks. Shot entirely in first-person, it follows the adventures of a mute cyborg as he seeks revenge against the bastard psychic entrepreneur who first built him then tried to kill him. Along the way, his main ally is a dude who keeps dying and coming back to life in a series of identical bodies but with radically different personalities and haircuts (this is eventually explained, but I’m not going to spoil it for you). It’s premise is demented, it’s surprisingly well-choreographed and its soundtrack is an aphrodisiac for your ears. Also, Tim Roth is in it, so that’s just yer seal of quality right there. It came out to a lot of fanfare and many, many cinema trailers back in the day and was then promptly forgotten about as soon as it launched. So I’m dragging it kicking and screaming back into the limelight. It’s on Netflix right now, so go watch it. I rate it a solid 11 out of 15 creepy duplicates of Tim Roth.

5. Upgrade Another lesser-known film about a cyborg. Unlike Henry, however, this cyborg’s life doesn’t so much ‘rock’ as ‘suck balls’. He gets crippled and then ends up with a sentient computer chip in his head that allows him to remote-control his own body despite not having a working spine anymore. Naturally, his experimental tech attracts the attention of some unsavoury characters and he and his brain-chip have to work together to figure out what’s going on, often through a series of ultra-violent, gory fight-scenes that horrify the protagonist himself. Of course, all might be well, except that the head-chip is a homicidal little shit that clearly has its own agenda. I give it at least 0000 0111 out of 0000 1001 painstakingly restored vintage kill-bots.

6. The Tick The Tick isn’t as overlooked as everything else on this list, especially since there have been a couple of previous televised incarnations of the franchise to lay the groundwork. However, I still feel like the modern iteration doesn’t quite get the love it deserves, so I’m throwing it out here. Following the adventures a mad, amnesiac and possibly stupid superhero and his neurotic sidekick, The Tick explores a world where superheroes aren’t the paragons of good from classic comics, the corrupt psychotics of The Boys or Watchmen, or the eternally struggling, walking moral life-lessons of modern cinema. Instead, they’re just ordinary people operating at various levels of competence/incompetence and mental illness and working within a bureaucratic, wildly inefficient framework. That might not sound like a recipe for a successful TV series, but it really is. Drawing out the mundane, human side of heroes and villains against the backdrop of cataclysmic, civilisation-threatening events makes for infinitely compelling and very, very funny viewing. It’s kind of doing for the superhero genre what Futurama did for sci-fi a few years back. It’s also where the phrase and/or popular song ‘seven billion monkeys boiling in the void’ comes from. My rating is four out of five sapient, homosexual boats (which will make sense when you watch it).

7. The Void Amid the high-budget horror extravaganzas of recent years, it’s easy to forget about the void, which feels like the best story H.P. Lovecraft never wrote and looks like David Chronenberg tried to adapt a Heironimous Bosch painting... in the ‘80s. The actual plot concerns a group of people getting trapped in a hospital by murderous cultists and discovering dark secrets and, arguably, a whole other dimension in its basement. You’re not exactly there for the plot though: The Void is a mood-piece and an exercise in visual FX craftsmanship. You’re there to drink in the atmosphere and see what each new cosmic horror looks like. I am delighted to award it ten out of ten unspeakable whisperers in the darkness. That’s enough for two barbershop quartets, an emcee and a supporting act.

8. Happy Death Day It’s Groundhog Day but as a horror film starring a really annoying lass in her late teens has to keep dying horribly until she learns to stop being such a terrible person... and also kill her murderer with a little help from her newly-minted, non-cunty friend. There’s a sequel that I haven’t seen yet, but the original is a low-key, oft-overlooked delight. I give it 9 out of 11 suspiciously similar corpses.

[comicreliefmorlock]

So here's a fun game. What are, let's say...10-15 pieces of media (books, tv, movies, whatever) that seem to have been made JUST for you? why?

*cracks knuckles*

Surprisingly, not all of these will be Tanith Lee.

…however…

{And this goes under a cut because this is going to be a very long, verbose post. A really long, verbose post.}

1. “Tales from the Flat Earth” by Tanith Lee

These books are essentially like sitting by a crackling fire on a cool summer night beneath the glimmering night sky while a smiling crone cards wool and tells you the stories that come from a time aeons before your birth. I have never in my life found a quartet of books–let alone one book–that have so completely and absolutely captivated me. From the first page of “Night’s Master,” I was gone.

Not only the language–breaking the fourth wall and referring to “words lost when the world reformed itself in the chaos”–but the characters… Azhrarn, the personification of Wickedness who saves humanity with love. Uhlume, the personification of Death who faces a form of mortality and is forever changed by it. Chuz, the walking embodiment of Madness, who is gentle to those under his domain and understands that he cannot understand why he does what he does.

Ferazhin and Narasen and Sivesh and Simmu and Jornadesh and Kassafeh and Zhirem and Azhriaz and Dunziel… Names I have never forgotten because they all but sang to me. A flat earth that holds the best and worst of humanity, often balled into a single person, with Underearth and Innerearth and Upperearth holding gods that have grown so distant they no longer recall humans were their creation at all. 

I have always loved mythology and these books? These are myth.

2. Pan’s Labyrinth -dir. by Guillermo del Toro

I’m not from Spain or know Spanish. I knew nothing about the Spanish Civil War when I first saw this movie. And this was the first film I saw that cemented del Toro for me as the only man I would ever trust to turn Tanith Lee’s books into cinema. 

I love fairy tales, mythology and folklore. And when you read enough of it, you see how bloody it actually is. How terrifying it is to realize that you’re not the only one in the world, humans aren’t the only ones, there are creatures on the midnight side of reality that share space with you. 

And I never really liked the Disney version of fairy tales with “happily ever after” and weddings. 

This movie was literally like watching something I’d imagined for myself. The acting was fucking phenomenal, the sets and costumes were off the hook and the comparison of “fairy tale horror” and “real horror” that overlapped just blew me the hell away.

And Doug Jones… Doug Fucking Jones. I never respected mimes until him and now I give all the respect. Being able to act, to breathe real life into a concept and a costume until it becomes a character you could picture walking through a forest or peering around a corner while not being able to use your own voice OR your own facial expressions is a kind of magic I think does not get enough appreciation.

DOUG FUCKING JONES, LADIES, GENTS AND GENDER REBELS.

3. Fatal Frame - Tecmo

I’m a writer/reader, not a gamer. When I have downtime or I want to relax, I almost always gravitate towards a book instead of a video game. The few games I’ve played purely for my own enjoyment have usually been MMOs and involve roleplaying.

Except for the Fatal Frame series.

Survival horror is my favorite game genre and I lamented when Resident Evil became more “survival action” than survival horror. (Fuckin’ lickers in the original Resident Evil game oh my god.) I wanted a survival horror game that had some meat to it, had something really compelling about it.

And I found Fatal Frame.

I love Japanese mythology. I especially love Japanese ghosts. For some reason–maybe out of sheer novelty because I, being an ignorant American raised near the US-Mexico border, have had little exposure to it–Japanese ghosts are my absolute favorites. Yurei (and the other subclassifications) just have something to them that I haven’t found in other mythologies. I’ve read and reread Oiwa and Okiku’s stories, been fascinated by the concept of the Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai and wanted more of what I found.

Which Fatal Frame provided.

Not only do the game mechanics work beautifully for someone as easily startled as I am, but the story behind each individual game is achingly intense. The intricacy of the interwoven histories, the rituals, the underlying question of “was all this really necessary or was this a priesthood trying to stay in power”… I love absolutely everything about these games. 

4. “The Blue Sword” by Robin McKinley

I’m not going to lie–this book took me forever to actually read. The first two pages were so achingly boring that I had no fucking clue why my mother had recommended it to me.

And then one day, bereft of anything else to read, I flipped through it. I still distinctly remember the line that made me stop and go “wait, what?” – “…your horse tells me where you’ve been…”

me: wait what horses can talk in this? wtf? *flips to the beginning and sits down to fuckin’ read it*

Slogging through those first few pages? Worth it. Because Harry/Hari/Harimad was the first heroine I’d ever encountered that I could imagine myself being. She was too gangly and not particularly pretty and kind of clumsy. She didn’t draw admiring eyes everywhere she went, spent a lot of time going ‘I can’t do this wtf’ and had aches and saddlesores.

Meeting Harry felt like seeing myself on a page for the first time in my life. And seeing someone with flaws like me going through adventure and fighting and succeeding and failing and getting a happily ever after felt like a warm blanket. Like someone had written a book just to tell me: “It’s okay that you’re not beautiful or graceful or soft-spoken and elegant. It’s okay that you’re clumsy and a goof and your hair is fuzzy as fuck because you can be a heroine, too.”

5. “Whoever Fights Monsters” by Robert K. Ressler

No, I’m not a serial killer. :D Nor am I an FBI profiler.

However, after reading “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris for the first time in ninth grade, I was fascinated by serial killers. Like… how did they do it? How did they get away with it? WHY did they do it? What kind of person did things like this? I wanted to know so much more and I started grabbing every book on serial killers that I possibly could find.

And the reaction of classmates and teachers who saw my reading material was… less than stellar. Even my mother was vaguely worried about what I was getting out of reading all…that.

It felt like my fascination with serial killer psychology was a flaw in my character that no one else seemed to share. Until I read “Whoever Fights Monsters” and saw Robert K. Ressler talking about the exact same thing. He wasn’t a “sicko” or a “freak” or a “lunatic” or a “killer-in-training” for being fascinated by the psychology of humans who could treat other humans like a moment’s disposable entertainment. 

And suddenly, neither was I. 

6. American Horror Story: Hotel - FX

‘American Horror Story’ is entirely my thing. Interwoven narratives of fascinating (and often awful) people combining “American horror history” with interpersonal storylines? Yes, thank you, I’ll take a dozen.

This season in particular, however, is just more for me than any other. 

Maybe it’s the vampires that are self-obsessed and not particularly powerful but end up with petty grudges and complaints. Or the ghosts that bitch and whine at each other, find consolation together, use Twitter and spend their long, long days doing little more than drinking, smoking and obsessing over their lives and deaths. Maybe it’s the single location with so many years of history weaving together like a book of short stories. 

I love ‘Hotel’ because it feels like Brandenburg to me. I could so easily see the entire season taking place in my fictional city and mentally insert my own characters into the show without losing a single step.

Also Kathy Bates is absolutely glorious and I desperately wish to be a tenth as glamorous as Liz Taylor. 

7. “The Butterfly Garden” by Dot Hutchinson

Books about serial killers? Yes, please.

Books about serial killers told by a victim who barely survived and understands what trauma really means? Yes, please.

What especially got me about this book is my thing for dioramas. The first one I ever remember seeing was in the El Paso Museum of Archaeology (yes, I’m from El Paso, Texas) and it always both frightened and fascinated me. 

^ This one in particular would keep me motionless for ten or twenty minutes at a time, kind of terrified at a house within a building and then absolutely enthralled at a house inside a building.

And the dioramas mentioned in “The Butterfly Garden” were akin to those in “The Cell” –some terrible, awful glimpse into someone’s mind that was visualized and externalized in a permanent way. 

8. “War for the Oaks” by Emma Bull

I love the fae. 

And I also have read enough to know that those sprightly little fucks are terrifying and humans are rarely left unscathed by them.

This book was my introduction to “urban fantasy,” much as Charles de Lint was my introduction to what I consider “mythic fantasy” and a city that felt so much like my own. 

And what was so quintessentially, absolutely me about this book–other than the main love interest being the Phouka :D :D :D–was the underlying theme about creativity.

It’s a driving force, a magic that humans have. It’s uniquely human (as far as we know) and often the only talisman against the dark that we’ve got. With creativity, there’s magic. There’s a spark of something beyond the mundane realities of survival. Creativity is a sword and shield all in one, complete with a lure to bring others along with you.

Whether it’s through music, art, poetry or graphic design, creativity is the actual drive for immortality that pushes us to reach beyond ourselves and touch those we have no possibility of seeing or speaking to in our own short, real lives.

9. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman/BBC

I loved the book when it came out. I didn’t expect to love the mini-series. I especially didn’t expect to love the mini-series for the #IneffableHusbands.

I won’t belabor the point about why this is on my list. The #IneffableHusbands tag on my OOC blog is enough. :D

10. What We Do in the Shadows - Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi

Vampires who are as absurd, incapable and oblivious as me? Yes. All of my yes. 

Having played the old World of Darkness tabletop games for years--and absolutely fallen in love with them--I found this movie and was in absolute heaven. These are vampires I can actually imagine hanging out with. These are vampires (and werewolves) I can envision walking around a city.

Noble creatures of the night don’t seem real to me (aside from the obvious reasons.) The supernaturals in this movie? They felt like people I knew. Like people I could meet or characters I’d written myself. 

I like the fantastical being put into the mundane--which is why my genre is ‘urban fantasy’ although I have such an eye-twitch about it being all supernatural detectives chasing various pieces of ass now--and I especially love it when the fantastical doesn’t outweigh the mundane.

Imagining vampires vacuuming and riding the bus fits in nicely with my desperate belief (and hope) that the fantastical isn’t JUST imaginary but actually exists. 

{And there, I’m restricting this to 10 or we’ll be here all NIGHT.}

[silvormoon]

Sleepy time

Atsushi: A man of good intentions. Mostly he manages to get up and fall asleep at the same times every day, but he likes to read a while before bedtime and sometimes gets caught up in that "just one more chapter" groove until he loses all track of time. He gets up at the same time even on days with no school "So I don't throw off my sleeping schedule." En thinks he's nuts.

Yumoto: Does not know the meaning of the word "time". If he wakes up at 4:30 in the morning, then he's awake and it's time to get up. Other days, if nothing disturbs him, he'll go on dozing until the middle of the afternoon. If it weren't for his brother, he'd only be on time for school two days out of the week. Sometimes Gora has to physically carry him into the kitchen (the smell of breakfast cooking usually gets him stirring).

En: Usually ready to sleep at any time. Sometimes, though, what people assume is sleep is just him lying still and letting his mind wander. People talking quietly while he dozes nearby are sometimes surprised to hear him put in a perfectly lucid and relevant comment, but when they turn to look at him, he hasn't twitched an eyelash.

Io:  A natural night owl doomed by his dependence on the FX market. He would really rather stay up all night, reading and doing the things that interest him, but mostly he tries not to since it would leave him zonked at school all day afterwards. He looks forward to the day when he can set his own schedule, but deep down he knows he'll get up when the markets open anyway so he won't miss a trade. Would die without his morning coffee.

Ryuu: Hates being in a 100% dark, quiet room. He sleeps better if there's a nightlight or some quiet music playing somewhere nearby. Having someone to sleep next to him is best of all, because he hates being alone.

Kinshiro: He tries, he really does. In bed by the stroke of ten, out of bed at six sharp. It's just that he has the kind of brain that just won't shut off, and he lies awake overthinking every little thing. It gets easier once he starts feeling friendly with some of the other night owls, who he can text when he's having trouble sleeping and they can text back telling him everything is going to be fine, so he should drink a cup of herbal tea and read a little while instead of lying awake thinking about how he's not sleeping. Weirdly, En is the best at this, when Kinshiro catches him on one of the nights he's decided to stay up until two because he napped all afternoon. En is really good at putting over "sleep" vibes. They barely talk to each other at other times, but they're best friends in the middle of the night.

Arima: One of nature's early birds. He likes to get up with the sun, fix himself a thermos of tea, and potter around in his garden for a little while before breakfast. He always feels a little disappointed if he oversleeps. The downside is that he tends to start getting sleepy early in the evening and starts getting really loopy and silly if you make him stay up past his bedtime.

Akoya: Does not cope well on short sleep rations. When he first gets up after a sleepless night, he's all snappy and snarly, but as the day wears on he steadily becomes more zombie-like. It's the sort of state where if you walk up to him and say "Here, hold this" and give him an umbrella or a table lamp, he'll just walk around with it all day until he needs that hand for something again. He's been known to start making a sandwich while talking on the phone and then put the phone in the fridge and place the sandwich carefully back on the charger. Ryuu thinks he is hillarious when he is in this mode and pranks him mercilessly, mostly because he rarely remembers anything he did the next day.

Aki and Haru: The idol life has wrecked their sleeping schedule. Mostly they tend to stay up very late doing concerts, rehearsing, writing new songs, working on their choreography, etc. Then they sleep four to six hours, go to school, and take a long nap in the afternoons. They have mastered the art of napping anywhere, anytime, since the ability to grab a cat-nap backstage was a survival trait. They have separate bedrooms but they often sleep in the same bed if they're feeling lonely or discouraged, or just too lazy to walk back to their own rooms. Lately they've started sleeping over at the Hakones' place a lot. They have fewer nightmares knowing Gora is there to protect them.

Gora: Has forgotten what it's like to sleep in, but thinks he'd like it if he tried it. Didn't sleep a wink that time when Yumoto and the gang went to the beach, because he's so unused to sleeping alone. Used to hate having to get up extra early to make breakfast for himself and Yumoto, but now he’s learned to enjoy those peaceful moments when the sun is rising and it feels like everyone in the world is asleep but him and nothing bad is happening anywhere.

[kiss-my-freckle]

3x4 Rewatch: Aperitivo Italian form of Apéritif. An alcoholic drink taken before a meal to stimulate the appetite.

3x2 does an 8 month flashforward, 3x4 does an 8 month flashback. They do the flashback here so they can pull the other characters into storyline because Jack already arrived to have his own conversation with Pazzi. 

They start with Chilton visting Mason. He sounds so much like his sister, "You show me yours and I'll show you mine." Where Hannibal is concerned, it's every man for his own self-interest. Mason wants to eat him. Chilton wants him in his hospital.

Another flashback of the finale so they can open it with Chilton instead of Will's hallucination of Abigail. He repeats the same lines Abigail gave him, about how Hannibal wanted them to live. He tries to play friendly, but Will isn't stupid. He tells Chilton there's no opportunity here, at least not for him. This upsets Chilton to return the favor. "This is your best possible world, Will. Not getting a better one." Will no longer needs Hannibal there, asking him to close his eyes and imagine a version of events he wouldn't have regretted. He imagines hooking Jack at the dinner table, and Hannibal killing him with a slice to the throat like Abigail's. A string of sparks filling the screen as they cut to Will working on a motor in his garage. Another flashback of his regret, Hannibal cutting him open. These flashbacks hit back to his hallucinated conversation with Abigail at the Norman Chapel as they tie both scenes together. “I'm having a hard enough time dealing with this world. Hope some of the other worlds are easier on me."

Jack visits Will as he's working on the motor in his garage. There for his own self-interest, to make sure Will doesn't contradict his statement to the FBI. Jack says, "We're officers of the FBI, wounded in the course of heroic duty." Will tells him this isn't true for either of them. Jack asks about his phone call to Hannibal. Will obviously wouldn’t want Jack to know what he had planned with Hannibal, so he lies. "Because he was my friend. And because I wanted to run away with him." This bothers Jack, who then should've been smart enough not to use him as bait with Hannibal when they went after The Dragon. Will's satement about wanting to run away with Hannibal ties into season two - from Randall Tier onward, hitting its heaviest in 2x13.  

They cut to Alana being pushed out the window, one of my favorites because the FX are that amazing. Shards of glass mixed with rain is delicious. Chilton tries to play her like he tried to play Will. She knows Will and Hannibal are the only "we" Chilton cares about, and neither are interested in him. He wants Alana to push Will toward Hannibal so they can capture him for a spot in his hospital. "Shame not to have the good seats, If only to support poor Will." That ugliness in the crowd Hannibal talks about later in the season. "Some English on the ball, as it were." As Alana tells Chilton, it would require some manipulation. To them, Will is now a billiard ball they can spin down a specific path. They cut to her in a wheelchair at Hannibal's house. This entire scene cracks me up because it feels like Karma. Her thinking Will isn't stable, and she's flashing back to Hannibal slamming his body against the door of his pantry. Her refusing to enter into a romantic relationship with Will because he wouldn't be good for her, and she’s at the home of the cannibal she entered into a relationship with, hearing voices just like Will was hearing the animal in his chimney. Will is sitting on the floor in the kitchen where Abigail died. One of the greatest things about this scene, along with many others... you can see the impact Hannibal has on Will. "I'm building rooms in my memory palace for all my friends." This admission ties in the very first conversation he and Hannibal had. "No forts in the bone arena of your skull for things you love." Alana thinks he's referring to Hannibal. "Friendship with Hannibal is blackmail elevated to the level of love." I love Will's response. "A mutually-unspoken pact to ignore the worst in one another in order to continue enjoying the best." She doesn't understand why Will ignores the worst because the best of Hannibal sits beside him in his own hallucination. The child he chose not to kill, but to save for Will. It's the reason Hannibal says what he does at the end of the series. "He's both free and damned to imagine anything." He can see the worst and the best. "After everything he's done, can you still ignore the worst in him?" Alana's line ties into Will's statement to Abigail. "After everything he's done, you'd still go to him?" Then they cut to Alana out of her wheelchair, now walking with a cane. She arrives at the Verger stables because she’s Mason's psychiatrist. Margot shows an immediate interest in her because she has the right parts for her proclivities. Alana makes it perfectly clear to Mason that she has no problem with revenge. 

Skip to Jack and his flashback, bleeding out in Hannibal's pantry. He wakes from his neck wound, in a hospital bed next to Bella's. Her cancer is eating away at her. They cut to Chilton visiting him as he packs up his office. "The first thing you did after getting shot in the face was copyright Hannibal the Cannibal." That’s why Chilton wants Hannibal in his hospital. He then foreshadows what happens at the end of the series, only it's Will who cuts bait. "You dangle Will Graham and now you cut bait? You're letting Hannibal have him hook, line, and sinker." Will was in the same position as Jack when he pulled him in for The Dragon's case. "I've let them both go. I've let it all go." A lot of foreshadowing can be found in this episode. Mason's Hannibal dinner, Alana having a relationship with Margot, Hannibal in Chilton’s hospital, Will having his breakthrough and cutting bait since he’s the fisherman. Bella’s condition worsens to the point Jack hands her a lethal dose, likely of Morphine. Alana helps him pick out a dress for her viewing. Will stops to comfort him at her funeral. “I know what's coming for you, Will. You don't have to die on me too."

“At Communions around the earth, the devout believe that through the miracle of transubstantiation, they eat the flesh and blood of Christ.” Something I made mention to in my 3x1 rewatch post with the Gideon flashbacks. They cut back to Mason for his flashback and introduce Cordell. He’s being paid a great salary for Mason’s care and feeding. Mason tells him that he wants to eat Hannibal alive. Cordell responds by asking him how he wants Hannibal prepared. They cut to Mason and Alana discussing Hannibal. She tells him she’s doing her part to get Hannibal to his dinner stage. What she’s able to do because of Bedelia, something I made mention to in my 3x1 rewatch post. Alana is able to find her, which basically saves Will from Hannibal’s dinner table. Alana's alliance with Mason ties in GIdeon’s flashbacks in 3x1. Skip to Jack pulling up at Will’s house. Alana is there with the dogs, likely caring for them while he’s gone. “Will knows what he has to do. Do you?” Alana wants to make sure Will follows through because she knows Jack allowed him to get too close. She’s also seeking Hannibal any way she can get him, be it his capture or his death because she knows he’ll make good on his promise to kill her. Mason is her way of doubling up the odds. 

“Each of us whose life intersected Hannibal Lecter lost something. A limb here, a lung there. A few feet of intestines. The dead... The dead at least have the luxury of being done with what they lost” This is why Will goes after Hannibal. The lamb is dead, but not done with what he lost. “You are already dead, aren't you?" Will heads to Italy on behalf of Abigail. “Children transport us to our childhoods. Will may feel the tug of life before the FBI, before you. Simpler times in boatyards with dad.”

[cazahealthcenter]

Secrets to holiday weight loss challenge

https://cazahealthcenter.com/the-secret-to-holiday-weight-loss-challenge/

Secrets to holiday weight loss challenge

Do you feel it’s a constant struggle to maintain your weight around the holidays? You’re afraid you will spiral out of control and eat your way to the dreaded, but familiar, holiday weight gain syndrome? Do you think you’re destined to struggle with your weight forever and that is simply the way it is? Do you allow old beliefs and patterns to take over your mind when you join in the family celebrations?

No doubt you have a basket full of excuses and reasons why you can and will overeat during the holidays, and then attempt to gain back control come Jan.

Would you like to put the struggling behind you once and for all? I know the missing link to your success, the truth about how you can create the body you want, and maintain it permanently, even over the holiday season.

Set up your mind to a holiday weight loss success

It is all in your mind. You control your thoughts. When you are committed, focused, and have a strong desire to live in a healthy, fit, and sexy body, you will spend time each day visualizing it.

Using positive affirmations and eating mindfully will help you create the body you desire.

When what you believe about yourself is parallel on the inside, you will no longer self-sabotage. You will release the fear around holiday weight gain and not attract it into your life ever again!

It is to your advantage to begin right now to recommit to the goals you’ve set around your weight loss program. Take out your journal and start to write down all the reasons you set out on this journey. Make it a lifestyle change, not simply a goal to lose weight.

It is important that you don’t focus your attention on the “fear” of gaining weight because you attract it into your life.

Focus on what you desire, what you want (not what you don’t want) to attract into your life, how you want to live your life, and how you see yourself in your ideal body at the ideal weight living your dreams.

Once you’re in alignment with what you’re thinking and feeling, you will no longer struggle with your weight. You will simply know, feel, and embody the person you really are at your core.

The weight will melt away without a struggle. You will no longer live in fear around food because your focus and attention are on living the life you choose.

Until you change the way you think and feel, the outer action will always be a struggle. Choose your thoughts wisely.

Set an intention every morning over the holiday season to release any and all fear around weight gain, temptation, and know that you are aligned with what you want to achieve.

Most common Holiday weight loss challenge ideas

Weight release is possible at any time, depending on your priorities and your version of “holiday.” For some people, the holiday season means extra stress, hectic schedules, and lots of get-togethers full of temptations.

For others, it means time off of work, relaxation, exercise, and enjoyment of healthy food and cooking. Depending on where you see yourself in this spectrum will determine if your goals can include weight loss, or if it would be more reasonable to aim for weight maintenance.

Take a look at some of these scenarios, and see which ones are applicable to you.

Busy, busy, busy. The whole month of December goes by in a blur of holiday get-togethers, hours of mall shopping, and too many egg-nogs to remember. Anxious busy equals stress hormones, which cause us to retain and store fat. You’re probably skipping meals and activity along the way, which also contributes to the stress factor and weight gain.

Holiday baker extraordinaire. You find joy and peace in baking for others. Baking becomes more of a hobby and relaxation exercise. If you’ve made a conscious effort to substitute your regular, sugar-laden recipes for ones with whole grain flours and natural sweeteners, then you are also giving a gift that doesn’t cause damage or guilt. Fat stores can remain neutral when whole food baking options are chosen.

Skips important healthy weight habits. Instead of attending your favorite spin class, are you taking this time to decorate your house? Are you shopping on your lunch break and skipping lunch? Are you finding you’re drinking more coffee and alcohol than water? In any time of added stress, ensuring you partake in your regular stress-balancing activities is essential for weight management.

Forget all your healthy habits until New Years. All the MindBody FX Lifestyle Habits that you’ve employed are yearlong, including holidays. That “I’ll start again in January” attitude gets you right back to square one. Holding on to as many of these healthy habits as possible will allow January to hold a whole new set of goals — like a dress size smaller.

Embraces time with loved ones. Genuinely enjoying the company of your friends and family will decrease cortisol levels and allow you to enter your rest and digest mode where excess fat stores can be released. Plan health-promoting activities instead of visiting over gingerbread. A winter hike, snowshoeing, or a sleigh ride are great family activities complete with fresh air and possibly some sunshine. Time off over the holidays is a great time to try a new class. Hot yoga will warm anyone after a day of skating.

Releasing weight over the holidays is totally possible depending on your priorities and choices.

If you really love Aunt Donna’s Christmas cake, have some. If you want to lose or maintain your weight, then pass on the second round of coffee and Bailey’s to allow balance. It’s all about happy compromise.

The best tool over the holidays for sticking to your goals is your journal. If you write everything down, you can see that you had nacho dip three times this week, and went to the gym once.

You can then schedule gym time with a higher priority for the next week, and choose the carrot and celery sticks for munching.

Journal to remind yourself of why. Write your goals out daily, and you’ll be far more conscious of them. With your goals in mind, you can choose to get through the holidays with a few less pounds on the scale.

Have Healthy Meal Plans for Children during Holidays

Spring break. Easter long weekend. Summer holidays! Your children are excited and this is the time when they get extra hungry and look to eat lots of junk food. Parents tend to indulge their children at this time.

As a parent, you also know that junk food is not good for health and it does not help your child at their healthy and ideal weight.

Slowly, this habit will lead your child to become obese and then going forward, your child will have to face rejection and an odd stare from his friends and even relatives. Instead of being healthy, happy and fit, your child will be fat.

As a parent, you will then need to have a custom diet or prepare a separate meal plan for your child in order to lose weight. Instead, it is so much easier to help your children maintain a healthy weight instead of having to help them to lose weight.

Parents need to know how to teach their children healthy habits, including proper diet, physical activity and take extra care in the weight management of your child.

Reasons why your child cannot avoid weight gain during holidays

Eating many goodies like burgers, pizzas, sweets, starchy foods, chocolates, and ice cream.

Eating high calorie foods eg. rich sauces, fries, etc. that are served with some of the above.

Eating many processed food and packaged foods that are high in salt and saturated fat.

Tend to lead a sedentary lifestyle like lounging on the couch most of the time, watching television, playing video games or spending time on the computer etc.

What a responsible parent can do:

–  Have a healthy meal plan for your child planned, especially during holidays –  Include lots of fresh fruits and vegetables in their diet –  Prepare and give them fresh food –  Avoid processed and unhealthy ingredients while preparing meals and snacks –  Do not use any trans fats or artificial fats that have no nutritional value –  Include whole grains and cut out all white sugar and flour –  Make low-calorie healthy snacks for your child to enjoy

Other lifestyle changes that a parent can help their child with:

Spending more time outdoors with the children as a family

Engaging in physical activities

Growing a vegetable garden and enjoying ‘organic’ food and having your child participate

Talk and explain the advantages of having healthy habits from a young age

Help the child to take up a hobby, something that he/she loves

Be a role model yourself for the children in order to inspire them