#i absolutely adore his portrayal of santa

[illiana-mystery]

It's that time of year again. 🎄 So sit back, relax, and enjoy Alfred's portrayal of Santa Claus 🎅 in the old Nick Jr. cartoon, Santiago of the Seas.

[viciouslyfilthy]

Okay so, I believe it's time to infodump about the other Season Spirits, and since I ended uo not having the time to tackle the Autumn Spirit for October, you'll be pleased to know I can and will talk about him here since- spoiler alert- he just so happens to be in a relationship with the Winter Spirit;

Jack O' Lantern is the Autumn, or- well, most commonly known as the Halloween Spirit. He's a blob of neon green slime that can change shape at will, he often has a humanoid shape just to be able to wear his cape; his head is pretty much a floaty pumpkin with a face carved on it (his tongue is a whole candle p much); he's probably the most chill/friendly spirit out of the rest. Unlike Sün, he just lives to celebrate and play mean-spirited pranks on people. He absolutely adores his own festivity of course, he scares people in every way possible just for laughs.

Wherever he goes, all nature around him withers and dries up. This is something he and his lover kind of bonded over since it saddens them both that they can only kill off plants and nature instead of rejuvinating them or making them bloom like the other two spirits can.

And this brings us to the Winter Spirit, whom goes by many names known in a lot of traditions- such as Saint Nick or Rudolph, though as if recently, he prefers to be called Xmas, simply.

Funny enough he was originally meant to be the spring spirit, but given that he would need to take a physical form he wouldn't have enjoyed living in for all eternity, he rejected it and instead preferred to become the winter spirit. You'll be surprised to know that Xmas absolutely loathes his own season (he has a Seasonal Affective Disorder), each Winter, the empty snowy paradise his season creates washes him up with melancholy since he finds the enviroment often very gloomy and lonely. The cold just adds to that loneliness part.

The festivity within his season is actually the one only thing that brings him joy, he's a massive fan of christmas lights and christmas trees since they add a little touch of happiness to the bitter cold, empty land he brings wherever he goes. And the fact that he's often referred to as an entity that brings joy and gifts really touches his heart- long story short he's pretty much the 'Santa Claus' in the flesh in my universe, though he doesn't resemble the big old man in white and red at all (in fact, in this universe, Xmas often gets a LOT of snow stuck in his fur, thus making him look like he has a white beard; and this ended up becoming a misinterpretation with people's portrayal of Santa); he's pretty much a humanoid reindeer with candycane antlers who often has a red glowy nose (he gets colds really easily, especially since he lives in the North Pole)

Another thing that brings him joy of course is his beloved Jack <3 and you best believe they HAVE sometimes attempted to fuse both their holidays together- their Halloweens and Christmas go together like peanut butter and jelly !!!!

[santaverse]

Meet the New Santas for 2022!

[ Hello again, everyone! Thank you for all the support towards Part 1 of the fic I posted this morning! I’ll be posting the parts throughout the Holiday Season, so I hope y’all will look forward to North, Nicholas, and Sleepy Santa’s adventure! ]

[ Now onto the exciting part! Here are the Santa Clauses I’ve added this year! ]

( feel free to go to the muse page to get... more or less, more cohesive blurbs about the characters! )

1. Apalpador

The Galician Santa Claus is here! This year, thanks to a movie called Pixi Post and the Gift Bringers (or Pixi Saves Christmas), I’ve added different Santa Claus depictions from around the world! It was a huge learning experience, but a very intriguing one! I hope you all enjoy Apalpador and the other genies from this series!

2. Bolly Santa

This Santa Claus is from an animated music video where he dances in celebration of the ick-vaccine. If that premise alone didn’t hook you on the idea of a Bollywood dancing Santa, then I don’t know what else will!

3. Boomer Santa

Did you know there was a 2006 retelling of the holiday classic; A Year Without a Santa Claus? Well, it exists! And boy, is it a mess! A chaotic movie with an equally chaotic Santa Claus. This dude really gets mad that kids are playing Soul Calibur 2. Mans need to get a GRIP.

4. Cap’n Claus

Leave it to a Nick Jr. Cartoon to give me another compelling Santa Claus! (I’ve gotta thank my Niece for being glued to that channel lol) This Santa Claus is pretty clearly a pirate, right? He’s got the cool clothes and captain’s hat! Well, in all actuality, this Santa Claus spends the entirety of his appearance learning how to be a proper nice pirate! It’s just a pure as it sounds! You’ll definitely get charmed by this Santa. He does these cool poses and winks at the camera a lot- Dude KNOWS he’s cool!

5. Hoteiosho

Celebrated in Japan as a Santa Claus figure, Hoteiosho brought something to my attention that I never noticed. He’s a Buddhist Santa Claus. ...Those two concepts have so much in common, having one as a gift-bringer makes so much sense. He wasn’t in the movie for long (he was captured first), but dang it he’s gonna get his flowers on this blog! 

6. JACKED Santa

The Villainous Santa Claus from Captain Underpants!!! I ADORE Captain Underpants, but never watched the Cartoon at all! It’s a shame because I’ve missed out on one of the most hilarious portrayals of Santa Claus yet. He’s an absolute dude-bro meathead who demands you give HIM presents for Blissmas. Amazing, incredible, 10/10, love this guy.

7. Manga Claus

An obscure pick from a mid 2000s book, This Santa Claus may appear docile at first, but when he wields his twin blades (The Miyaguchi Daisho), he reveals his decades of training and absolutely intimidating stature. He’s the definition of edge, and I LOVE it.

8. Monopolish

A Roman Santa Claus who was stripped of his powers once he was revealed to be stealing the glory of his genie counterparts. Now he’s the leader of his own multi-billion dollar company (where some defected elves work for him) in which he plans to capture the other genies and get his powers back. He’s a good villain who shows genuine sorrow for not having any children who believe in him.

9. Olentzero

The Basque Santa Claus! (also voiced by Eggman himself) Olentzero is one of the best reasons to watch Pixi Post and the Gift Bringers. The guy is just an absolutely softie. He’ll always do what he can to help, even if he has no clue what he’s doing. He’s great!

10. Robo Santa

This Santa was recommended to me since this blog’s creation a few years back, and I couldn’t see myself adding any Santa that was overly malicious to the blog. Well, years later and a few bad Santas added, here we are! To be honest I’m still not entirely sure how I’m going to keep his more violent nature in-tact, but a robotic Santa Claus that thinks even the most minute action to be Naughty is just an incredible basis for RPing. I couldn’t say no!

11. Skinny Santa

Definitely the most requested Santa Claus I’ve ever had for this blog, and for good reason! Similarly to Robo Santa, I was against Skinny Santa joining the blog because I never thought there was much to him aside from just being a jerk for the entirety of the movie? But there’s a bit more to his character admittedly, and I have a few jerky Santas here now, so what’s one more?

His addition was long overdue.

12. Snegurochka and Ded Moroz

The Russian / Slavic pair of Santa Clauses! In Pixi Post and the Gift Bringers, the Santa Clauses are referred to as Genies, and Snegurochka (the most difficult name in the world to spell) is the de-facto leader of them all! These two bring such a unique portrayal of a Santa Claus, I had to add them!

13. Sporty Santa

A Santa Claus from a relatively underrated Christmas Special, Sporty Santa is a Santa Claus who is that friendly elderly guy who helps you out at a convenience store, or you see at a sporting event! He’s hidden in plain sight and I just think he’s neat! (PS, I neeeed his sweater, it looks so soft!!)

14. The Three Wise Men

If I was going to add just one Genie/Santa from Pixi Post and the Gift Bringers, it was going to be the Three Wise Men. They’ve had their appearances in cartoons before (they have their own day for crying out loud), but never specifically doing the Santa Claus shtick! They’re full of character in this movie too! Caspar’s got a bit of spice to him, getting the other two in unwanted fights- it’s so great. I’m so excited to show y’all this portrayal of this trio!

-

[ phew! that’s all! this brings the blog to 64* (not counting duos, trios, or mrs. clauses) Santas! WOW, I never really expected to find this many new Santas, but each year I seem to find or be recommended something with a unique Santa portrayal! The goal of this year was to be the last Santas added... but I already have my eye on some Santas that are in animated projects lauching next year, sooo.... looks like there really isn’t an end to the Santaverse! ]

[ I’ll be making a Starter Call very soon! Until then, thank you & Happy Almost Holidays!! ]

[shakespearefreak]

Favourite Childhood Christmas Movie: Rankin/Bass' The Little Drummer Boy (1968) This movie really resonated with me as a kid. Aaron's journey, from youthful joy, to bitterness and hatred, to finally acceptance and love, seems very real, especially given the special's half-hour runtime. Also, the final scene before the manger is breathtakingly beautiful, and has forever influenced how I picture the Nativity.

Favourite Modern Christmas Movie: Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020) This only came out last year and it's already one of my favourites. The gorgeous, lavish costumes! The incredible songs! The worldbuilding! The acting! Keegan-Michael Key's Gustafson steals the show as far as I'm concerned, but there's a lot of talent here, including the brilliant young actress Madalen Mills as Journey.

Favourite "Christmas Carol" Adaptation: Scrooge (1951) Alastair Sim is Scrooge in a way no other actor has ever managed for me. I also love most of the other casting (especially Michael Hordern's fantastic Marley), and in general, I think it's the most faithful adaptation out there, and what extra scenes it adds are utterly in keeping with the tone of the original novel.

Favourite "Nice" Christmas Movie: It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Okay, so It's a Wonderful Life isn't exactly a Christmas movie in my opinion; a very small percentage of the runtime has anything at all to do with the holiday season, and in general, I tend to think of it as a "slice of life" story until near the very end (when George is standing on the bridge, about to jump). That said, a lot of people strongly associate it with the holiday, so I think it counts.

Favourite "Naughty" Christmas Movie: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) Any movie that can make me laugh hard enough to pee a little and touch my heart with tenderness is a good film in my book.

Favourite Child Protagonist: Cindy Lou Who (How The Grinch Stole Christmas 2000) I really related to Cindy Lou as a kid: her struggle to reclaim her former joy in Christmas, her otherness in a world where no one really seems to understand her, her determination, and her belief in someone everyone else has given up on.

Favourite Teenage Protagonist: Jack Frost (Rise of the Guardians 2012) Once again, RotG may not precisely be a "true" Christmas movie, but it definitely is has strong ties to the holiday. Also, I know Jack isn't technically a "teenager," given he's a few hundred years old, but he retained his teenage appearance and personality after becoming a spirit.

Favourite Adult Protagonist: George Bailey (It's a Wonderful Life 1946) I love Jimmy Stewart's characters in general. His George Bailey is both inspirational and relatable, which is a tricky thing to do. George has flaws - bouts of temper, despair, frustration - but is ultimately a wonderful person who is intelligent, charismatic, generous, and deeply compassionate. Also, I relate very strongly with the idea of giving so much of yourself to others, you feel like there is nothing left; thankfully, like George, I have a host of amazing friends who are there for me when I start feeling too drained to go on.

Favourite Santa Claus: Tim Allen (The Santa Clause trilogy) Though I love many different incarnations of the jolly old elf - Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Kris from Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1970), and Claus from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum especially come to mind - I have always felt that Tim Allen's portrayal of Santa was pretty much perfect.

Favourite Villain: Mr. Jonathan Teatime (Hogfather) Mr. Teatime (pronounced "Te-ah-tim-eh," as he always points out), falls into that small category of my favourite characters who I am genuinely afraid of, even while I adore them to no end. He's absolutely fascinating to me. He seems like a very young child in a lot of ways, one who doesn't yet really understand that other creatures have feelings, and just wants to take everything apart to see how it works.

Favourite Christmas Present: A second chance at life (A Christmas Carol) A lot of people doing this meme have been listing what they like best to receive on Christmas morning, but according to the original creator "Christmas Present, is what you think was the best present given to someone in any form of media, be it movie, TV show, extra. And yes, metaphorical presents like getting to spend time with family and such also count here." As such, I can think of no better gift than what Jacob Marley gave Ebenezer Scrooge - another chance.

Favourite Christmas TV Special: "The Most Adequate Christmas Ever" (American Dad!) I actually adore the American Dad! Christmas specials in general (especially the first three); I find them both hilarious and genuinely deeply touching. I also love the risks they take with the ideas of God, Heaven, and the afterlife.

Favourite Ship: Ebenezer Scrooge x Jacob Marley (A Christmas Carol) These two marvelous old sinners who both ruined and ultimately saved each other have been my ultimate OTP for almost my entire adult life (and as always, I have to thank @wolfenm and their wonderful story "A Conspiracy of Spirits: The Love Story of Jacob Marley and Ebenezer Scrooge" for opening me up to the idea).

Favourite Classic Christmas Song: "The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)" by Nat King Cole I love how simple this song is. It has so much depth and warmth, without ever feeling showy.

Favourite Modern Christmas Song: "Christmas Wrapping" Glee cover (originally by The Waitresses) Yes, I know Glee covers are basically blasphemy in the music world, and I really enjoy the original Waitresses song too, but there's something fantastic to me about Heather Morris' voice in this version.

Blank template by HorrorExplorer on DeviantArt

[saywhatjessie]

Written for Kathleen for the History Huh? Holiday Exchange! 1.8k (Ao3)

“Yes, Alex, of course I’ve heard Mariah Carrey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’.” Henry said, rolling his eyes and tapping at Alex’s leg where it was propped next to him. “I am gay, you know.”

“And thank God for that.” Alex said, rubbing a hand up over Henry’s hair. “But how am I supposed to know which pieces of American culture you’ve experienced? You didn’t know about ‘Get Low’! I don’t trust any of the education provided to you by that snotty English prep school.”

Henry laughed, softly. “Ah, yes: forget the European history and international policy I was educated in. If there’s no American pop music on the syllabus, the whole system’s a crock.”

“You get it,” Alex said, nodding solemnly. His face only broke when Henry snorted.

“I don’t think most Christmas music is strictly American, though.” Henry argued. “I’d say it’s such a specific genre it’s mostly universally shared.”

Alex grinned. “Let’s test that.”

 He lifted his pelvis so he could reach his phone that was tucked into his back pocket and caused Henry to whine at him, disgruntled by Alex’s squirming.

They were huddled together on the couch in Alex’s room in the White House, their New York brownstone not yet ready for them. Alex was sitting sideways on the couch, back against the armrest. One of his legs was extended down the couch to make room for Henry who was laying on his side between Alex and the back of the couch, but mostly on top of Alex. Alex kept one socked foot pressed into the cushions to keep them from toppling off the couch onto the floor.

As twined together as they were, Alex reaching for his phone definitely disturbed Henry’s whole body.

“Oh, shut up,” Alex told him. “We’re doing science.”

He got his phone in front of him, petting over Henry’s head again to apologize for the disruption, and pulled up Spotify.

“Consider this your official Christmas education.”

Henry snorted again, resting his head against Alex’s chest. “I wouldn’t say this is–”

“And you’re shutting up again.” Alex said, pressing play and resting the phone on his knee. “We’re listening now.”

Out of Alex’s phone speaker came some high melodic bell sounds followed immediately by a female singer doing a vocal run of ‘Oh yeah!’

Henry hummed. “Britney Spears.”

Alex looked down at the top of his head. “You know this one?”

“No,” Henry admitted in a grumble. “But any queer worth their salt knows Britney when they hear her.”

Alex chuckled. That was valid.

The song got to the chorus and Alex couldn’t help but mouth along to the lyrics.

 Santa, can you hear me?

I have been so good this year.

And all I want is one thing:

tell me my true love is near!

He’s all I want, just for me,

underneath my Christmas tree.

I’ll be waiting here.

Santa, that’s my only wish this year.

 Henry rumbled a soft laugh, burying his face in Alex’s sweatshirt. “Love, that is incredibly sappy.”

Alex swatted him, lightly. “Leave Britney Alone.”

Henry laughed again, grinding his forehead into Alex’s sternum and Alex just grinned, bringing his hand up to rest in Henry’s hair.

When that song ended, a new one started.

“Fuck yes,” Alex said, with feeling. “Keeping it in the 90’s.”

“Dear, you were just barely alive in the 90’s.”

“Shhhh!” Alex shushed him. “*NSYNC is singing!”

Henry was right: Alex was born in 1998 and, therefore, most of these songs were just a little bit before his time. But he did have an older sister.

“I do, actually, know this one,” Henry said, humming along to the chorus. Though why he didn’t sing the lyrics, Alex didn’t know. It was literally just ‘Merry Christmas’ over and over again.

“I’m shocked that it’s a boy band that makes its way across the pond to you,” Alex said.

Henry rolled his eyes. “I had an older sister of the nineties as well, Alex.”

Alex got bored of the song halfway through (it really was repetitive) and picked up his phone to find a new song.

Most of the songs Spotify had picked for them were in the same vein: 90’s and early 2000’s stars singing poppy Christmas songs. But a little bit of scrolling found him something truly incredible.

 “It’s Christmas in Hollywood, 

Santa’s back up in the hood, 

so meet me under the mistletoe,

let’s fu-u-uck”

 Henry burst out laughing, his convulsions almost enough to shove Alex to the floor. “What is that?”

“Hollywood Undead!” Alex answered, merrily. “They’re not good and this song is actually terrible but it kind of slaps?”

Henry could barely hear any of the lyrics over his laughing but he did manage the jolly voice of Santa on the track saying “If you guide my sleigh I’ll let you fuck my wife.” And that just sent him into a whole new bout of hysterics.

“We should play this at our holiday dinner,” Alex suggested, as the song faded out.

“Oh, yes,” Henry said, choking on a couple late chuckles. “This is the best representation of sharing between our cultures I can imagine.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too,” Alex answered, a stray giggle betraying him.

They managed to laugh through the next song which was someone’s cover of “Santa Baby” but it wasn’t Eartha Kitt so Alex didn’t think it was any real loss.

It wasn’t until a certain guitar riff that Henry shushed him. “Quiet, darling, Darren Criss is singing.”

Alex groaned, dropping his head back against the armrest. “God, you and that guy.”

Henry shushed him again.

Alex rolled his eyes and picked up his phone to look at the song title. “Extraordinary Merry Christmas” from the Glee soundtrack.

And, yes, there was Lea Michele’s voice harmonizing now.

Alex understood, obscurely, the appeal of Glee. The music. The drama. The beautiful people. June had been obsessed with it in the early days and he’d seen a few episodes but he could never really get into it.

Henry, though, was a card carrying Gleek. Which was absolutely absurd but also, weirdly, totally expected. He was totally the type to eat that corny shit up.

Also, he was obsessed with Darren Criss, who played Kurt’s boyfriend Blaine on Glee.

“I guess this song, is kind of alright,” Alex admitted.

Henry turned wild eyes on him. “Do you not hear him? He’s incredible.”

Alex rolled his eyes again. “He’s not even the real Harry Potter,” Alex grumbled.

Henry shushed him.

When the song was over, Alex pulled the phone up and tapped out another search.

He made Henry get up before he hit play.

Henry groaned. “Why.”

“Because we’re going to dance like the worst and most terribly cheesy couple in the entire world,” Alex answered, promptly. “And I get to be Blaine.”

“Wha–” Henry started but then Alex hit play and the opening notes for the Glee version of ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ started. 

Henry’s eyes lit up but he frowned. “Let me be Blaine, my voice is deeper than yours.”

“Too late!” Alex said because it was Henry’s cue.

“I really can’t stay,” Henry sang falsetto and completely off-pitch.

Alex tried not to laugh over his line. “But Baby, it’s cold outside.”

“I’ve got to go ‘way.”

“But baby it’s cold outside!”

They swayed in a circle, arms around each other, trading lines and trying not to laugh at Henry’s absolutely horrendous attempt at falsetto. Alex didn’t know all the words and Henry’s voice kept cracking but they got through the whole song with minimal trouble.

They were laughing to themselves by the end, Henry ducking his head to bring Alex into a long kiss. Alex hummed into it.

The phone kept playing another Christmas song of another slow-ish tempo so they kept dancing, not wanting to stop now they’ve started.

Henry pulled away, resting his forehead on Alex’s. “Why did you get to be Blaine?”

Alex laughed. “Because he’s your favorite. And I wanted to be your favorite.”

Henry kissed him again, humming. “It’s not just because you wanted the boy part?”

“The point of that version is that they’re both the boy part.”

Henry smiled a small smile and leaned down to kiss him again.

They stayed kissing for the rest of the song, and then the opening notes for “Baby It’s Cold Outside” started again, this time the Zooey Deschanell version.

Henry pulled away again. “You know when Kurt and Blaine sang ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ on Glee…” Henry started, licking his lips. “That was the first scene of television I’d ever seen that had a positive and sweetly romantic portrayal of two men.”

Alex pulled his head back a little bit to look at him. “Really?”

Henry nodded. “Every other gay thing on television was always very sexual. Or completely neutered. I was a 13-year old kid having innocent crushes on boys but there was nothing on tv that looked like what I was feeling. Not until that scene.”

Alex grinned, leaning up to plant a kiss on Henry’s jaw. “That’s adorable.”

Henry growled a little in his throat, but turned his head so it was easier for Alex to kiss him.

Alex kissed him on the mouth, pulling away with a smile. “Weird, though, that the song is about date rape.”

Alex grinned wider as he watched Henry’s whole face turn red.

“You have to take the song in context!” Henry hissed. They stopped dancing. “In the 1940’s, it was inappropriate for a woman to be at a man’s house very late without a chaperone! You have to listen to the song with the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse.” Henry was breathing heavily. “The song’s a game of cat and mouse! She even says ‘At least I’m gonna say that I tried’ like she really wants to stay but she knows what people will say if she does.” Henry was sporting the angry eyebrows now and Alex was delighted. “It is disrespectful and historically inaccurate to reduce the song in that way.”

Alex reached up to rub his thumb against the crease of Henry’s eyebrows. “You enormous nerd.”

Alex leaned up and kissed the pout on Henry’s mouth. Henry held firm in his rage for a count of two before he melted and kissed Alex back.

They kissed all through Christina Aguilera’s rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.

[quercussp]

Favorite phanfics of 2018 (pt 2): oneshot edition

You can find part 1 here.

Oof I finally got through most of my reading and here are my favorite short (under 10k) phanfics of the second half of 2018. They are ordered by publication date, from the middle of June to December. They also don’t include any of the phandomficfests secret santa fics, there were just too many for me to go through in time and I’ll just make a list of my favorites later. Also, because of the incredible amount of works published this year (yay!!!!) I am absolutely sure I missed a lot of stuff, please let me know if you think I missed a fave of yours.

alone and together (M, 1.8k) by @symmetricdnp - a 2010 fic that captures that feeling of a still new but incredibly important relationship, when you know this is something big but are still a little bit afraid of it, or afraid of not being afraid of it. Made me feel all the feels.

matte black (G, 1.4k) by @waveydnp - a 2018 tour fic about nail polish and also everything else. So beautiful I want to cry just thinking about it.

you're the ultimate high that i'm tripping on (M, 7.2k) by @onedirectionticketss1 - the type of d/s fic I love to read. It is about people and communication and love for each other, not about fitting into roles assigned by the dynamic. The level of communication and nuance described in this fic is absolutely phenomenal and I love every word.

and i'll admire your expensive taste (G, 1.4k) by @legdabs - a fic about how much clothes can say or not say and about self acceptance and identity and breaking down boundaries. So beautiful!

high maintenance machines (T, 1.4k) by @alittledizzy - I love fics about family dynamics and the level of complexity and nuance in this one is astonishing. I love Mandy’s interpretation of Dan’s family. It’s difficult and full of different kinds of pain and of different kinds of love. 

21 thoughts I had today (M, 2.3k) by @agingphangirl - a fic about bad days done in an absolutely amazing way. Dan’s internal process is frighteningly relatable and the entire fic is just stunning.

corazón tú sí sabes (love me like I like it) (M, 1k) by @babethepig - this is the type of fic that is so atmospheric it feels like you are actually visiting the place. It’s also full of love and adoration for each other and just makes me feel so happy.

give you my heat (E, 700) by @alittledizzy - a short but absolutely brilliant fic about sex and about being happy.

(not) Fair Game (E, 1.7k) by @i-am-my-opheliac - another fic about sex, with a totally different vibe, but such incredible dynamic exploration. It’s hot and beautiful and original and just brilliant.

a world alone (T, 2.2k) by @waveydnp - a fic about Dan and Phil as women. It’s amazingly in character, but with also all the things that would be different taken into account and so delicately explored. I loved it so much.

sleeping in a spotlight (E, 1.1k) by @alittledizzy - a wonderful fic about kink exploration, which is one of my favorite things to read about. It’s full of communication and acceptance of each other and is just a wonderful read.

Hands (E, 4.4k) by TooAttachedToDelete - if you know me, you know I have a thing for hands. And for power dynamics. And for d/s. And for communication. This is basically the perfect fic for me.

when the sun goes down (M, 1.4k) by @alittledizzy - first sex done in a way that makes my heart ache with love for the both of them. It’s an AU but Dan and Phil are both so in character and so them. Absolutely brilliant.

nothing but my smile (T, 2k) by @templeofshame - this is the type of fic that just makes me think about things for hours. An incredibly deep dive into exploring what certain actions or inactions mean, with thorough research and a lot of thought. I loved it so much.

Double Ended (M, 1.1k) by @auroraphilealis - a fic about a double ended dildo, and also about how amazing sex can be in all of it’s different manifestations. 

one star (M, 500) by @alittledizzy - by this point, this is an absolute classic. I’m not even gonna say anything, if you haven’t read this, than just go do it right now, you’ll thank me later (actually thank Mandy instead).

where the trees we planted grow (T, 2.4k) by @alittledizzy (at this point, just go read Mandy’s entire ao3) - Japan and talks getting married, with so much love and familiarity with each other, it fills my heart with so much love.

10,000 emerald pools (E, 2.9k) by @kay-okays - a fic filled with so many visuals, you almost feel like a painting is being painted before your eyes. It’s beautiful in a way I can’t even properly describe.

Plus One (NR, 3.4k) by @tortitabby - a dive into Phil’s life before Dan, but also a deep exploration of Phil with Dan. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but this is an absolutely brilliant fic you have to check out.

d&p (G, 1.1k) by @waveydnp - this is the type of fic that shows how much depth and emotion fics labeled as “fluff” often have. I absolutely love it.

ooh you make me live now honey (M, 5.7k) by @onedirectionticketss1 - a fic about sex that’s real and honest and honestly hilarious. I love it so much and I just wish this type of sex was shown more often in mainstream media or films. 

Would love to spend a day in the clouds (G, 2.2k) by @det395 - an outsider POV (which you know I’m an absolute sucker for) done absolutely amazingly. It’s full of nuance and detail, and is done from a very interesting point of view.

starving (G, 2.6k) by @waveydnp (again, what am I even doing here, just go read all of Sarah’s stuff) - introspection into the feeling of missing a person who is right next to you. Or missing the routine you are used to. Or missing home. Or comfort. As always with Sarah’s fics, this filled me with this deep ache and a whirl of different emotions.

Looking to the Sky to Save Me (NR, 2.4k) by @tortitabby - another thing I absolutely love reading about is conflict, and this is a perfect example of the type of fic I enjoy reading. The level of nuance is incredible and there’s so much exploration of Dan and Phil’s connection. I absolutely love it.

campfire (E, 4.4k) by @waveydnp - I love 2010 phanfics. It’s such an interesting time in their relationship to think about, and this is a perfect example of it. It’s all about young love and learning each other, and also about that settling feeling of “this is actually happening” and “this might be the biggest thing in my life”.

Clavum Nitorem. (T, 1.7k) by @phansb - an incredible exploration of gender roles and self acceptance and all the pain that comes with it.

averagely enough (G, 1.5k) by @watergator - a very interesting take on Dan’s relationship with his dad, done in a very careful and nuanced way.

even while the dust moves (G, 2.4k) by @cityofphanchester - a fic about depression and family and having a support system. It fills me with so many different feelings.

let our bodies make memories (E, 3.4k) by @symmetricdnp - sex-centered fic with intimacy and realism and which just is bursting with their love and their friendship.

a little bit of something else (E, 1.2k) by @danisnopeonfire - this is a take on their florida vacation, and it’s full of happiness and joy and being with each other.

Turn and Face the Strange (NR, 2.1k) by @tortitabby - Kathryn’s POV of 2009 Phil. A brilliant take on a mother’s love towards her child and on coming out.

Times Of Change (T, 2.4k) by @phantasticlizzy - a dive into Phil’s mind and aging and change and growth. It’s absolutely brilliant, and Lizzy’s portrayal of Phil makes me love him even more (which I wasn’t sure was possible).

soft silence / softer lips (NR, 1.1k) by @floralandrogyny - this fic is filled with so much adoration that it makes my entire soul soar. I loved it so much.

A Green Menace (G, 500) by @megiaolf - an AU where Phil makes plants. It’s really short but it paints an incredible universe in which both Dan and Phil fit so organically. This is definitely one of those fics that will surprise you.

old hat, new hat (T, 1.3k) by @iihappydaysii - a very interesting take on Phil’s relationships with his friends and how they changed with the appearance of Dan in his life. 

Hungover but Sober (T, 3k) by thesassykels66 - this fic portrays the type of anxiety and tiredness that I can physically feel while reading, and also so much understanding and support a partner can offer. Just a brilliant take on being very tired and overwhelmed.

we got the north lights (E, 1k) by @alittledizzy - a snippet of the tour and their time in Australia, filled with familiarity and love for each other.

make this feel like home (M, 6.1k) by @onedirectionticketss1 - conflict and tiredness done in an incredibly realistic and nuanced way, with so many different emotions and themes. So brilliant.

even if (T, 5.4k) by @thelesterhowells - so technically this isn’t a one shot, but it’s too short to go into my long fic rec list, and I really want to share it with you guys. It’s an amazing fic with a really interesting alternative universe, but done in a way that really highlights the differences and parallels this universe would have with the canon. I think it’s a brilliant idea and it’s done really beautifully, so check it out!

for a better tomorrow (G, 7.7k) by @cityofphanchester - family is so difficult. Dealing with your loved one’s relationship with their family is difficult. Dealing with depression is difficult. This fic just includes so many different aspects of their lives and is extraordinary and beautiful.

Insight Between Black and White (T, 4.6k) by @tortitabby - a very interesting take out outing, and on how both Dan and Phil would react to it. There’s so much to unpack in how differently they would react and how they would support each other. This is such a brilliant exploration of that.

for you are not beside but within me (E, 6.9k) by @obsessivelymoody - this is a story filled with so much love for a place, it really makes you feel like you are in Vancouver with Dan and Phil. I really really loved this story.

say your confessions (T, 2.3k) by @watergator - a beautiful fic about Dan and Phil being in India, with an incredible atmosphere and some interesting insights into the last time Dan was there. 

running you with red (T, 6.3k) by @waveydnp - the infamous nurse AU by Sarah that is just an amazing piece of art. The universe is incredible realistic and vibrant and the whole fic with all the comfort and love and urgency it has leaves me breathless.

someone that I forgot to be (G, 1k) by @capriciouscrab - a wonderful take on Phil coming out, and how scary and complicated it is, and what it means to him and to Dan. 

paint it on your face (M, 500) by @onedirectionticketss1 - a very original take on the concept of soulmate marks. I love it so much!

wanna run away (but i won't) (T, 1.1k) by @capriciouscrab - this fic hit me like a ton of bricks. Dealing with depression is really difficult, but dealing with someone else’s depression is also a very painful and difficult thing to do, and this fic explores it wonderfully.

two eggs, lightly beaten (G, 1k) by @alittledizzy - a fic about Dan and Phil taking care of each other and the back and forth any relationship has when one person needs some extra support.

all your thoughts running through your head (M, 2.2k) by @onedirectionticketss1 - a beautiful exploration of gender identity and gender roles, both individually and in a relationship.

between two lungs (G, 860) by @uselessphillie - an exploration of Dan’s relationship with his family and with Phil, full of comfort and intimacy. 

archive of his own (T, 1.6k) by @velvetnautilus - a fic about outing and about the breaking of the fourth wall and also just exploration of what fanfiction means to people. I’ve never read something so meta and so realistic at the same time, an absolute masterpiece.

back to those tokyo nights (M, 3k) by @waveydnp - relationships grow and evolve, and there is something incredibly romantic about being in that point of a relationship where you are sure about what’s going to happen next. This is a brilliant exploration of relationship growth and coming to terms with it.

ellen (G, 3k) by @watergator - being a parent is incredibly scary (I imagine), and I really loved this take on that fear and that uncertainty that comes with it.

into your glow (E, 3.8k) by @kay-okays - have I mentioned somewhere here that I absolutely love kink exploration?:) Well I do, and this is no exception. The level of communication and depth that goes into kink exploration is so amazing to read about, I just can’t recommend this enough.

zig zag boy (G, 1.4k) by @velvetnautilus - a magician AU that shook me to the very core. This universe is incredible and unexpected, and their relationship is so so interesting to read about.

make it out when the sun is ruined (E, 6.1k) by @waveydnp - seeing your loved one in danger definitely brings out some of the biggest fears and a lot of pain. This fic really dives into what it means to love someone in a way that you don’t know how to even live with the thought that they might not be there. It’s brilliant and beautiful and very nuanced.

Get drunk on the good life (T, 2k) by Midgetphan - a take on Dan and Phil on vacation. It’s so bursting with love and companionship and intimacy, really makes me so happy.

Because you and I shine (G, 1.9k) by Midgetphan - a fic about the pure adoration that Dan has for Phil which just makes my heart soar because of how beautiful and emotional it is.

You fit me tailor-made, love how you put it on (M, 600) by Midgetphan - a take on threesome dynamics but not really. I love this because it’s a very interesting thing to think about and a very interesting dynamic to explore in a relationship, something that requires very deep trust and communication.

nod my head (don't close my eyes) (E, 2.5k) by @alittledizzy - Mandy’s take on Phil’s mind always leaves me breathless and in love with him, and this work of art is no exception.

In my arms (T, 2.7k) by @phantasticlizzy - this is the purest hurt/comfort fic I could have ever asked for, a fic that feels like a hug, full of love and emotion and support and fear for your loved ones. I love it so much, I have no words.

Conjuncture (M, 6.9k) by @yikesola - a 2013 fic about Dan’s depression and the ways that Phil tried to help. It’s filled with the sense of helplessness that comes with seeing your loved ones struggle but not knowing what you can do about it, but also filled with hope for the future.

some kind of magic (E, 2k) by @alittledizzy and @waveydnp - another very interesting time period - 2011 - done in a very delicate way. The fic is all about insecurities and newness and excitement for what’s yet to come, and it just fills me with so much emotion to read about all of that knowing what their life was after all of this, what it is now. So beautiful and brilliant, truly a treat for all of us.

let the jameson sink in (T, 1.1k) by @alittledizzy - a drunk Phil is something that I would absolutely love to see in real life, and this is almost better. Phil having a conversation with Marianne, with his inhibitions lowered and just being himself. I really really loved this.

not a social monster (G, 2.3k) by @templeofshame - Phil’s relationship with his brother is something that I absolutely love reading about, especially when it’s done so thoughtfully and carefully.

discourse (G, 450) by badbadnotgood - a short but lovely take on that now iconic bath scene in PINOF 10.

december 9th: you worry me something stupid (G, 1.6k) by @watergator - a fic about family and about missing each other and trusting each other to know how you feel, and it’s just an absolutely wonderful read.

like (T, 3.8k) by @iihappydaysii - reading this broke my heart in the best way. Parenting is really really hard and this is so heartbreaking and realistic and emotional. I really really love it.

fringe check (E, 2.6k) by CoffinWeaver (politely_ironic) - it’s amazing how much hair can affect us. I love fics exploring Phil’s new haircut and the emotions behind it, and this is no exception.

sweet dreams (T, 1.9k) by @waveydnp - I love exploring dynamics in an established relationship, and this is definitely one that really interested me. I love the differences between how Dan and Phil treat the same things in a relationship, and how they mean different things to them.

Old Habit, New Setting (E, 3.5k) by @yikesola - kink exploration and communication done in a very interesting way. Also it’s a very interesting kink to explore. It has a lot of nostalgia and a lot of acceptance of one another, and it’s just beautifully written.

the moon is right (T, 2k) by @alittledizzy - Dan talking with someone from his old life is definitely a guilty pleasure of mine, and this is just a wonderful take on that.

december 22nd: a mothers secrets (G, 3k) by @watergator - this is such a brilliant take on Dan’s mother. I really really love her character here, it’s unexpected but so realistic and so vibrant.

A Christmas Tail (T, 9.2k) by thewakeless - an incredibly cute fic from a dog’s point of view. It’s happiness in pure fic form, so adorable and so warm and happy. Just treat yourself to this amazing fic, it’s really worth it.

changes (turn and face the strange) (T, 3.9k) by happy_hufflepuffle - a very interesting take on Kath’s perspective and a very beautiful coming out moment. Family is difficult and Kath is no angel, but there is so much love in this fic, it really makes me emotional.

not what i asked for (G, 2.8k) by @capriciouscrab - this fic really captures the exhaustion and vulnerability I associate with therapy, and it has a brilliant insight into Phil’s mind.

Ok, I’m done for now. I really hope this is useful for someone, because it took me a really long time to make:) Thank you so much to all the writers who spend their time and energy creating amazing works of art for us to enjoy!

You can find the list of my other recs here, as well as a list of my own fics. Thank you so much and I hope this isn’t too long:)

[fishhater-ieatthem]

Differences between trailer Grinch and movie Grinch

SO!!! MANY!!! SPOILERS!!!!

BE WARNED!!!

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First off I just want to say that the Grinch they show in the trailers is a very specifically edited Grinch. He's shown to be very one sided, that he hates all things Christmas and happy. This is simply not the case. Grinch just feels sad when he thinks about Christmas, which makes him bitter. He's been dealing with this for over 50 years. He's gotten used to letting his outer shell protect him from all things Christmas.

In the scene with the puppy dog eyes: something that's cut out in every trailer and clip, is that after everyone cuddles up with him, there's a close up of him smiling. He's not annoyed by them. He puts up a rough exterior, but frequently shows his only friends (dog and reindeer) that those are not his true feelings

The scene where the dog is trying to pull the sleigh, but digs himself into the snow: every trailer cuts out a part where right after he digs himself into the snow, Grinch asks Max "are you okay?" because Grinch actually fucking cares

The part where he's stealing presents with fire in his eyes: this is after we see a sad scene about how he had sad Christmases as a child. We get a reason for what he's doing. WE SEE HIM PLAY A SAD PIANO

When he poured the milk: There's different voice acting here. There's a hm that makes it more like he's like "let's do a nice thing, why not?"

I'm going to steal their Christmas: he's sad and he doesn't know what to do about this three-times bigger Christmas thing and then he gets a plan

If I need to look like Santa,then I need to get into character: it looks like he's eating a bunch to get fat but this didn't happen. They're two completely different instances. Like, the reason he needs to go out during Christmas (which he really really REALLY doesn't want to do) is because he's been stress eating. The getting into character thing is actually followed by an inventing montage.

Speaking of inventing!: This isn't talked about in the trailers at all but he's actually really smart,and a really good inventor!! He's made all these things and doesn't get any recognition!!!

And speaking of not getting any recognition: Literally half the movie was about betty-lou and her mom, but she only gets like five seconds on screen which SUCKS because she's ADORABLE and PURE

Skater scene: this scene isn't part of the movie once so ever !! Like, maybe it's after the credits or something (I didn't sit through that cause I was mad) but this isn't part of the story at all

Him getting hit by the snowman: He was trying to get past the neighbor without being noticed because he REALLY doesn't like how the jolly the neighbor is

Boop: the most accurate portrayal of Grinch!! Grinch Is absolutely the kind of person to boop his dog!!!!

I've been making lots of cool stuff: this line I only saw in a couple trailers, and not aligned with the actual animation at all. He says this when he rings for Max to come over to his inventing lair and he's genuinely excited and proud of everything he's made. And Max is loyal and supportive

Hey, why are you taking our Christmas tree: "I saw a lightbulb that wasn't working, and I just wanted to take it up to the shop and fix it" The animation and voice acting is really good with this line. There's a lot of breathless stuttering and repetition of phrases that really hammers down that this is probably the most he's ever talked to another who in a long time.

The interview where everyone describes the Grinch's attitude in one word: Everyone describes him negatively,which means either they didn't see the movie they were voice acting in, or they're describing another Grinch. I would describe him as sad.

The time when he's squeaking the toy to distract Max: this is after he's musing about how it's great that he's losing chess to a dog *sarcasm* and I low key think Max did it on purpose

And finally: His alarm plays various different Christmas Carols , not the frikkin happy song!!!

[daleisgreat]

The Accountant

I have been anticipating doing today’s entry for awhile, but held off to put some distance behind my initial theatrical viewing two and a half years ago to see if 2016’s The Accountant (trailer) was still worthy of being ranked as my 2016 film of the year. After re-watching it yesterday I can safely assure it absolutely does. Another reason I was a little reluctant going back to it was being trepid of having rose-colored glasses for the time and place I originally saw The Accountant. I was on my last day of work before starting a vacation in fall of 2016 and on break I was skimming through the local paper’s entertainment section and it had a little write-up of The Accountant and its risks taken of doing a movie centered around a person with autism and making them a professional assassin. I somehow missed previews for it and it was the first I heard of the film. A couple friends who knew I was heading out of town the next day gave me a buzz after work to see if I wanted to join them to see The Accountant, and I was intrigued by the brief summary in the paper I read and have been a huge fan of Affleck for the better part of his career to jump on the opportunity. It turned out being a great decision and a perfect way to kickoff a vacation.

The film grabbed me right away with the opening scene where one Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is at his front, ‘ZZZ Accounting,’ doing the taxes for a down-on-their-luck farming couple. The way it plays out almost instantly made Christian affable for pulling the farmers out of a tough hole. The opening scenes proceed to introduce how Christian copes with his day-to-day lifestyle while we are introduced to a pair of FBI agents Ray King (JK Simmons) and Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) who is tasked with tracking down Wolff throughout the film. There are so many great little exchanges early in the film, especially when Wolff is getting acquainted with the rest of the cast. He is introduced to Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow) who hires him to track down missing money recently reported to his company. Wolff’s scenes with the adorably aloof Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick) steal the film every time they share the screen. Cummings is Wolff’s assistant in tracking down the missing money, and naturally their digging gets too deep and assassins are sent after them with the primary one going by Brax (a pre-Punisher Jon Bernthal). Little did the assassins know who they were targeting as their attempts at laying waste to the accountants is the catalyst that yields several thrilling action/chase sequences as a result.

Interspersed throughout the film is a series of flashbacks with Christian and his family coping with Christian’s condition and how his father put him through some grueling home therapy and training that lead him to become the ‘accountant’ he is in the film’s present day. It was fascinating watching these flashbacks play out and piecing The Accountant’s greater over-arching plot together along with the FBI in some excellent deducing scenes as everything falls into place. Most films have twists that we can predict or see coming from a mile away, but I loved how they played out in multiple ways in the closing moments to wrap a tidy bow on this. I do not want to overhype this as the quintessential brain-buster, but for me The Accountant provided the perfect balance of detective work, exposition, high-tempo chases and action that combined for the killer formula and make it my favorite film of 2016. There are only three quick bonus features on the BluRay totaling up to 25 minutes, but worth going out of your way to see. Both Inside the Man and Behavioral Sciencedeal with the cast and crew’s research that went into the film and how they strived to give a faithful portrayal of Autism. They both provided great insight on their experiences and sessions on doing their background for the film. Accountant in Action is all about the stunts and choreography for the movie. What is here is good, but the extra features felt they were missing one or two things to make the bonuses collectively pop like a commentary track with Affleck, Kendrick, Simmons and director Gavin O’Connor, but it was not meant to be!

On a final note I want to make sure to applaud the casting for this film as O’Connor got excellent performances out of everyone. When doing research for this film I became giddy to see a sequel was announced with most of the headlining cast returning and O’Connor coming back to direct, but that was two years ago and when checking IMDB the sequel is still listed as merely ‘announced.’ Here is hoping the sequel comes to fruition, and if you cannot tell by now The Accountant gets my highest of recommendations to check out if you have not done so already. Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed Deck the Halls Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Hercules: Reborn Hitman Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Man of Steel Man on the Moon Marine 3-6 Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Days of Future Past

[takeabreathandsmile]

Three Christmas Movies I Would Highly Recommend

So I’ve been sick lately, and have subsequently had a lot of time to check out some movies I’ve been interested in watching. There were 2(technically, 3) in particular that I enjoyed so much, I felt like I just HAD to recommend them.

(Disclaimer: This isn’t really meant to be an official review or anything, I just wanted to talk about some Christmas movies I recently watched that I absolutely loved.)

1. The Christmas Chronicles (2018)

Genre: Comedy/Adventure

This movie surprised me. I was expecting a somewhat crude, Santa-gone-bad type of scenario with a lot of adult humor. What I got was a charming and memorable combination of the Santa Clause, Adventures in Babysitting, and just a teensy bit of Polar Express and Home Alone tossed in for good measure.

Kurt Russell plays an atypical, straight-talking Santa Claus (very reminiscent of Tim Allen’s iconic portrayal with a few major differences) who maintains all the childlike joy and charisma of the role minus the cliché elements. When two kids accidentally wind up going for a ride along in Santa’s sleigh and getting stranded in the city of Chicago, they have to pull out all the stops to find Santa’s bag and reindeer and get him back on track before Christmas morning.

This movie does a great job conveying a believable sibling dynamic between the two protagonists and the heart of the story is genuinely touching and real. It deals with the themes of loss and grief delicately and turns the old, overdone trope of “just believing” on its head with a heartwarming twist. Just when I thought it was going to take a turn for the cheesy, it surprised me with emotional depth. 

The Christmas Chronicles is currently free on Netflix, definitely begs a watch.

(Also - the elves in this movie are like tiny furry gremlin things and they are absolutely adorable. Just saying. )

2&3. Snow / Snow 2: Brain Freeze (2004-2008)

Genre: Comedy/Fantasy/Romance

I might be a little biased on this one, because I personally love Tom Cavanagh in any role he plays. But the characters in this story are just so easy to fall in love with, and this series has probably the most intriguing and inventive “how Santa came to be” backstory that I’ve ever heard.

These movies feature Tom Cavanagh (from CW’s the Flash) as “Nick Snowden,” AKA Santa Claus Jr. On his first year taking over the Santa gig - Buddy, one of the reindeer in training to fly, suddenly disappears and winds up in a small city zoo. Nick goes to retrieve him, but as it turns out, he is horribly inept when it comes to dealing with actual people and has a lot of trouble blending in at the start. He also finds himself extremely infatuated with one of the zoo hands - a sweet and spirited young woman named Sandy (played by Ashley Williams.)

The second movie takes place a year later and (without giving too much away)involves Sandy having to find and help Nick when he gets amnesia and forgets who he is, and they end up having to enlist the help of a former enemy, a street-savvy orphan boy, and an old man who may be the last living person who knows of Nick’s family secret.

The charm in this series just knows no bounds. I absolutely love the way that the two leads play off of each other. And their awkward, quirky chemistry is explored even further in the sequel (which, I have to say, I actually enjoyed just a little more than the original.) This one is a bit more on the corny side at times, but the combination of charming writing and perfect comedic timing adds up to create such a fun and enjoyable experience. I could honestly watch an entire tv series based around these characters, they are just so interesting and easy to love.

I watched both of these movies free on demand via the channel “Freeform” (previously: ABC Family)

I highly recommend all three of these great Christmas gems, I know I’ll personally be adding them to the holiday binge repertoire for sure! 

[nosakkayuuma]

A Request [Gouenji/Kidou]

Merry Christmas, @fanfictionbymimnim! I was your Secret Santa. I wrote you a fic, I hope you like it!

Title: A Request Summary: Kidou may be a tactical genius, but even he needs help from Gouenji sometimes. GouKi, Secret Santa gift for Secret Sakka 2017! Word count: 1,558 Notes: Thanks to my Gouenji expert friend Ise @tsuri-ouji and my awesome nuance picker upper friend Clem @oiyama for reading an earlier version and giving their thoughts, it helped a lot to refine the portrayal of Gouenji especially.

Fic below the cut:

A Request

It was, for all intents and purposes, a normal session of club practice, but the way with which Kidou approached Gouenji at the end of it was anything but.

"Kidou, you need something?"

The sense of purpose with which Kidou was striding towards him unnerved Gouenji slightly. Had something happened in practice that he’d missed? Did Kidou still have some pent-up energy left to burn? Normally, Gouenji would be happy to kickabout with Kidou a bit more after practice, but today was a little dicey, since the party was tomorrow and unless he wanted to disappoint Yuuka he had to go and…

"Hey, Gouenji," Kidou said, and was that a hint of hesitation in his voice? The last time Gouenji remembered Kidou sounding this unsure had been back in second year, right after Teikoku had lost to Zeus. It was not exactly a time he wanted to revisit.

“What’s up, Kidou?” Gouenji asked again, because Kidou definitely had something he wanted to say, but seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. No lie, it was getting a little weird.

Kidou’s expression turned rueful. Every brain cell Gouenji possessed was yelling now that this entire situation was strange and he really needed to go, but it was too late. He was well and truly involved in Kidou’s current predicament. Whatever it was, anyway.

“I have something to ask you,” Kidou finally said. His words were confident, like he was giving the team a pre-match briefing. If it wasn’t for the long pause that preceded his words, Gouenji would have been fooled. Instead he was confused.

“Ask away.”

“I plan to get Haruna a Christmas present.” The words spilled out of Kidou’s mouth, and he almost stumbled over them. Seeing their normally capable tactician like this was unexpected, to say the least.

“That’s great,” Gouenji said. Otonashi would appreciate that. What a nice thing for Kidou to do. Was this what he had been trying so hard to say? “What’re you getting her?”

“That’s the thing,” Kidou said, frowning. “I have absolutely no idea. I need your help.”

What? That Gouenji could be an authority on what to gift Haruna was news to him. “Kidou,” Gouenji said, as gently as he could, “I barely know your sister.”

“Yes, but you get yours gifts all the time, you must have an idea.”

“Kidou,” Gouenji said, half-tempted to look for hidden cameras around them. Kidou coming to him for such a simple thing had to be a prank. “Yuuka’s eight. Haruna-san is only one year younger than us. It's completely different, you know?”

“Of course I know that! Are you going to help or not?” A faint blush coated the tips of Kidou’s ears, and he gave Gouenji an indignant look that Gouenji was more charmed than reprimanded by, not that he would ever admit that, of course.

“Kidou.” Gouenji put his right thumb and index finger to the bridge of his nose as he thought of how best to phrase it. “It’s just a matter of thinking what she would like. It’s not that hard.” You had to be a pretty rubbish brother not to understand that much, was what Gouenji wanted to add but thought better of. He wasn’t the one who had been separated from his sister for 8 years, after all.

In that context, Kidou’s uncertainty was understandable and almost even adorable.

Gouenji let his hand fall back down to his side.

“Fine.”

“Fine what?” Kidou’s tone was dubious.

Gouenji didn’t deign to answer him directly. “I was just heading to the shopping district to see if I could get something for Yuuka. Want to come?”

To say the shopping district was packed was an understatement. The throng of shoppers had them fighting just to stay standing, and the jostling of the crowd rivalled the most annoying defence Gouenji had ever faced on the pitch.

When he had carved out his position on the avenue, he looked around for Kidou and managed to grab hold of his sleeve just before the crowd pushed him to the other side of the street.

Kidou’s eyes were hidden by his goggles, but his dreadlocks were askew and beads of sweat dotted his forehead. “It wasn’t this busy the last time we were here.”

“It is the day before Christmas,” was all Gouenji had to say. Of course it would be busy today, now that he thought about it! If he had known, he would have come earlier. He’d never procrastinate buying Christmas gifts ever again.

“I… see,” Kidou said. He probably didn’t come to Inazuma Town much to shop, since he could just ask his butler to get whatever he wanted. Actually, it was the same with Gouenji and his housekeeper, but since Kidou had been the one to ask him for help he didn’t want to appear inexperienced. Kidou wouldn’t figure out that he wasn’t familiar with the area either, not over his dead body.

To give the impression that he had visited the shopping district more than once since the last time they’d come, with Endou to the candy store, Gouenji craned his neck upwards and looked around. A multitude of different stores dotted the street, the signs a healthy mix of old and new. It was surprising that such a street still existed in Inazuma Town. Places like this had been fading for many years, or at least that was what his father said on the rare occasions they went out together.

“So,” Kidou said, sounding a bit less overwhelmed now. “What are you getting Yuuka-chan?”

Gouenji shrugged. “I’ll just get another stuffed toy. Yuuka’s really into rabbits right now.” Where he would get it was the question, but there had to be a toy shop somewhere in the area.

“That must be nice, to have something you know your sister will like no matter what.”

Ah, yes… at the corner at the end of the road, Gouenji could just make out a sign saying ‘Toys Terao’. There we go. But before that, he had something to clear up.

“Look, Kidou,” Gouenji said, turning to him and looking him in the goggles. “It’s not like that. I know I said to get Otonashi-san what she would like, but that’s not all there is to it. You’re the one giving the gift, aren’t you? It’s a two-way street.”

He set off towards the store, and Kidou fell in step behind him, protesting all the while.

“What are you saying? What’s the point of buying something Haruna won’t like?”

“Obviously don’t buy something she’ll hate.” When Gouenji woke up this morning he sure hadn’t expected that he would be giving Kidou, of all people, a dose of sibling counselling today. “But don’t feel too much pressure to get the perfect present. Wait, look.” He pointed at a particularly distinguished-looking storefront, with muted wood décor washed darkly brown and a white sign engraved with calligraphy reading ‘Shirousagi Honpo’. Kidou liked sweets, didn’t he? “See that place?”

“Oh, I know that brand,” Kidou said without missing a beat. “Delicious confections. I love their snow rabbit rice cakes. Father has boxes of the stuff at home all the time. I’m surprised there’s a branch here in Inazuma Town.”

Sometimes it was unbelievable how Kidou could be such a rich kid. “Well, what I’m trying to say is, if you got a box of sweets, and picked the ones you wanted Otonashi-san to try, I think she would really appreciate it.”

“Hmm.” A frown crossed Kidou’s face again. “Really?”

“Really,” Gouenji assured him. “As long as you put true thought behind it, it’ll shine through. Otonashi-san is observant. She’ll understand your feelings.”

“Perhaps,” Kidou said, but he was already walking towards the store. Clearly he was now a man on a mission. Gouenji tapped him on the shoulder, gave him a wave that went unreciprocated, and went to buy Yuuka’s present.

After their first practice after Christmas, Gouenji waited for Kidou to emerge from the changing room.

“How’d it go?” To be honest, if Gouenji were Otonashi-san he would have been happy to receive anything from that expensive store.

“I did as you said,” Kidou replied. He was smiling, which was a good sign. “I picked out twelve sweets I thought she would enjoy.”

“And?”

“She loved them. She sent me a text message this morning saying they tasted really good. Thank you for the suggestion.”

Gouenji returned his smile with a lazy one of his own. “Glad to help.”

“How’d you know it’d be perfect?”

“Well…” Gouenji trailed off. Perfect was a strong word. It had been luck, honestly, that they’d happened to pass that store, but it hadn’t been all luck, either. “Well, I know you like food. The whole team knows after that time we went to Coach Hibiki’s and you looked about to confess to your ramen.”

“That did not happen,” Kidou interjected, but Gouenji ignored him and continued, “And you two are siblings after all. Not too big of a leap.”

After a silence that stretched a bit too long, Gouenji glanced over at Kidou. He was frowning, but Gouenji knew him well enough to figure out that he was just deep in thought.

Eventually, Kidou said, “Thank you, Gouenji.”

Against his will, the edge of Gouenji’s lips tugged up into a wry smile. “Anytime.”

Notes: Sometimes it was unbelievable how Kidou could be such a rich kid, Gouenji thought, without realising that he, too, was a rich kid. Oh well! Merry Christmas!

[nerdtrash-iteration]

(Re)watching Doctor Who: series 9

So this is where the infamous pair Heaven Sent and Hell Bent reside. You’ll see my feelings on the latter are rather lengthy. Let’s see how we did here. Series 9 (Twelfth Doctor)

9.X1: Last Christmas I loved this Christmas special. I thought it was a great homage to both the Alien franchise and Inception. The guest cast were really fun (especially Santa Claus), the plot kept me interested and there were many very sweet character moments. Loved Danny Pink’s brief return and the sleigh scene at the end especially. Bit awkward at the end with the fake-out of Clara leaving, you can really tell it was a rewrite. But I really enjoyed this one. 9.1: The Magician’s Apprentice Excellent opening episode. A cold open that immediately grabbed me, love the confirmation of Clara’s bisexuality and Missy is very welcome back. I wasn’t a huge fan of how they found the Doctor, felt a bit too contrived for my liking. Also wasn’t fond of his guitar antics and the whole notion of his last day alive. Felt a bit ehh. But I love all the character interactions here and the reveal of Skaro was fantastic. 9.2: The Witch’s Familiar A great 2nd part to the first story of this series. I adore Missy’s interactions with Clara, I highkey ship them but I do also ship Missy with everyone. It was also really interesting to see the Doctor and Davros have a civil-ish conversation. I still haven’t watched the classic era yet so I currently only know Davros from the series 4 finale. He didn’t really wow me there but I quite like this more complex portrayal of him. The Daleks are quite fun here, especially when Missy messes with them. It was a bit disappointing to see Davros double-cross the Doctor, I really thought they would try something different with him. Also sad that the Doctor just knew the whole time, made the interaction seem more fake. I feel the connection to the opening is a taaaaad tenuous with how old Davros is influenced by it, wish that had been a bit clearer. But I’ll allow it. 9.3 + 9.4: Under the Lake + Before the Flood I was so disappointed in this story. It’s hard for me to judge the two episodes separately so I’ll just talk about the story overall. I was quite bored throughout. Found the ghost design quite generic and not scary, the explanation of the mystery was absolutely batshit and I really didn’t care for it. I thought the plot resolution was pretty good and kinda cool how the Doctor transported himself to the future. Also cool that 2nd half took place in the past and ended up causing the flood. I love a good bootstrap paradox. But the reveal that his ghost was a hologram really felt like a cop-out. The guest cast were initially quite awkward but did grow on me in the 2nd part. I also was glad they wrote a deaf character with agency and made her the leader of the team. I saw Toby Whithouse wrote this, so I wasn’t surprised both the Doctor and Clara referred to the pilot as “he/she/it”. He has written some lowkey transphobic lines in the show before. That one isn’t that bad but just sounds so awkward. No-one uses the pronoun “it”. And just say “they”. Overall quite a disappointing story for me after that great first one. 9.5: The Girl Who Died I set my expectations a bit lower after that previous story. But this one was quite fun! Nice to have something a bit more light-hearted. Aschildr was fun but I didn’t feel she was very well-developed at this point. Kinda the generic “I’m not like other girls” trope used here. The Mire were an interesting race in how they survived on their reputation. The ragtag amateur feel of the finale was fun, with the use of electric eels. I thought Aschildr using the hologram technology to project the image of a sea serpent was a biiiit of a stretch though. Also some of Clara’s interactions just feel a bit awkward here. I thought the decision to basically make Aschildr immortal was very ethically dodgy on the Doctor’s part but I’m curious to see how it plays out in the next episode. 9.6: The Woman Who Lived Ah I loved this episode! It was so fun. I appreciated how simple its plot was and that it largely focused on the Doctor and Aschildr’s interactions. She was a lot more interesting in this episode, with some really great dialogue between her and the Doctor about immortality. Sam the Swift was really fun too. A really enjoyable episode. 9.7 + 9.8: The Zygon Invasion + The Zygon Inversion This is a very flawed story but one I still really enjoyed. Really felt like a proper sequel to the Zygon subplot in Day of the Doctor with how big in scale and budget it was. Really love to see Osgood(s) back and Kate Stewart. I really like the horror vibe the first part has especially with building in suspense. I think Osgood’s refusal to be defined as human or Zygon is thematically brilliant and her interactions with the Doctor are great. Love the Doctor calling Bonnie “Zygella”. I do find some of the plot details quiet frustrating though. Like the mechanism for the Zygons keeping a human form was very confusing. Also the radical Zygons’ plan just seemed really stupid? Like the humans outnumber you by a lot, they will kill you and your plan will be pointless. Also a bit disappointed in how Kate’s cliffhanger was resolved. Just shooting the Zygon in front of her, wow. But the speech at the end, damn. The two boxes and everything the Doctor said was amazing. Loved that. Overall a very enjoyable if flawed story. 9.9: Sleep No More Yiiiiiiiiiikes. I was warned this episode was underwelming and yeah, it be. It doesn’t make me angry though, just disappointed and confused. I absolutely adore the premise. Late-stage evil space capitalism not even letting workers sleep, absolutely brilliant. I can even roll with the idea of the change in brain chemistry making sleep dust into monsters somehow, sure. But all of the bonkers twists and attempts at being meta really frustrated me. It was just too many ridiculous ideas that we were expected to just accept and appreciate. Twists don’t necessarily make your story better, especially if you’ve just put one in to try and get a reaction from the audience. They work when they make sense in the story and add texture to it. The Doctor said it best: “None of this makes any sense”. 9.10: Face the Raven Oh faaaaaaaack. I hadn’t been watching Doctor Who for a while as I hadn’t been super feeling series 9. While I have enjoyed many of the stories up until now, I was frustrated by the lack of season arc. Felt like it wasn’t really focused on anything, besides vague notions of the Doctor’s confession dial and the Hybrid. Then just today I got in the mood to try to continue. Yeah this episode was a massive punch in the gut. I was immediately grabbed by the premise and the setting and having Rigsy and Ashildr back. I got so excited when they used trap streets!!! I just learned about them recently, they’re so fascinating. I loved the street itself and how Ashildr keeps the peace. It was really ruthless but narratively very interesting. I found the plot a taaaaaad contrived. Surely there were easier ways to get the Doctor and his confession dial and TARDIS key. But for character interactions were spot-on. Also I knew this was when Clara dies but the scene where they realise it left me a weeping mess. Like tears streaming down my face. Also the soundtrack in this episode was a bop. Fantastic episode, great way to pull me back in to Doctor Who. 9.11: Heaven Sent Okay so I’ve had this episode hyped for me for a good while. I’ve seen Doctor Who YouTube commentators call it their favourite episode. Personally there are episodes I enjoy more just because they tap into what I personally love in a story. But this still really impressed me. I love how good the episode looks, it really does feel special and cinematic. The twist is absolutely genius and I could not have predicted it. Everything about the harder-than-diamond wall was great. The ending montage was so emotional. Not my favourite but it certainly earns its reputation. 9.12: Hell Bent I was honestly tempted to just key-smash with this one because what the faaaaaaaaaaaaaack. In contrast to Heaven Sent, I’ve had others warn me that Hell Bent was their least favourite episode. And yeah, this ain’t it. I tried going in with an open mind but there are just too many things that annoy me. I personally really dislike the Time Lords as a presence in a story as they often do not feel like real characters. Just a vague annoying bureaucratic threat with very empty lore tied to them. “We must stop the Doctor, he bad, for reasons” is the feel I often get with them, it’s very annoying. The motivations of the various Time Lords and Sisters of Karn used here were also very unclear. One minute some are helping the Doctor, the next he’s against them all. Things were just happening too fast to keep up. Also why is there barely any significance made of the Doctor finally returning to Gallifrey???? Clara even asks “How did they get unfrozen?” and the Doctor says “I didn’t ask”. Just felt like the writers saying “Yeah we’re bored with this really important character arc that was set up all the way back in 2005, never mind”. I just thought the performance of the woman in the barn was really silly, with her wordlessly gesturing to the Doctor to come to the door to see the soldiers. I hated seeing a Gallifreyan crowd just surround the Doctor and silently applaud him like a hive mind for drawing a line in the sand. The whole thing with the soldiers going to the Doctor’s side one at a time just felt silly to me. That is a good idea in a story but something about the execution just felt off. It was cool to learn that the Cloister Bell in the TARDIS was likely linked with the basement cloisters on Gallifrey. But the cloisters themselves felt very underused and just thrown in there. After a lot of thought and seeking other hot takes on the episode, I see the Doctor’s real plan had feck all to do with the Hybrid (now a cursed word for me) and was just to save Clara. Which isn’t a bad idea necessarily but the choices so many characters make just felt so silly. Something about the script just didn’t work, like the actors were kids playing pretend and making up their own lines as they went. I really liked Clara as a companion (especially in series 8) but she had a good death in Face the Raven that fit her character, let her be. I really love the relationship between her and Twelve (especially how it’s the focus of series 8) but I think this is just a stretch. To shoot a Time Lord to kill, to go as far as he does, it just didn’t ring true. The rehash of the memory wipe from series 4 annoyed me, and there was a throwaway line as to why it was necessary and it just didn’t feel right. It just felt like “Ummmm we need a sad and dramatic end, this will work!!!”. And it just felt so unsatisfying and empty. Again like kids playing pretend and then they decide a character dies or gets amnesia to be dramatic. I was already not a fan of the series arc here (or lack thereof) and this really cemented it as the worst arc in revived Doctor Who so far for me. I see why RTD’s mystery box phrase might not be for everyone but at least they all led to something. “The Hybrid” was just a phrase that kept be dangled over our heads and ultimately meant nothing. It’s like a McGuffin but worse. It’s not an object to move the plot, it’s just nothing. “Oh no, Clara, through my selfish actions, I see now that I am the Hybrid!” No. It just felt like a contrivance made to get the Time Lords angry with the Doctor and it turns out they caused their own problems by bringing the Doctor to them and he ended up being their worst nightmare. There should be something poetic or ironic in that but it didn’t feel concrete enough for me to care. Ummmmm things I liked: -Another gender-swap regeneration, that was cool. Also T’nia Miller! I recognised her from Sex Education. -I always like seeing Ashildr and the Doctor muse over immortality. I liked seeing her at the end of the universe, even some of their musings over the Hybrid were kinda interesting. -Some of the Doctor’s dialogue before losing his memory was funny, like never eating pears. 9.X2: The Husbands of River Song This was quite a fun special! Definitely needed after how series 9 ended. The robot with the replaceable heads was fun, didn’t know this was when we first meet Nardole and it was nice to have River back. Her characterisation felt slightly off to me, like she was a bit too zany. But it’s probably just been a while since I’ve last seen her. Her not recognising the Doctor felt a bit too drawn out for me but the scene where she realises it is lovely. As is her ending scene, even if it sliiiiiightly goes against canon but whatever. I don’t know how to feel about her certainty that the Doctor never loved her. I myself did doubt their romantic connection as it more so felt like we were being TOLD they were a couple rather than believably showing it. I do believe the Doctor can fall in love but that it’s very rare and probably in a manner that humans might not appreciate. I think he was a monolith who loved her back but probably just not to the extent she wanted. So series 9 didn’t feel as cohesive in theme compared to series 8. I really liked many of the individual episodes but it didn’t feel like the series was really about anything. And that’s confirmed when we learn the Hybrid is basically nothing. I wish Clara got a better send-off, seeing her fly off in her own TARDIS with Ashildr just fell flat for me. We still got some great stories here if you just ignore the Hybrid arc.

[timeflies1007-blog]

Doctor Who Reviews by a Female Doctor, Season 3, p. 1

Previously on Doctor Who: The stellar first season was followed by a pretty subpar second one, but this second outing did give us a chance to meet David Tennant’s quirky, charming Doctor. The show struggled to land on a consistent storyline for the Tenth Doctor and Rose, but it did embrace the joy and energy that both characters brought to their travels. That joy ended in tears, though, as Rose was trapped in the parallel universe with her family, leaving the Doctor once again on his own.

         As this season begins, he is still very much in a state of grief over his separation from Rose, and this heightens his general sense of loneliness. The seasonal arc highlights this lonely state, as it relies heavily on his awareness that he’s the last of his species. The meticulously-planned Master plot works exceedingly well in bringing out this side of the Doctor, or at least it does until the last episode turns everything into nonsense. The Doctor’s obsession with his own aloneness doesn’t exactly help his relationship with his smart new companion Martha, though, as he tends to treat her like she’s getting in the way of his lamentations over his lost favorite. The Doctor can feel alone even with Martha standing right next to him, which is a good indication of the Doctor’s state of mind but is understandably frustrating for her.

        In general, this season is erratic in terms of episode quality; the first couple of episodes are solid, then there’s a lengthy slide into mediocrity, then we get five great episodes in a row, and finally everything crashes and burns in the finale. On the whole, I like more of this season than I did of the last one, but the brilliant, thoroughly unappreciated Martha feels mostly like a missed opportunity, and that prevents this from reaching the heights that Davies’s first and fourth seasons attain.

The Runaway Bride: Some viewers find Donna annoyingly screechy in this episode, which I think is a bit harsh. She’s picked up at her wedding and flung onto the TARDIS without warning, which is enough to make anyone do a lot of shouting. To be fair, the episode occasionally encourages an uncharitable reading of Donna; the Doctor’s long list of reasons why she’s a surprising target, including the notion that she’s not special or powerful, is uncharacteristically mean, and the sequence in which she tells the Doctor of Lance’s insistence on their wedding while the camera cuts away to her begging Lance to marry her is especially unfunny. Still, to me she’s already a likeable presence, and her oversized personality feels appropriate for an extremely fast-paced and frequently ridiculous episode. Her efforts to pull the Doctor away from some of his “big picture” thinking also make a decent case for taking her at least somewhat seriously. The beautiful last scene mostly makes up for the mean-spirited jokes; Donna’s right, the Doctor does need someone to stop him sometimes, and the fact that she is the quickest to challenge him is one of the reasons why I see Donna as the Tenth Doctor’s best companion. This is definitely not her best episode, but we get plenty of glimpses of the marvelous character who will return in Season Four.

        The other controversial element of this episode is the silliness of the plot, which is intensely goofy even by Doctor Who standards. The first third of the show, in which robot Santas kidnap Donna, is silliness done well. The car chase, which features the TARDIS pulling up alongside a Santa-driven taxi, is an especially fun sequence, and the two delighted children watching from the back of a nearby car make it even better. The Empress of Racnoss, however, is silliness done badly. She’s not quite as awful a monster as last season’s Absorbaloff, but she’s bad enough that I’m physically uncomfortable watching her scenes largely out of embarrassment for the actress playing her.  It’s like the director told her “Do a bunch of different random goofy evil laughter things, and then we’ll pull the best ten seconds and cut the rest” and then they forgot to cut anything. We keep cutting back to this poor woman, covered in a giant spider costume, wriggling about and making weird sounds, until finally she shrieks “My children!!!!” about twenty times and then she dies. It’s completely cringeworthy, and I spend the whole scene just waiting for it to be over.

         The serious side of the episode takes the form of the Doctor’s grief over Rose, which is generally very effective here. His memories of her from “New Earth” that are set off when he watches some dancing at the reception seem a bit random, but these moments are otherwise integrated believably into the story, and they reflect a form of grief that seems plausible for the Doctor’s personality. He’s clearly sad, but he hasn’t lost hold of his belief in Rose, and his assertion that she is “so alive” as he convinces Donna to leap into the TARDIS is a lovely display of his continuing love for Rose even in the midst of his sorrow. His angry response to the harm done by the Torchwood Institute is still very present, though, and his destruction of the Racnoss children just about makes sense in light of his devastation about losing Rose. The Doctor tends to get very self-righteous about the destruction of other species, even when they are trying to end the world, so it’s always jarring when he goes so definitively against his own principles like this. (Giving the Empress the choice to leave doesn’t really absolve him of all responsibility here in the way that he suggests, since he couldn’t give a similar choice to her children.) However, if we look at this as a release of the rage and sadness he’s been burying throughout the episode because he’s had a lot of crazy nonsense to take care of, I can understand why he would indulge in violence as much as he does here.

        This is a pretty uneven episode; some of the humor works fantastically well, but other pieces of it fall completely flat. I do think that it’s the best portrayal of the Doctor’s sense of loss this season, as the episode gets across his distress without making him treat Donna with the fairly dismissive approach that he later extends to Martha. In the end, this is a significant episode mainly because its events give Donna a reason to go looking for the Doctor later on, something for which the Doctor and everyone else should be exceedingly grateful. B+/B

Smith and Jones: The first twenty minutes or so of this episode are an absolutely sensational debut to the regular season. We get a very charming glimpse of the Jones family dealing with an ordinary minor crisis, we watch rain going the wrong way, a hospital gets relocated to the moon, the Doctor is somehow even more charismatic than usual, and Martha keeps her head to an impressive extent in spite of being whisked away from Earth without warning. And then the Rhinoceros Police turn up! (I know that they’re called Judoon, but there’s hardly ever an opportunity to say Rhinoceros Police, so I’m not passing up the chance just for the sake of getting the right name.) It’s a glorious setup, both for Martha herself and for this story.

           The rest of the episode doesn’t quite match the beginning, but it’s still a fun story, although the moon itself is disappointingly dull. I enjoy the Plasmavore, who calmly commits murder with a straw. The contrast between the hospital staff, who panic loudly, and the Judoon, who methodically catalog everyone with a cross on the hand, is also pretty funny. The Doctor gets a lot of comedic material in this episode, most of which works. There’s a tedious scene in which he hops around trying to get rid of radiation for what seems like half an hour, but his shouting about “Rhinos! On the moon!!” in an attempt to look human is adorably hilarious. Most importantly, Martha gets a lot of opportunities to show her scientific knowledge, probably more so here than in any other episode. She immediately impresses the Doctor with her understanding of how air would work on the moon, she makes a complicated machine work by reading the manual, she figures out what the Doctor has done to the Plasmavore, and she revives the Doctor when he seems to be dead. She is clearly excited to see the surface of the moon, but she’s much calmer than Rose, and she’s thinking more carefully about what she sees rather than just reacting emotionally. She’s definitely very different from her predecessor, and while she doesn’t quite have Rose’s immediately captivating presence, it’s exciting to see a companion who responds to a crisis by reading the operator’s manual.

           I do think that the ending of the episode is a letdown in several respects. The Doctor’s supposed death gives Martha a chance to put her medical knowledge to use, but is still one of the dullest fakeout deaths we’ve seen on this show. Both the business with the scanner and the last-minute return to Earth as the hospital runs out of air fall pretty flat for me, and Martha’s family gets reduced to silly squabbling instead of the much more engaging tensions that we saw in their earlier scene. The Doctor’s effort to prove that he’s a time traveler by going back to that morning and taking off his tie is a fabulous moment, but Martha’s actual TARDIS entrance is pretty underwhelming. The camera seems to be going for a pan of the control room, but somehow lands on jumping into a corner of the ceiling and staying there, which doesn’t exactly support Martha’s “bigger on the inside” moment. Once she gets into the TARDIS, the Doctor suddenly decides to stop being the lovely, charming figure he’s been all episode in favor of treating Martha like an intruder. I can understand that he might feel conflicted about inviting another woman into the TARDIS after losing Rose, but I’m not sure if the Doctor has ever shown quite this much resentment toward the new companion at any point in the show’s 50+-year history. (I guess he’s a bit annoyed with Jo at first because she’s not a scientist and she ruined an experiment, but he has an immediate change of heart, so it plays very differently.) It’s wonderful to see the first black companion on the show, and I’m thrilled that she gets a generally very strong debut episode, but it’s unfortunate that the first companion of color is the only one to be told “You’re not replacing her!” as she comes on board. Then she awkwardly flirts with him as a scowls at her, and I’m just left wondering if there’s a parallel universe out there in which the Doctor didn’t kiss Martha in his attempt to elude the Rhinos and this whole unrequited love plot was never set in motion. A full season of awesome, science-knowing Martha would have been much better than watching sad, mopey Martha wait for the Doctor to fall in love with her, and the origins of that storyline make for an irritating end to this otherwise great episode. Still, the most important thing for this episode to accomplish is the establishment of Martha as an interesting individual, and in spite of this unfortunate interaction with the Doctor, I would say it succeeds very much in that regard. A-

The Shakespeare Code: This marks the second installment of “The Doctor and Companion meet a dead writer in circumstances that resemble that writer’s works,” something that was nearly an annual tradition during Davies’s time on the show. The portrayal of Shakespeare is not as good as Simon Callow’s work as Charles Dickens two seasons ago, but he’s an enjoyable presence, and while the script sometimes goes obnoxiously overboard with the references, it’s fun watching the Doctor quote Shakespeare to the man himself. (A lot more than 57 academics would have punched the air if they saw Shakespeare flirt with the Doctor, though. Like, really a lot more.) As in “The Unquiet Dead,” the portrayal of the writer himself is better than the rather awkward incorporation of characters who resemble his own creations; the witches are entertaining enough, I guess, but keeping them for most of the episode as two clichéd hags and a generic attractive woman is not exactly an imaginative approach to these characters.

       The story does pick up, though, when it focuses on the power of words, which is both a nice individual storyline and a good piece of foreshadowing for the season finale. The Doctor’s explanation of why words hold so much power is especially lovely: “a theatre’s magic, isn’t it?...Stand on this stage, say the right words with the right emphasis at the right time. Oh you can make men weep, or cry with joy. Change them. You can change people’s minds just with words in this place.” Martha’s observation that the theater is like the TARDIS, containing power that exceeds its apparent dimensions, is smart enough that the Doctor manages to be impressed with her in spite of his unappreciative behavior elsewhere in the episode. The climactic scene, in which Martha helps to banish the Carrionite by realizing that “Expelliarmus!” is the perfect rhyme that Shakespeare needs, is an absolute delight, made even better by the Doctor’s jubilant exclamation of “Good old J.K.!” I love that this Shakespeare-focused episode finds so much joy in language and performance, and this scene encapsulates that joy perfectly.

       It’s a shame that this, probably their most appealing interaction, is placed into an episode that otherwise makes it difficult to enjoy them as a Doctor/Companion pairing. The previous episode ended on an unpleasant note, but featured a lot of great moments between them before that. This episode solidifies the problems, including the Doctor’s completely oblivious approach to racism. It makes sense to me that the Doctor might not quite grasp some of the nuances of Martha’s identity as a black woman; he’s seen so many species and been to so many times and places that I can imagine it would be difficult to keep track of exactly what power structures are in place at a particular moment in Earth’s history. Still, he’s spent a lot of time on twentieth and twenty-first century Earth, so his complete lack of awareness of her fears feels like a step too far. Responding to Martha’s concerns about slavery with the quip that “I’m not even human!” and the advice to “walk around like you own the place” is startlingly tone deaf—he may not be human, but he looks like an attractive, well-dressed white man, and that gives him an ability to swagger around that isn’t as available to Martha. It’s completely worth pointing out that there are more people of color in sixteenth-century England than we tend to see in movies, but using two extras with no lines to make this point, and then returning to Martha’s race only as a joke about the Shakespearean-era terms constituting “political correctness gone mad” is not the way to do this. The Doctor’s inability to quite grasp certain human things is worth exploring, but having him come across as completely unaware of the existence of racism just makes it look like he hasn’t been paying attention at all in his travels on Earth. The dynamic between these two gets even worse as the Doctor continues to treat Martha like a downgrade from Rose. It’s entirely possible to write a good unrequited love story; one-sided romantic feelings happen, and I don’t think that portraying a character as having these feelings necessarily weakens that character in any way. Framing an unrequited love story around jealousy of another woman is almost always going to go badly, though, and the Doctor’s unkind remark that “Rose would know what to do” sets in motion Martha’s understandable resentment toward her predecessor. During their interactions with Shakespeare, both characters show themselves to be wonderful, charming, witty people, but this episode does such a terrible job of setting up the relationship between them that it’s difficult to get excited about watching the two of them together. B

Gridlock: New Earth wasn’t very exciting to me the first time we saw it, but at least that episode had Tennant and Piper doing Lady Cassandra impressions (and Lady Cassandra herself being entertaining) to distract from the dullness of the planet. That’s gone here, in favor of “floaty vans get stuck in traffic.” It’s not a completely unworkable premise, but if I have to spend much of an episode trapped in an unmoving vehicle, I at least want to be trapped with interesting characters, and Martha and the Doctor manage to land in vehicles driven by the blandest beings of New Earth. Some of the other vehicles seem to contain more memorable individuals—I particularly liked the elderly lesbian couple keeping a close watch on the motorway’s many vehicles—but the four main minor characters are almost completely devoid of personality. The most interesting trait that I can think of to describe them is “child-bearing,” which is enjoyable only in the brief moments when we get to look at some kittens. Novice Hame doesn’t make much of an impression either, as I barely remembered her from “New Earth,” so her redemption didn’t mean anything to me, and the whole theme of “drugs are baaaaaaad” creates an awfully lukewarm center to the story.

       The Face of Boe scenes make more of an impression, but I have trouble making sense of them, given the revelations later in the season. If this really is Captain Jack, as is strongly hinted at later in the season, why does this particular secret have such significance for him? If a character has a final truth that they need to tell before their death, I expect it to be something that’s meaningful to them, or at least to the person being told. Here, though, Jack spends his final moments giving the Doctor an unintelligibly vague clue about the existence of the Master, which the Doctor doesn’t really understand at this point and is going to find out about very shortly anyways. After everything that Jack’s been through in his life, the Doctor’s encounter with the Master later in the season doesn’t seem like something that would be resonant enough to Jack to form the center of his last moments before the death that finally sticks. It’s an interesting moment for the audience, as we are left wondering what the Face of Boe’s words mean, and it serves as an important clue to Yana’s identity in “Utopia,” although the Doctor could probably have pieced things together on the basis of the drumbeat and the watch. As the possible death scene of a beloved character (albeit one who was still alive and kicking on his very own spinoff) it just seems unsatisfying to frame it around the confession of a secret that doesn’t have a lot of personal significance to Jack and is too vague for the Doctor to understand.

       Pieces of this story are somehow duller than actually being stuck in traffic, but the redemptive final minute prevents this from being a total disaster. As the people of New Earth sing a beautiful hymn, Martha convinces the Doctor to open up to her a bit, and he gives her a heartfelt description of his grief over the loss of his planet. He does genuinely seem to realize that she deserves better than the halfhearted welcome she’s gotten from him so far, and so the scene both lends a sense of specificity to New Earth that otherwise eludes it in this episode and gives us one of the best interactions between the Doctor and Martha. One scene can only do so much to improve a generally weak episode, but at least Martha’s first trip into the future ends on this stunningly hopeful note. C+

Daleks in Manhattan: The first time I watched this episode, I assumed that the TARDIS had somehow landed Martha and the Doctor in some parallel universe or a future era that was trying to reconstruct Depression-era New York, and that the climactic reveal would be their realization that they weren’t where they thought they were. The performances and production values are just so unconvincing that I figured there must be some sort of plot twist explaining them, but this is, in fact, just a poorly-realized story. It’s unfortunate because it’s the debut episode for writer Helen Raynor, the first woman to write for the reboot and, sadly, the only woman to write for the first eight seasons. Her script is mostly unimpressive here, but it’s made far worse than necessary by the completely incompetent direction. Doctor Who frequently deals with trying to do special effects without enough money, but most directors have either managed to somehow make the episodes look good, or to use the low-budget feel to create a sort of charming, B-movie atmosphere. Season One’s “Dalek” looks particularly low-budget, but the director makes it work amazingly well. The classic series had even more struggles with money, and while sometimes this results in disaster (i.e. “Underworld”), most of the time the cheap sets create a lovely, whimsical world for the Doctor and his friends. (“Invasion of the Dinosaurs” features dinosaurs that look like an elementary school art project, and it’s still one of my very favorite classic episodes.) Here, it looks like the director tried to film the episode on about 10% of the necessary budget and did nothing to account for the lack of money, and everything just looks shoddy. The acting is also weaker than usual here; the minor characters come across as forced attempts at campy humor, and the comedy just looks so effortful that it’s never actually funny. Worse, this two-parter is the one story in the reboot in which the Daleks don’t scare me even a little bit. Even in “Victory of the Daleks,” where we get the stupid color change, they are at least frightening in the earlier scenes of the episode. There is usually some sort of magic that makes Daleks terrifying in spite of being big pieces of metal with plungers and whisks attached, but here they actually come across as harmless and ineffectual as that description sounds.

           The problems don’t lie entirely with the direction, as Raynor’s script has plenty of clunky moments. We begin with the Doctor’s efforts to explain the concept of homelessness to grown woman Martha Jones, and then we meet Obvious Moral Man, who pontificates on subjects like “I learned in the war that it’s important to stick together” and “It’s confusing that some people have money while other people don’t have money.” He’s not wrong, but the show usually manages to get across life lessons with a little bit less sledgehammering. Throughout the episode, the dialogue is pretty bad, weighed down by misguided attempts at 1930s colloquial speech and even worse attempts at irony (like Tallulah’s observation that men are pigs, but not her Laszlo, who has been turned into a pig. Yikes.) We also get some more attention to Martha’s unrequited crush on the Doctor, although at least it’s pretty brief here. As this first part draws to an end, everything is terrible, and there is still another half of the story left to go. D

Evolution of the Daleks: This one is not quite as bad as the first part, although it’s pretty close. We have to sit through the Human-Dalek, which delivers stilted dialogue in the most grating voice imaginable. We have to watch more of Tallulah, who is pretty much the pinnacle of blandness. We have to endure the Doctor shouting aggressively at the Daleks while thumping on his chest in what is arguably Tennant’s worst performance in his entire run on the show. (It reminds me, somehow, of the scene in The West Wing in which Josh starts shouting at the Capitol Building—a moment similarly grounded in an apparent desire to just throw lots of ANGRY! at a talented dramatic actor and hope it works out.) We have a plot that seems awfully reminiscent of the Dalek being corrupted by Rose’s DNA in season 1 but that is worse in every way. We have to hear another entry in the list of Martha’s laments about how the Doctor liked Rose better than her. We have to listen to Andrew Garfield’s terrible accent. And, in the end, it’s all for an experiment in linking Dalek and human DNA that makes them look utterly ridiculous and doesn’t properly work, resulting in the destruction of the whole project. After sitting through two whole episodes of the Daleks putting together this plan, it’s an awfully underwhelming conclusion, and calls into question whether it was worth trotting out the Daleks just to have them engage in this poorly thought-out adventure. There are a couple of nice moments, especially Martha weaponizing lightning against the pig people, but on the whole the story is a major disappointment. D+

[leighleighpresents-blog]

Kate Ceberano Interview

GQ:  Hi Kate, how are you?  How’s your day been today?

KC:  It’s been really full-on, which is nice, cos, you know, you kind of prepare to do these things when you’re promoting stuff, and actually, when you look at it on paper, and you look at it a week away, it looks like a fucking nightmare.  But then you look at it as you’re doing it, and it’s like “it’s all good”.  And television’s not frightening, they’re not going to put the horror make-up on if you just don’t tell them, or don’t let them, and you don’t have to talk about any other crap that you don’t want to talk about, you just talk about what you want to talk about, and it’s all good!  You just gotta be willing to be a little bit of a diva and mark your position in the sand, and you’re off.

GQ:  It’s the only way to be isn’t it?  Being a diva?

KC:  Well, it is, but you don’t get to do it very often in Australia, cos, unfortunately, divas in Australia are not … we don’t breed proper divas, let’s put it that way.  I mean, divas in America, for example, they have the whole culture, it’s in the whole infrastructure.  But here, it’s different, you sort of struggle to stay … you have to continue to define and continue to explain your definition to people, whereas, in America, you’re defined by what people say about you.  They create it all.

GQ:  True, true.  Well, you’re currently promoting your first Christmas album, Merry Christmas.  How did it feel to record that?

KC:  I’m a big fan of an era of Christmas music which goes back mostly to the 50’s, singers like Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt, and another singer I like who you may not know, Julie London.  To me, the sound of Christmas is the sound of those artists, Bing Crosby, and the older singers.  You can do contemporary R’n’B, and you can do a whole lot of sort of choral or gospel type Christmas songs, but to me, it doesn’t seem to feel the same as when I hear those artists doing it, so it’s a little bit of an homage to them.

GQ:  Well, you do a version of White Christmas, which, to me, is one of the all-time classics …

KC:  It’s golden, it’s beautiful.  I hadn’t actually thought of doing a Christmas album to date because I often do charity songs, usually giving up a track for charity, which, for the past couple of years, has been for Myer, and this time, I just went “No, I’m going to make an album for myself, and for my daughter Gypsy” and give her her own mother’s soundtrack.  I mean, what better gift can you give a kid for Christmas?  You might as well give her an album, if that’s what you do for a living.  I mean, if I was a designer, I’d make her a mirror-ball dress, but I can’t (laughs) and I would!

GQ:  Oh, that’s camp as!

KC:  Well, I am the queen of camp!  You don’t know that, but that’s true, haha!

GQ:  So how did Gypsy like the album?

KC:  Oh, she loves it, she absolutely loves it.  I think the parts of it that she loves the most are the most quirky, like Santa Baby, and I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, the things that have a more … like a danceable quality to them.

GQ:  Yeah, true.  You also did a duet with Ronan Keating on there too, that’s pretty cool!

KC:  (quietly)  Ronan Keating is gorgeous.  He is so handsome … He absolutely, in every way, is just everything that a great pop star should be.   He’s cute, he’s a clever musician.  He wrote that song, actually.  Even if you thought he was this … cos he’s quite young, you know, some middle-aged sort of Mumsy thingy, you know, he never made me feel that way.  He made me feel like I was just stunning, and that’s nice.

GQ:  Another thing with this album is that it’s the first time you’ve worked with Chong Lim for a while too ..

KC:  Yeah, since Dancing With The Stars days.  We kind of met up on that show, which, to me, was … you were telling me about your Maori background before, the chap I was dancing with, John-Paul, he’s this big, beautiful Maori guy, and I have to say, the producer who put that show together gave me the greatest thrill of my life, because, not only was I able to dance like … you know, when you do ballroom dancing, the male partners are usually quite petite, not very tall, but if you’re a big buxom girl like me, and you want to get swung around, it doesn’t feel right.  You know what I’m saying?  You want someone you can really hang onto.  And John-Paul was really great, because he was very strapping, covered in tats, and really quite, you know … and yet, still so very feminine and romantic, and gentle, oh, gentle as!

GQ:  That’s what I love about Maoris, they can seem imposing, but they’re really just gentle giants for the most part.

KC:  Oh, definitely.  I just loved my time on the show, I adored it.  I felt like a Pedro Almodóvar character, his portrayals of women are my favourite in any feature films.  In fact, Penélope Cruz is one actress he used to use all the time, and she’s just my living icon, I worship her, she’s absolutely stunning.  So, having that experience, to me, was like having this precious jewel, and, in doing the Christmas album with him just added to the whole fantasy, cos he lets me be really quirky and, you know … actually, recording it, I was thinking “now, what would Penélope Cruz do?”  You know, what would a woman like that do, someone who’s just singing a Christmas traditional thing, you know, but I didn’t want to make it too daggy, I wanted to make it a bit quirky.  

GQ:  Well, it makes it easier listening then anyhow.

KC:  Well, I think so.  Also, it makes it so that people can sing along.  If a child wanted to learn the lyrics, you’ve got to keep it clear.  I mean, even my own daughter, she’s 6, and she’s not able to get all the words, but she’s able to get the simple ones, like “you’d better not cry, you’d better not pout, I’m telling you why”, she’s got all those words, but if the verses go on, and you get a bit tricky with it, she just gets lost.  So yeah, it’s nice for the kids.

GQ:  What’s been your most memorable Christmas so far?

KC:  (thinks about it for a few seconds)  God, I don’t know, but I’d say the ones I remember the most, the ones that mean the most to me are the ones that were spent in our family house in Lime Avenue because of the … I think I’m really nostalgic, cos I didn’t like it when my family all moved out.  I thought we all should have just stayed together, I didn’t understand why we all had to move out.  I mean, you know how most teenagers are busting to move out?  I wasn’t, and I didn’t really want anyone else to move out either.  I wanted us to just stay in this little family pod forever.  And so, to me, the memory of being there, with all of my family as a unit, was the safest, and seemed to be the most important years of my Christmas life.  Now we’ve got it again, cos all the family are back living in Melbourne again, and all my siblings have husbands and wives, and babies, and bits and pieces.  You know, everyone’s kind of in and around, and I dunno, I’m really nostalgic about that sort of thing.

GQ:  That’s a good thing, I think.  Christmas SHOULD be all about family.  What are you doing for Christmas this year?

KC:  I’m going to be here in Melbourne, so I’ve gone with a big Mexican fiesta theme this year, so we’ve got a big Santa Claus piñata, which the kids will go berserk over.  So yeah, just generally be like the hub of the whole scene for the family, they’re all going to come over and drop in and out all day, but I’m basically going to be the big fat mamma who sits there going “come-a, come-a”, haha.  That’s going to be my style.

GQ:  Haha!  Sounds like a great time!  Well, getting back to the music, when I was growing up, of course, I remember hearing your songs like “Bedroom Eyes” …

KC:  Now, you definitely look too young to remember those songs …

GQ:  I’m 28!

KC:  You’re a baby, see?  Who knew those songs?

GQ:  “Bedroom Eyes” was awesome!

KC:  Oh thank you, but you’re such a baby!  How do you know those songs?!?

GQ:  Haha!  And “Pash” …

KC:  Yeah, that was a little later on.  I’m glad you remember them.

GQ:  Well, what I was going to ask was is that a style you’d be returning to?

KC:  I certainly hope, that would be awesome.  I’d want to get some sort of outrageously innovative dance thing going, cos dance is my first love.  My first band, I’m Talking, was one of the first dance bands in Australia, actually.  The early stuff was … it was probably a lot like … Sneaky Sound System reminds me of them in atmosphere.  Not because we were like them, but we were the first ones to introduce disco to Australia.  Anyhow, we were travelling, and that was like my first gig, and we were trying to create chic.  So yeah, that’s something I’d love to get back to.  I want to do something really outrageous, like a full disco band, live, full-on band, like horns and disco strings and lots of thighs and sweaty boobs, big biceps, muscles … hahaha!  That would be a pleasure …  

GQ:  Hahahahaha!  Sounds like Mardi Gras!  Actually, speaking of Mardi Gras …

KC:  Have I done Mardi Gras?  Yeeeeeeeees … no, I haven’t.  Well, I have done it once or twice.

GQ:  Haha.  I was actually thinking of gay audiences, and I’ve asked a few people this question, but I want your opinion.  Do you see a difference between your straight audiences at gigs, compared to your gay audience?

KC:  Well, my gay audience is just the most vocal, the most appreciative … I don’t know why, I guess it’s just their freedom to express their love of art.  I often think our culture doesn’t know how to do that, generally.  So, to me, it’s wonderful that you have your emotions so close to the surface, because that’s what music hits at, and that’s what we rely on as artists, we rely on that instant feel, and it’s irresistible, and, you know, I rely on that.  I’ve got some great friends that I work with who are artists, especially in fashion and hair, and I would trust their opinion more, because they’re so involved in art, they just have a better viewpoint about it.  I mean, I hate to generalise, but that’s the truth.

GQ:  True.  Well, I think we’re just about out of time, but one last question: do you have a message for our readers?

KC:  Just enjoy your Christmas, have a safe Christmas, and look after yourselves … and see you at Mardi Gras next year, haha!  Yeah, I’ll have to get a dance album out before then, haha!

GQ:  Do something like what Sheena Easton did.  She released an album called Fabulous, and it was an album of covers of disco classics, like Never Can Say Goodbye …

KC:  Really?  Oh, Sheena Easton rocks!  Well, the other night, we pulled out I Will Survive, you know, just as a bit of a shit-stir, and, you know, I fucking ripped it up!  I tore it a new one, I’m telling ya!  Oh, I was just … isn’t that an amazing song?  What I need to do is get those sorts of songs, which are the best-written songs and get you in that emotional place, and get you from the first chord to the very end, and they don’t stop, they work you the whole way through.  I need songwriters to write songs like that.  I would love to go to America, and find the author of that song, and be like “Write me another one”, haha!

[vernicle]

To The Bone | Netflix Movie Review

2017 Netflix film evaluate: To the Bone follows Ellen (aka Eli) a female with anorexia nervosa as she struggles with restoration, restoration plans, and a team household. The actor Lily Collins who formerly had an ingesting condition seemingly misplaced a lot of pounds to engage in the part of Eli or Ellen. For that explanation, I believed that NetFlix was in the completely wrong. I identified the portrayal of ingesting problems (EDNOS, Binge Eating, Bulimia, and Anorexia) to be quite precise, the ED behaviors had been on entire show and I feel that is a superior matter if a person wishes to actually see what an ingesting condition is certainly like. I appreciated Keanu Reeves as Dr. Beckham, his challenging adore design and style is in line with what I feel is essential in most cases. I was not a significant admirer of the Luke & Ellen adore story component of the movie, it did not seem to be vital to me. Susan, performed by Carrie Preston was excellent at showing help but largely not being aware of what to do. Pearl with the feeding tube showing us what is possibly ideal around the corner for Ellen was coronary heart breaking. Judy (Lily Taylor) as her organic mom was strong when she tells her "she is okay with accepting that she may want to die" was straightforward and quite hard to observe. All round, as you can convey to, I actually appreciated this movie. I only desire that the lead part was not performed by a person who in the previous has had an ingesting condition. Actors shed and acquire pounds for roles all the time, but when a person has a background of an ingesting condition, they should really not do this, it is Pretty perilous and I never help it. Marti Noxon does an excellent occupation of directing and producing in an effort and hard work to showcase ingesting problems, their destruction, and ultimately she leaves us with a glimmer of hope, which is what we all want when it comes to ingesting problems... Hope.

****Make sure you Read through**** If you or a person you know is in immediate danger, remember to call a regional crisis telephone range or go immediately to the closest crisis place.

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