• sara reads the feed

    Productively neglectful, really cool science, movies I don’t want

    2023-12-08 /

    Yesterday was mostly a fun variation of my normal-of-late routine where I watch at least one movie and write a review about it.

    I actually spend November/December every year watching comedies, especially romcoms, even if this is the first year where I’ve put a sincere effort into reviewing the stuff I watch. Usually I do more genre — SF, horror, and fantasy — in August through October. Yesterday a short film kinda fell in my lap which is more of a September watch, if you ask me.

    The John Experiment‘s premise is near-future science fiction, and its impact is ultimately psychological horror. So, you know, September stuff.

    This one is special because I know the creator and I got to chat movies with her a bit. It was a lot of fun!

    Also, I reviewed Much Ado About Nothing, but I otherwise didn’t watch movies. I’m trying to take a break consciously every day or two. It feels kinda *too* good to slam movies and reviews all day. Like, overstimulating? Instead, I did a bunch of drawing, some essay writing, and then I under-stimulated myself by playing more Baldur’s Gate III with Rory.

    ~

    I’ve been avoiding the doctor for a couple years. I go in a couple times a year, mind you. I’ve got asthma and psychiatric needs which absolutely *cannot* be ignored. But I’m doing my best to ignore everything else because I hate it and I don’t wanna. It feels like if I’m seeing my doctor a few times a year already, that’s enough, and my body isn’t allowed to do anything else.

    Of course that’s not how it works and not how it ever has worked.

    I had a big blood sugar crash yesterday. I’ve always had reactive hypoglycemia from taking an SSRI – basically, my body over-produces insulin. If I eat properly, it’s not a problem, but I struggle to eat “properly” because of an eating disorder. So yesterday, big crash.

    I feel so shaken after things like that. Probably because it’s massively depleting, but it’s also just scary. I don’t love the idea of trying to hash this out with my doctor. I hate running around for appointments.

    ~

    The makers of No Man’s Sky are promising a game where they generate an Earth-sized planet. I am benignly skeptical. I was there when they marketed NMS with a whole long list of features which never materialized and watched it turn into a base building game. I like NMS. I just won’t listen to a thing Hello Games says until I can see the game itself.

    ~

    This article about fungi encouraging ice formation is the most mind-blowing thing I’ve read in a while. (Ars Technica) I’d always heard that ice forms at lower temperatures with “pure” and undisturbed water, because impurities permit ice to form quicker, but never thought further than that. I guess I assumed it was a surface area thing?

    Organisms such as bacteria, insects, and fungi produce proteins known as ice nucleators (non-protein nucleators can also be of abiotic origin). These proteins can kick-start the formation, or nucleation, of ice at higher temperatures than pure water would freeze at.

    This is one of those things where I read it and I just wanted to throw my pen to the desk and pace around the room thinking FURIOUSLY about everything new-to-me I just glimpsed.

    ICE NUCLEATORS?

    Shit that’s so COOL.

    ~

    Speaking of cool stuff, researchers seem to be developing these sorta…synthetic mini-organs? (Engadget) to help people with diabetes produce insulin properly, with fewer external devices involved.

    First, the scientists figured out a way to insert nylon catheters under the skin, where they remain for up to six weeks. After insertion, blood vessels form around the catheters which structurally support the islet devices that are placed in the space when the catheter gets removed. The newly implanted 10-centimeter-long islet devices secrete insulin via islet cells that form around it, while also receiving nutrients and oxygen from blood vessels to stay alive.

    Medical symbiosis? Shit that is ALSO so COOL. And this is one humans are coming up with!

    Often, when I learn about science and medicine, I’m surprised how basic our understanding remains. A lot of the stuff we use on a practical level day-to-day isn’t necessarily more complicated than, say, a medicine that just adds a single molecule to your body and then your body does the work because it has the molecule. This “islet device” seems something else entirely.

    ~

    BookRiot rounds up romances without the third-act breakup.

    ~

    Hugh Grant hates Wonka. (Cosmopolitan) Like, I get it. I hate it and I haven’t even seen it, much less performed in it. I don’t expect anyone to love their job, either. But I’m sick of this miserable lipless man being miserable and lipless and everyone tittering like that’s a personality.

    ~

    Yes, we are talking about Avatar 3 (Variety) even though we didn’t want Avatar 2 and Avatar 1 was forgettable if not for the fact the franchise bafflingly continues.

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  • image credit: Lionsgate
    movie reviews

    Much Ado About Nothing (1993) ****

    2023-12-07 /

    Hey, nonny nonny!

    Herein lay a review for another Shakespeare adaptation starring our good noble Denzel Washington, looking even hotter than he does in The Tragedy of Macbeth. My God, man. You’d think the purring voice alone would be all the hotness that could reside within a single man’s body. Then he’s running around the countryside, riding on a horse, bouncing around with his mantitties inside that vee neck, and I’m just like. My God. Lord Denzel. (Prince Denzel?)

    Credit: Lionsgate, by way of my cell phone snapping my computer screen. oh yes i did that.

    Bear in mind that I didn’t do any research to make sure I have details about the play or movie remotely correct, and I don’t care, so please don’t correct me.

    There are several plays by Shakespeare that I know very well. I performed a small part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a teen. I’ve written a lesbian vampires adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The Scottish Play is another favorite, and so is Taming of the Shrew. But Much Ado About Nothing is a blank for me. I’ve seen it performed live–once–when I was a kid–but that’s it.

    Anyway, as far as I can tell, this is Shakespeare’s Silly Bitches Play for Bitches Acting Silly. Literally, there is much ado about absolutely nothing, and we love every minute of it.

    Like there’s something about Emma Thompson arguing with a bearded guy. I don’t know, I couldn’t look at any man when she was on screen.

    I’ve got mixed feelings about Emma Thompson sometimes. She did this whole odd former-Yugoslavian accent thing for Last Christmas, which is my most recent exposure, and…I did not know what to think about that. Here, I realized I wasn’t enamored with her delivery either, but…

    Goodness. That smile. The way she just sort of flows everywhere in those gorgeous dresses, with her hair, and my lesbianness.

    wait oh my GOD is that KATE BECKINSALE?

    Image credit: Lionsgate

    I got all the way through the movie once without realizing who it was. I saw her name in the credits, then completely forgot she was meant to be there. I couldn’t pin the young actress’s look down. I’m bad at faces. I was like, “For one thing, it’s definitely NOT Mia Sara.”

    Since looking things up didn’t sound interesting, I just kept staring at this gorgeous young lady thinking, “Oh, she’s so pretty. I wonder what she’s doing these days? Is she still acting?”

    It’s KATE BECKINSALE, Sara! I just liked a more recent movie of hers! And I’m pretty sure I swore fealty to Selene the first time I ever watched Underworld!

    The number of times I have dreamed about this actress (as a character) drinking my blood is making me have such deep thoughts about the adorable young woman to blood drinking vampire milf pipeline. Like, if I had a nickel every time–

    Okay, so I’m reviewing a movie, right?

    Well, it’s a straightforward adaptation of the Shakespeare Silly Bitches Show, translated quite literally, with a sorta ambiguously historical setting and lots of Italians (?) speaking in English accents, or like Denzel Washington. If you don’t enjoy watching it, then you probably just don’t like watching Kenneth Branagh’s vacation videos. Obviously this whole thing was a ruse for hot talented people to giggle in a beautiful place wearing pretty dresses.

    Or wearing…not dresses.

    image credit: Lionsgate. nipple credit: Keanu Reeves.

    I didn’t find the movie especially interesting on most levels. It doesn’t have anything to add to the core play, as far as I can tell, except for the sheer vivacity of beautiful actors.

    So obviously it was a *great* movie and I highly recommend it completely on artistic merits.

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    The John Experiment (2023) – Colors as a Visual Language

    2023-12-07
  • essays,  movie reviews

    The John Experiment (2023) – Colors as a Visual Language

    2023-12-07 /

    I was invited to view The John Experiment by its co-creator and voice of IVY, Lux Karpov Kinrade. As one half of publishing and marriage duo Karpov Kinrade, Lux has a great many talents to her name: many books, a USA Today Bestselling author title, a romance game on the Dorian app, and an inclination toward illustration. Bear in mind this is only skimming the surface of this particular artist’s interests based on my rugged research (citation: “paying attention to Facebook for a few months”).

    We’ve been acquainted with one another for a while since we’re both SFF-loving indie authors of a similar “generation.” A similar interest in movies only recently came to my attention when Lux began posting about her film festival experiences and I started posting movie reviews. Turns out we’re both obsessives about a lotta similar things.

    So when she asked if I wanted to watch her movie, my tits got real jacked.

    To my pleasure, “The John Experiment” is a short film that invites interpretation–my favorite kind. I adore it when I get to watch something and then be Extremely Opinionated About What It Really Means. Hence, I decided to write an analysis of the film before asking Lux Karpov Kinrade anything about it in the style of my usual reviews.

    Spoilers for The John Experiment from this point onward. (All images credit to Lux Karpov Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov Kinrade.)

    Be aware: STROBE WARNING. The John Experiment contains explicit on-screen death by suicide. Themes of death and possible implied child abuse.

    In a focused fifteen minutes of film, The John Experiment takes us from an apparent thought experiment (can hot-button tech like AI help us heal from grief?) into a metaphoric space of punishment (do you deserve to heal from grief?).

    credit to Lux Karpov Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov Kinrade
    John is looking happier already!

    John is doing therapy in a sparse red room, like a studio apartment stripped of personality. He spends much of his time in bed. When he’s not in bed, he’s at his laptop at a small white table. The only method of physical interaction with the outside world is an unremarkable white cabinet. From this cabinet, John can retrieve his coffee or expel bodily waste. These things are cared for by IVY, an AI character voiced by Lux Karpov-Kinrade.

    Also, John seems to be trying to write an email to his wife, and it’s not going great.credit to Lux Karpov Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov Kinrade

    Ostensibly, the purpose of John and disembodied IVY semi-coexisting is for IVY to help John overcome his grief. The email changes throughout the course of the film as John begins to accept his own role in a baby’s death. He stops blaming his wife as much.

    Eventually, John even admits he should have checked on the baby instead of watching football.

    If that was the point of IVY and the red room, I guess that would be the end of the movie, huh?

    credit to Lux Karpov Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov Kinrade
    John does not feel better.

    Unfortunately John is still trapped. Initially it’s not clear whether he’s suffering from psychosis or not–is there really a baby crying?–and his distress rises as he should be healing.

    Maybe John isn’t telling the whole truth to himself, to his wife, or to the audience.

    The room isn’t getting smaller, but it’s getting “smaller” as he realizes how little control he has over the situation.

    The white cabinet permitting ingress and egress of Things to John’s room is not there for him, and exiting the room is simply not an option. John wants to go home to his wife.

    IVY says, “I’m sorry Hal, but I can’t do that,” or something to that effect. He signed a contract.

    credit to Lux Karpov Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov Kinrade
    “Of course I didn’t read the EULA! Nobody reads the EULA!”

    The therapeutic room changes in increasingly distressing ways. John cannot access the internet to talk to his wife anymore. There’s a new picture in the room: a red circle upon a white field, bold and accusatory, and here to tell half of the story with its abstract form.

    Why is such a red circle so upsetting to John?

    Why is John’s room so red?

    Hey, let’s take a look back to his video chat with his wife, Ana, at the beginning of the movie.

    credit to Lux Karpov Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov Kinrade
    One of the blue things in this film is the room Ana chats from. Also, Joe’s mug.

    These two were permitted one conversation, where Ana begged for John to get out of the program. She was bothered by how little he was allowed to take in, and even more so, how he doesn’t seem allowed “out.”

    Initially, John is not so terribly bothered being trapped in the red room.

    He still has comforting sources of blue refuge: video chat with his wife, his mug, the bedspread under which he is usually lying to do therapy, and parts of the painting. Anything signaling comfort is blue. Blue is hope and peace in Western color theory, and this applies to John’s world.

    But there is that damn red dot painting.credit to Lux Karpov Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov Kinrade

    It’s like the redness of it all doesn’t want John to find refuge. It wants him to see that he is in the red place.

    The red dot upon white can be emblematic of so many things: The nipple a baby nurses upon, the roundness of a pregnant belly, the sphere of a newborn’s head. In Western culture, red is often hostile and angry. It is a bloody evocation of John’s sins.

    Because as we established, if this was a therapeutic environment, he would have probably already made enough progress to leave.

    credit to Lux Karpov Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov Kinrade
    The blue sweater, blue jeans, and blue bedspread are no longer comforting, but cold and deathly.

    If John is in Hell, communicating with Ana in Heaven, we could read deeper meaning into this than parental neglect. John’s fury over a crying baby could be the normal frustration of a sleepless parent, the pain of a grieving parent, or a sign that this man gets *real* angry when he hears a baby cry.

    Though the size of John’s grief could belong to anyone struggling, the heightened emotional state in the end, and Ana’s position in a “blue place,” suggest a family annihilation to me. That red dot is the bloody thumbprint of his legacy, and he will never reconcile his actions enough to exit that red room.

    ~

    The John Experiment is supported primarily by a compelling, human performance by Evan Gaustad as John. This movie was produced, directed and written by Lux Karpov Kinrade and Dmytry Karpov Kinrade. This was an Official Selection at the LA Sci Fi Film Festival.

    Lux assures me this film will be available for streaming once it leaves the festival circuit, so keep an eye out for future updates.

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  • sara reads the feed

    Mental energy conservation, A Forgettable Prince 2, and notification privacy

    2023-12-07 /

    I was really vibing for a couple days until current events crashed in to ruin my mood. It’s not that there isn’t good reason to be upset. But I think I need to use these things as opportunities to practice good mental hygiene. Getting sucked into “it’s fair to be upset” things happening in the world is part of the reason I bottomed out so hard in 2020.

    There will always be lots of reasons to be unhappy, and I have to make sure to process them as healthily as possible. I was up randomly at 3am brooding and then began brooding again the instant I woke up at 7. Now 1.5 hours into brooding about it. A reasonable length of time? I don’t think “reasonable” applies. But I have had Thoughts about it, and now my Thoughts suggest it’s time to turn back to my tangible life.

    (It’s not cruel to “turn off” to the world; it’s conserving emotional energy for when it’s my turn to *need* it.)

    I really really need to watch out for News Mood Swamps as we approach America’s next presidential election.

    ~

    Yesterday’s crochet time was spent on what I’m calling “the installation” rather playfully. I crocheted a bunch of handbags in a frenzy, and now I’m making an art installation in my stairway to display all the bags. I’ve integrated a Very Big Stick and some organic elements that unite Stick and Bags and it’s coming along slowly. But it’s nice. I think it will end up looking like an abstract crochet handbag rain forest.

    My 9yo told me it was really cool that I was turning part of our house into “the art museum” (we visited recently) and 13yo has barely blinked because this is just the kind of shit mommy does.

    I’m going to figure out how to light it too. And THEN I will take photos of everything to share with you guys.

    I guess that’s the entirety of the project for me. An organic growing art-thing in my hallway, which I will then document after the fact like someone who discovered it, and then I will probably disassemble it because it’s getting dusty and put everything in a labeled bin. “My entire 2023.”

    ~

    While I was looking for things to watch yesterday, I realized I had watched The Christmas Prince 2: Royal Wedding without logging it on Letterboxd, writing a review, or even remembering it until that moment. If I write a review, I’ll bundle it with the third movie, because it was so forgettable that it’s not going to be worth more than a paragraph or two.

    But the tl;dr is that they shouldn’t have tried to venture away from the oppressive blandness of the first movie, because they took about two baby steps and fell flat on their faces being monarchists, plus they wasted most of our time with a boringly executed mystery instead of actual romance or Christmas vibes. Rose McIver deserves better.

    ~

    Turns out your push notifications can be “read” by Apple and Google, no matter other privacy settings. If I understand the article on Engadget, this has been known quietly for a long time but the government didn’t want folks to know.

    Thing is, I think we “knew” publicly because most apps with any sort of privacy element have an ability to mask push alerts in some way. Alerts on mental health apps I used were always discrete. Not like, “Check in with MYCRAZYPERSON and log your PSYCHIATRIC MELTDOWNS!!!” kind of alerts. Rather, it would say, “Want to check in?”

    Partially, that’s to keep people from seeing your alerts when your phone is sitting on the lunch table.

    But also, many app developers come from Apple or Google development backgrounds, so they’d know notifs are always “readable” by the companies. Some folks have been protecting us longer than we “knew” we needed protection. I guess that’s the good part?

    I disable notifications on everything by default because I don’t want anything to talk to me.

    ~

    Andrea Fay Friedman passed away (Variety). She was an actress with Down’s Syndrome, and for many families like mine, she brought representations into our living rooms through the tv show “Life Goes On.” She also provided a voice role to insult Sarah Palin on Family Guy, and kept working through 2019.

    ~

    Important news for the adult family members of giggling children: Goat Simulator 3 is on mobile now. (Engadget)

    ~

    SAG-AFTRA’s new agreement has been officially ratified. (NPR)

    ~

    Colossal reviews a book on surrealist art. I might want this one. I really like Miles Johnston and one of his pieces is included, too.

    ~

    A Nevada grand jury indicted some of Trump’s fake electors. Get ’em all outta here. (NPR)

    ~

    Tor reviews a biography of Captain Sisko from DS9. Tor dot Com also let me know that three Pixar pandemic-era movies are coming to theaters. I’m still not back in theaters for anything short of a Jordan Peele movie, BUT I loved Luca more than life itself, so I hope this will bring more people to the child-aged mmf paranormal romance. Call Me By Your Fins?

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  • movie reviews

    Falling for Christmas (2021) ****

    2023-12-06 /

    The first time I watched Falling for Christmas, I was surprised to enjoy such a corny Lindsay Lohan Christmas comedy. Since I’ve spent this year watching a whole breadth of comedies, I’m not surprised anymore.

    Honestly? The setup is easy to dismiss if you are around Lohan’s age and kinda cringed away from the public nature of her meltdown. Plus, culture in the time when Lohan and I were young is notoriously mean. Most of us had to come on a journey to accept movies with sincere messages after growing up on the sarcasm and apologetic self-effacement of the 00s. And some of us particularly immature kids needed to realize public meltdowns deserve sympathy and privacy and a thousand opportunities to try again, not tabloid snark. (Sorry Lindsay. I wasn’t cool.)

    Sincere Christmas romance with Lindsay Lohan pings a lot of my primal “ugh, eye roll” nerves, is what I’m saying, so I guess Falling for Christmas had to sneak up on me in order to earn my love. That’s my fault, not yours, Hallmark-like romance genre.

    Yes, it’s corny, but let’s put that at the forefront: Holidays are a good time to tell corny stories about falling in love.

    Once you accept corny as a feature instead of a bug, there is nothing about Falling for Christmas left to dismiss. The more obvious special effects are funny. The performances are sometimes cartoonish but always earnest. There are some decent needle drops with songs I don’t recognize, but possess exactly the right amount of drama for the hero to gaze after the heroine with tears shimmering in his eyes.

    Even the hero won me over. This is one of the dearest romance heroes, and you know I hate boys. He’s a daddy, and a little bit of a Daddy, and he brings his GAZING INTENSELY gaze with the best of them.

    The part is appropriate for Lohan’s skills, warmly, and she does such a cute job transforming from bratty heiress to amnesiac flannel mommy.

    It’s got the trope I love where they fall in love with one another’s families (mostly Lohan falling for his family).

    Lohan’s ex goes into the wilderness and falls in love with a bear poacher. No, not a poacher who kills bears. A poacher who is a bear.

    Plus, there is a so-magical-he-almost-seems-scary leering Santa Claus disguised as a strangely intense old man, and I love this EVERY TIME.

    THERE’S A SILLY CREDIT BLOOPERS SEQUENCE!

    Basically this is exactly what you’d expect, and if you like the tropes, you’ll love this. It’s a good execution of well-trod small town holiday warmth and YEAH I’m probably just going to give it a higher rating every year I watch it, even though my inner sarcastic teenager thinks I’ve grown up *so lame*.

    (Image credit: Netflix)

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  • Diaries

    A retrospective on Sara’s 2023 artwork

    2023-12-06 /

    We approach the end of the calendar year, which gets me feeling reflective. It’s been a weird couple of years here, otherwise unrepresentative of how I’ve spent my adulthood, but I think I’ve been consistently the happiest-ever. I’ve always been stressed out as hell and just didn’t know how to…stop stressing.

    It’s not that I’m worry-free. I’m just not dogged by the persistent dread I recall from pretty much always.

    I became an adult just in time for the recession of ’09; my first and only real job spent several years declining in pay as I watched my hours chopped and the sword of Damocles getting wobblier. By the time I left real employment, I had a year-old baby, and I tumbled screaming into parenthood while supporting the family off artistic self-employment, which made me a *total* mess. Successive near-death medical incidents just totally screwed me up seventeen ways to Saturday. Having never paused to grow up, I struggled real hard.

    The last few years leading up to the 2020 pandemic were stuffed with therapy and other psychiatric care, which is good, because that was when I finally, truly, fully burned out and couldn’t do anything.

    2020 was rock-bottom misery, loss of identity, pitch black.

    In 2021, I was uncertain but waking up and growing up.

    In 2022, I was looking around to figure out where I landed.

    In 2023, I’ve just been making art, basically. All art, all the time, constructing something expressive out of everything else.

    I’m not sure where I’ll be in 2024, but I’ll be lucky if next year looks anything like this one. I feel like I’m building momentum toward something. I just don’t know what.

    ~

    Captain Pegi comics marked my months-long reinvigorated obsession with Star Trek. I binged the 90s shows in 2020, and then again in 2023, and for a while my identity was just kinda Starfleet.

    tumblr_981cb02858e2cc2c45500526ec68de28_1b92e380_1280
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    The story here is that Pegi is actually a half-Tellarite exomalacologist, which means she studies space slugs. She’s very good at what she does but absolutely not cut out for command. But the captain on her ship dies in an accident, the high-ranked officers are in a spat, and Starfleet permits Pegi to take charge. All of the Captain Pegi comics to date are on Wholesome Morbid, my webcomic page.

    ~

    It’s such a behemoth in my life that I can’t neglect to mention it, even though I chose to do zero (0) work on the project in the back half of 2023.

    Atop the Trees, Beneath the Mountains did continue to occupy my time on the front end of the year. You can see a bit about it on Tumblr, but it’s no longer accurately representative of where the project stands, since dramatic edits have happened.

    Last I checked, the previous draft was around 280,000 words, the rough draft was about 320,000 words, and there are well over half a million words of drafted material available to me.

    I worked on that puppy *hard* for three and a half years straight, including producing a Quite Large appendix that is *mostly* complete. If I took out the chapters I didn’t finish and published it as-is, I wouldn’t be embarrassed. It’s meaty. I left it off at 150 pages.

    The future of this book isn’t certain, but I plan to return to working on it once I finish Fated for Firelizards.~

    Speaking of Fated for Firelizards.

    Another thing I toyed with in 2020 was RenPy and TyrannoBuilder and the whole idea of a romance game. I decided to play with Twine this year, which draws on some of the principles I learned there, without as much an emphasis on art…or so I thought.

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    Foolish me! At this point, I’m over thirty images for this “mostly just text” game and absolutely going to cross fifty illustrations before I’m done. The actual book won’t be that long if you take a single path–a normal shortish novel. I thought I was keeping the scope small. I am a FOOL. Hahaha.

    Anyway, it’s up to Chapter 11 and totally free and you should read it if you’re an adult who likes playful smutty stuff.

    ~

    One of the things I wrote this year is my favorite-ever pieces of fiction, called The Wolf Made Differently. It’s historical fiction about Vikings. The story used research I’ve been doing kinda casually for years, ever since I visited a Viking museum in Denmark. Apparently this is a historical period people like to see in fantasy, but not so much in normal historical fiction. Oh well! I enjoyed writing it.

    ~

    The above represents the bulk of my public work for the year, but I’ve had other stuff going on too. I’d like to photograph it all properly so that I can share these collections on my website nicely. Not just with random blurry phone snaps.

    But even if all that ^^^ was all I did this year (in addition to loving myself better), I’d say it’s been a pretty fab year!

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  • movie reviews

    Last Christmas (2019) ***

    2023-12-05 /

    God, I am fighting with my urge to shit talk this movie right now. It’s lovely. It’s fine! It’s cute and Christmasy. Emilia Clarke radiates. Michelle Yeoh was showing her comedy chops before the world noticed her comedy chops. It has a nice message. It’s a romcom without wealth centered, which I always want.

    Don’t shit talk the movie, Sara. It’s so nice.

    ~

    Okay, first of all, I have seen Emilia Clarke play three (3) roles where men are fridged for her character development.

    On one hand, nice. Way to be. Writers don’t fridge men nearly enough for the sake of a woman’s development.

    On the other hand, two of these male characters weren’t played by white actors (Henry Golding here and Jason Momoa on Game of Thrones) and in the third (Me Before You) the hero’s disability is central to the story/identity.

    I can’t get excited about misandry when it’s all…weird.

    (Are you telling me I shouldn’t *ever* get excited about misandry? *Weird*.)

    I think it would balance out if Emilia Clarke fridged four perfectly healthy white guys for her character development. Hey casting directors, agent, whoever needs to make this happen—could she like, fridge Chalamet or something?

    ~

    Henry Golding shows up to look perfect and shiny and handsomely fix all of her problems. He is wisdom, he is grace, he is romantic but sexually nonthreatening. He’s been inside Emilia Clarke for a year and she didn’t have a clue until he appeared to deliver his Christmas message. “What if you DIDN’T drink our heart to death?”

    Is it a happily ever after if they’ll be together for as long as this transplant holds out?

    ~

    It’s really cute though! It ticks the boxes I want ticked for a romcom…almost completely.

    There is a strong message about hope.

    It’s also, critically, mostly about the woman (boys are gross).

    Love heals! Love wins!

    We have adorable secondary romance, there is suggestion of a better future for our heroine, the family is important.

    It’s just.

    Okay.

    I really don’t want anyone in the relationship to be dead. Okay???

    ~

    Is Ghost a romcom?

    Is an ending happy if we know the ghost gets what he wants and the woman moves on happily?

    There is a lot to be said in defense of grief as an element of both Christmas movies and romances. In a long life, we should all be so lucky as to lose a great many loves, and grief is an ongoing process that accumulates as the years accrue.

    Grief feels very much like love. It’s the hurting side of love—love that is lost and wandering.

    Not all horror movies scare us; sometimes they’re just exciting. Not all romcoms have to make everything better; love can be intermingled with sadness, and that is healing for a lot of people.

    I can say these things rationally, nodding along with myself as I type.

    “Yes, of course, there’s no reason why Henry Golding shouldn’t be dead in this romcom,” I say reasonably.

    And yet.

    ~

    I like what I like and what I don’t like is this. At least, not on the first watch. I can imagine why other people might like it, but my grudge for the concept is strong, and I just didn’t enjoy watching it.

    Part of the issue for me is probably the issue that attracted Emilia Clarke to the role. She’s got severe chronic health issues. A heroine with complicated medical trauma might be compelling for an actress who has had plenty her own.

    For me, it’s more repelling. The song “Last Christmas” goes from being a happy romp to a haunting story literally about organs. I’m sitting around wondering if the movie when the movie is going to dump hospital scenes on me so I feel awful. Maybe I should have watched the movie in my therapist’s office?

    ~

    Oh, but it’s so cute. I don’t think there’s anything *wrong* with it.

    I really need my romantic couple to survive, though. Or I need a lot more fantasy/goth type elements to make the dying bit hot instead of sad. I don’t know! This isn’t hot. I just feel sad.

    And personal preference isn’t any reason to shit talk a perfectly lovely movie.

    Don’t shit talk the nice movie, Sara. Just give it three stars and move on.

    Comment

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