never trust a man with two first names

Neil Gaiman on why he cast Michael Sheen as Aziraphale:

"Michael had said he wanted to be in it from the very start. Around 2014ish. We both assumed he'd be Crowley. Except as I wrote it, I kept thinking of the Michael I know: an incredibly sweet, sensitive, funny man determined to do good and to do the right thing, and I kept thinking of him as my Aziraphale."

I know since it's coming on the holiday season, I'm going to start seeing a lot of Hallmark slander.

But here's a little known fact.

Hallmark is actually really really good.

WAIT WAIT DON'T LEAVE-

Let me explain!

The movies people usually associate Hallmark with are the "old" ones (2020 and back). I bet after seeing how cliche and unhealthy they were, you didn't see a reason to watch them again after that, am I right??

But you knew them well enough to know they weren't worth your time and sanity.

Girl in a high stress job goes to small town, learns the meaning of Christmas, and then cheats on her also stressed out boyfriend back in the city with a hot cocoa making stubbly kind of rude lumberjack man then quits her job and moves to Vermont or something.

Yeah, they don't do those anymore.

At all.

I'm serious.

A part of it is that there was a purge. A year or two ago, there was a new Christmas movie company in town. All the actors that didn't like the forward direction Hallmark wanted to go in, left and joined GAC.

(Great American Family, or as I like to call it GACK. The movies are exclusively awful old Hallmark style, but Republican, badly decorated, very white, and also much worse.)

GAC took all the problems away from Hallmark, and made movies out of them. Hallmark, now cleansed, is pumping out cinematic greats that I WILL be rewatching every Christmas.

The whole of Hallmark was Recast, save for the best of the best fan favorites (Like Lacey Chaubert-)

They have plus sized actors now and people of color, cast as main characters on a regular basis.

Half of the movies aren't even romance centric anymore, instead focused on life, and moving forward, but when they are, they're really well done, and actually healthy.

If you know me (which you don't), then you'll know I hate unhealthy relationships. Especially when they're treated like they're okay. I will pick apart ANYTHING over toxicity in a relationship, wherever that might come from.

I used to hate Hallmark movies, because they were predictable, unrealistic, flawed, and toxic.

But now the characters talk with each other, and they don't get in the others space without permission. If there's an accident and it does happen, it's not used as a plot device to move the relationship along. It's not treated in a "OMG hot guy is literally right in my face!!! I've only known him two minutes and I hate him, I'm in love!!"

It's more of an, "OMG I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to do that at all, im so sorry, I'm so sorry- *Immediately backs away*"

I can't even begin to explain how much better they are now.

To further prove my point, here are some gifs of Three Wise Men and a Baby, one of my favorite Christmas movies ever:

Just listen to this one.

It's about three brothers, one of which is a firefighter (this is important). A baby gets dropped off at the fire station, with a note. The firefighters name is on it, asking him to look after the baby until Christmas.

This is not his baby.

This IS a joke throughout the entire film.

They have no idea who dropped him off.

So they end up taking care of him for a week, and seriously bonding with him. The make his first Christmas ornament with clay, they do a holiday photo dressed to the nines.

They talk about how hard it is to actually take care of a baby, and how hard it must have been for their mom doing it alone.

Talking about how their own dad left, and finally processing that trauma together.

Their mom confesses that if she didn't have support, she may have done what the babies mother did. How she must be going through such a rough patch, and building empathy for her.

All three of the brothers go on complete cathartic emotional journeys about it, and all the other issues in their life.

I can't do it justice.

It's called Three Wise Men and A Baby. I'm begging you please go watch it, you will NOT regret it.

I CRIED SO MANY TIMES YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

I'm tearing up now just thinking about it oh my gOD-

The ending just sent it home for me, so I won't spoil anything.

Its amazing. I can't explain the whole thing, I seriously beg you please go watch it.

And, if you're more into comedy, I present to you Haul out The Holly:

A Christmas comedy starring your very own Gretchen Weiners!! Abso-fucking-lutley HILARIOUS.

It's about a woman, just broken up with her boyfriend, and coaxed into going home for the holidays. Here's where it gets interesting.

Her parents are the head of the Christmas neighborhood watch, something that has plagued her since childhood. Her childhood friend has now taken over the position, as her parent ditch her for retirement on a beach someplace, and she's left stuck, having to decorate against her will.

She wants a nap. The neighbors want her to carve ice sculptures. And her nutcracker apparently isn't up to code.

Includes: Girlboss and male wife power duo (madly in love), insane chainsaw man with way too much time on his hands, the ML an anxious wreck, and many, many, MANY MORE.

Another recent movie was built around a woman who is an astronaut (She's mixed) who was about to finally go to space (The goal shes been working on her entire life) She got into a car accident and her eyesight was impaired. She's currently grieving the loss of her dream (like, actually grieving, she took three months off-).

Her company asks her if she wants to do an exhibit in the planetarium for Christmas, that she doesn't have to, but she can if she wants to take her minds off of things. She says yes, and ends up working with the planetarium director on an exhibit about the sun and it's connection to Christmas through how people used to celebrate with the sun (I don't remember exactly, but it was explained thoroughly, and i think pagan???)

She and him don't constantly argue, or be angry at each other. They cooperate. They show genuine interest in each other. It's actually adorable, and it's also not just about them.

She meets his daughter, who is a wheelchair user. She asks why the Female lead isn't in space if she's an astronaut, and the FL tell her it's because of her eyes. The daughter tells her it's okay, because she'll never be able to go to space either, even if she wants to, but she can still enjoy it from Earth.

I'm not even doing it justice.

By the end of the movie, the FLs eye problem doesn't heal. Nothing is miraculously solved. But the ML and the FL are now dating (After the best, slow paced, healthy, communicative, collaborative bonding freaking ever-) ALL OF THE CHARACTERS HAVE FULL BLOWN EMOTIONAL JOURNEYS THAT ACTUALLY MATTER.

SHE GRIEVES.

HER BROTHER FINALLY FIGURES OUT ITS OKAY FOR HIM TO DO WHAT HE LOVES, AND THAT HE'S NOT A FAILURE FOR IT.

THE ML LET'S GO OF THINKING HES A BAD PARENT.

AND MORE.

There are soft bits, nothing is cliche, nothing is icky or gross.

It's healthy, it's cute, it's emotionally driven, I'm actually learning about things I didn't know before, and amazing.

And all the new ones are either like this or better than this. I could name over ten, but I can't even explain how good they are.

Some of the are still a little dark ages, but it's only every one out of six or seven.

It’d be one thing if they’d made the Blip never take place, or restored everyone one millisecond after they disappeared — things they absolutely could have done, by the way — but they didn’t. They brought them all back five years later. It’s insane. It’s sociopathic.

First of all, a lot of people didn’t disappear that day. They died. People who got hit by suddenly driverless cars, people who went down on pilotless airplanes, people skydiving when the instructor disappeared, people whose doctors crumbled to dust mid-surgery, babies who wasted away in their cribs because their parents got Snapped. None of those people got restored in the Reverse Snap. They just stayed dead.

Second of all, everyone got brought back right where they’d disappeared. Which is fine in theory. Except isn’t it pretty lucky no one was sitting in that chair when Monica got restored? And also that apparently no one had moved that chair in five years? So what if you were on a plane that’s no longer in the air? What if you were on a boat that’s no longer in the middle of the ocean? What if you were skydiving and now there’s no parachute? What if you were on the top floor of a building that’s since been demolished? What if you were in your car in the middle of the freaking freeway? That’s thousands more deaths, conservatively.

But forget about all those dead people for a sec. TFatWS makes it explicit that the world is in complete chaos because of the Reverse Snap. People are displaced, families have been torn apart, people are angry and scared and no one knows what to do. It’s so clear that if the Avengers weren’t going to undo the Snap completely — if they weren’t going to undo it at the moment it happened — then they shouldn’t have undone it at all. That it would have been kinder, better to have let the Snapped stay Snapped. Not just for the sake of the people left, but for the people who disappeared.

Imagine the absolute hell of materializing five years in the future to find someone else living in your house, someone else married to your spouse. To find out your baby died or your mom or your partner. And by the way you have no credit, you have no money, no job history, no possessions, nothing. But good luck trying to rebuild your life and all! Aren't you glad we brought you back? You're welcome!

If the MCU ended with Endgame and no one ever had to think about the ramifications, then fine. Whatever. It’s a happy ending. What a cool final battle!

But it didn’t end there. And as such, it’s not a happy ending. It’s deranged. The Avengers are villains.

And it’s just so weird that no one in-universe seems to acknowledge this. That what the Avengers did was bad. That all this chaos, all this suffering, is entirely their fault.

“Yeah, things suck, but I sure do hope Captain America 1.0 is having fun on the moon! Man, we all miss Iron Man!”

W H A T

And

Bucky being too ignorant by not realizing the reasons why Sam gave up the shield and making a black man's struggle about him

It’s the action in the bad.