Meanwhile, in Rivendell . . .

It seemed wrong to group the dead.  It was not seven; it was one and one and one and one and one and one and one.  Each an entire life, each with a name. Chanel Miller, Know My Name Let's talk ✨violence✨, kiddos. Growing up, I developed a reputation as someone who was "easily freaked out" by violence, peril, etc. within the realm of fiction.  Part of this — when I was younger, especially — was due to real sensitivity.  Anything "dark" was difficult for child me to handle without paying for it when trying to fall asleep at night.  As I've grown older, however, things have shifted.  Exhibit A:  my inability to make it more than twenty minutes into  Snow White and the Huntsman  as a tween, contrasted with my adoration for the whole movie as a twenty-something.  Now, I'll take a film with R-rated violence over a cutesy murder mystery episode of Monk any day of the week — and, what's more, I'll (probably) be far less disturbed by the R-rated ...

If you've been around for a while, you may have heard me say before that I dislike time travel in fiction.  I just do.  There are (a very few) exceptions, of course, but, for the most part, if I know that a story involves time travel, I can give it a friendly "Not for me" and move along my merry way with no hard feelings on either side.   I've more or less always known that this technique is one of my fictional no-go's, but I haven't always known why — or, at least, I haven't always known fully why.  That changed when I watched Christopher Nolan's Interstellar for the first time a few months ago.  (Yep, this post has been in draft that long. *coughs*) If you don't know, Interstellar tells a fairly familiar story:  a retired military-pilot-turned-farmer living on a futuristic Earth teetering at the cusp of ecological Armageddon is recruited by a super-secret branch of NASA.  His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to undertake a Perilo...

Well, hello.   It appears that "Olivia angrily ranting about problems within the modern American Church" is turning into a series.   Tbh, I'm down for that. #noregrets Do y'all remember this post ?  The one in which I vindictively gracefully addressed some of the negative aspects of Christian literature, specifically?  I mentioned in that post that I wasn't going to delve very deeply into Christian film, because that was A Whole Other Deal. Welp, today, my dudes, we are going to dive headfirst into that Whole Other Deal.   That's right!  I'm going to talk a bit about the world of Christian cinema: a couple of the trends I'm seeing that concern me, as well as some of the exceptions to the rule that give me hope.  (#Positivity!) Here we go. I want to keep this post reasonably short [edit from future Olivia:  I failed] , so I'm going to restrict my remarks to the primary issue I have with Christian media right now.  There are several, but here'...

Featuring:  Eight Fictional Ships That Should Have Sailed and The Girl Who's Still Mad That They Didn't.   (Which I guess means that you could consider this whole post one big SPOILER ?  Idk.  It's your call.) ⎼ ⎼ ⎼ You know what I'm talking about.  We all have those couples who needle at the back of our brains because they didn't get the ending we thought they deserved.  And sometimes the best way to cope with the injustices of a cruel team of creative directors fate is to just thrash it all out. So here we are. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does cover the couples who've been most actively milling around in my mind lately.  And I gotta say, I've loved writing this post, delving back into all the reasons why I love them and why, in MY fictional universe, they all live happily ever after. ♡ (I defy you to watch some of these fanvids and not agree with me.) ⎼⎼⎼⎼ ❀ Rey & Poe ❀ "You know what you are?" "What?" ...

*WARNING*   This post contains frank discussions of sex, sexual misconduct, and various sexual activities.  It may also contain controversial opinions on those topics.  Use your own discretion. Hello! As some of you already know, I recently took a dive into the exotic world of Christian "purity books".  There were only four involved in this spontaneous little adventure, and put together their length was probably a little less than that of Les Misérables : Girls Gone Wise in a World Gone Wild (by Mary A. Kassian)  Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control (by Elisabeth Elliot)  Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry: Why Women Lose When They Give In (by Lisa Bevere)  Every Young Woman's Battle: Guarding Your Mind, Heart, and Body in a Sex-Saturated World (by Shannon Ethridge and Stephen Arterburn)  Not a big deal, right?  Granted, I'd gone into the whole affair with blatant skepticis...