Because in the darkness

The Xmas Special aka S5E7: All God's Creatures.

Telly Visions recap.

I feel kinda bad when I nitpick the Telly Visions recaps, but I do feel like it's important to point out that it is not December 1942. The attack on Pearl Harbor which drew the US into WWII happened on 7 December 1941 [there was a brief mention of the US entering the war], and more importantly for this show, the sinking of the HMS Repulse (and HMS Prince of Wales) took place on 10 December 1941.

We had an announcement of this sinking instead of the King's Christmas Message, and most of the tension was whether Edward Hall's name was going to appear in the lists of casualties in the newspaper in the upcoming weeks. Mrs Hall focused on cleaning the kitchen, swapping excess clothing coupons with someone in order to get a goose set aside, and trying to prepare for the upcoming Xmas and Jimmy's first birthday celebration. In order to reduce stress on Mrs Hall, they actually hold the birthday celebration on the 23rd at Helen's family's home. Her dad and James get in a back-and-forth over whether the farm animal set or child appropriate doctor bag [with at least a stethoscope] are better gifts, since they're not in agreement on whether Jimmy will grow up to be a farmer or vet. (For what it's worth, Helen doesn't really care at this point, and she's just glad Jimmy made it to his first birthday, which gets everyone else to calm down a smidge.)

A young boy with a fondness for the unusual creatures (snail, a mouse) leaves a fox at Skeldale House earlier in December, and Mrs Hall finds solace in interacting with it as she waits for news of Edward, even though she knows she shouldn't encourage it to be around humans. A letter from Edward posted before the sinking leads her to visit a discharged shipmate [injured before this event], who does reveal that if Edward were on duty in the engine room, there's really not much of a chance of surviving. When Mrs Hall finds the fox with an infected bite (probably from a dog) on Xmas eve, she is upset that Siegfried initially suggests euthanasia which is where the title comes from (Who are you to decide which of God's creatures lives and dies?). Siegfried is aware that this is mostly a reaction to worrying over Edward, but he agrees to try to help the fox.

In the morning, there's a phone call from Edward (and the fox appears to be recovering well enough), and Xmas is salvaged as celebratory. (Except for the goose. Siegfried was distracted enough around the date that he was supposed to pick it up that Xmas is goose-less this year.) Other than all of this going on, Tristan gets a task to find pigeon breeders because the RAF is looking to increase their pigeon flock. (This was mostly a way to give a shout-out to how important pigeons were in past wars, but Tristan did help a man treat some of his pigeons for lead poisoning from lead paint and get some pigeons to breed in exchange.)

After watching some gifsets of All Creatures Great & Small cross my dash through the UK airing of series/season 5, it's finally here in the US.

I'll put more substantial recaps in the comments.

ETA: I updated the post date to the end of the season in February, so everything wouldn't be clustered in January.

Instead of a daily post, each day will go in a separate comment on this post.

Season 2 is here [on tv]. It's another round of dropping several episodes at once.

S2E1: Persons of Interest

Recap.

Oliver, Charles, and Mabel are interviewed after the dramatic ending of S1 where they're being led away in handcuffs, but they're released and explicitly warned that they're persons of interest who the police are looking for more evidence for. Mabel wants to try living a boring life, but after the S1 rival (more famous) podcaster releases an episode about them (as the Only Murderers in the Building), they quickly band back together to solve Bunny's murder in an effort to clear their own names. I'm not a bird person, but I think the actor who played Bunny is voicing the bird for a particularly surprising soundalike moment for the three.

When it comes to a season two of the podcast, they're all looking to benefit outside of just not being sent off to prison: Oliver runs into Amy Schumer (who's taking over the penthouse from S1 resident, Sting) who wants to talk about turning their podcast into a tv series, Charles is informed that there's interest in a Brazzos reboot (he was previously assumed dead until he appeared in the papers) with him as Uncle Brazzos, and the attention is briefly helping Mabel get recognized as an artist. Alice is in charge of some collective or something and invites her to the gallery with an offering to have her join.

S2E2: Framed

Recap.

To go back a smidge, two other Arconia characters in E1 enter Bunny's apartment to try to take a porn-y painting that's supposedly worth a million dollars, which is how Mabel, Charles, and Oliver find the hidden lift in Bunny's closet. The painting unexpectedly shows up in Charles' apartment at the very end of the episode, and E2 gets back to that. The naked man in the painting is Charles' father, and there's some talk of balls before the three get around to trying to sneak the painting back into Bunny's apartment. (Don't worry, there's a convenient wake happening there that Howard just happened to stop by to invite them to, which will excuse their presence. His black eye may or may not be relevant later.) The door to the secret lift apparently locks automatically and Charles finds out by locking them out of the building, they panic and leave the covered painting in between the dumpsters, and Charles will find out that the painting is missing later.

Bunny's mother, Leonora, shows up at the wake and insists that the painting belongs to her. She does this weird sniffing thing that proves to her that Mabel, Charles, and Oliver aren't the killers, but I have no idea what's going on with that. She's very aware that the man in the painting is Charles' father, which seems to explain why she's so tolerant of a seeming stranger asking so many questions. It turns out that his father was having an affair with her and the painter, Something Rose (?), back then; we get some flashbacks to Young!Charles having to wait outside the building during one of his father's "auditions" which may or may not have been sex and/or nude painting sessions. (It feels like this was a somewhat paid endeavor with the painter, but later information about the father may contradict this.) When Oliver stops by the penthouse to talk to Amy Schumer about this series idea, he finds out that she was the one who found the painting. Leonora, Charles, and Mabel appear, and Leonora reveals that it's a replica. It's possible that Bunny's killer was someone who wanted the original (and is still trying to frame M/C/O for the murder).

(Amy Schumer has this idea for making the tv series adaption all about Jan, who will be played by herself, so she gets 'into character' by pretending to have a childhood crush on Charles and tries to insist on keeping the painting because it looks like Charles. It's supposed to come across as uncomfortably intense, and... It succeeds.)

Also: Alice invites Mabel to the studio part of the gallery, or wherever it is, and she presents a kind of abstract sculpture that represents her. She offers Mabel an axe and will record her destroying the sculpture (and if Mabel wants, she can have a copy of the video). It's presented as this type of art therapy that she's done with others, so even though it kind of comes across as personally odd to have someone you've barely been introduced to for like 24 hours do this, Mabel takes part. [I'm not an art person, but it initially looks like freshly sculpted clay until Mabel takes the axe to it, and it's like ceramic-ish white inside. It seems like something that Alice had to have had done and waiting for a bit.] Mabel does feel better afterwards, and she kisses Alice. (It's not un-reciprocated, but personally, it comes across as fast. I'm not really the best person to ask about 'how soon is too soon to kiss someone' here, though.) And Mrs Gambolini, the pet bird, is left to Oliver in Bunny's will.

S2E3: The Last Day of Bunny Folger

Recap. There's a little bit at the beginning where the Mabel, Charles, and Oliver trio are trying to think out loud about what info they have (the police can't find the knife, Bunny received a threatening note about the painting, Mabel heard her last words), but it's mostly Bunny's perspective on her last day.

As much as the narrative presents our podcast trio as the focal characters with a sympathetic view of their events of the day, I liked getting a break from them. Bunny is a bit foul-mouthed at times, but she's unlikable for being a stickler for the rules as Board President in a way that also reveals her more positive aspect of noticing details about people. She tips the waiter at Pickle Jar Diner with enough extra for him to the DJ equipment he must have brought up to her over the years, she mentions the doorman's wife's knee while grumbling about him not picking up a littered plastic plate, and she seems to enjoy the walk with Nina about preparing to take over as Board President (though Nina is very pregnant and Bunny's not 100% sold on the idea of moving to Boca Raton, Florida). She really seems to enjoy Charles' offhanded comment 'what would we do without you' when she knows the trick to getting the lift started again, and she seemed to want to use her last board meeting to announce that she didn't want to actually leave. Nina does not take this well, and Howard takes down the insult trading in the meeting minutes [our trio found while initially snooping inside Bunny's apartment]. There's a scene where she maybe wanted to join the trio on celebrating their success with Jan/podcast ending that sets off the second-hand embarrassment, but we get to see a bit of work shoes and long trousers from the killer appearing at her apartment. (I can never remember where most characters live, but Bunny is a few doors down from Mabel, which might explain how she managed to get there before finally dying.)

From SquidgeStatus:

Squidge.org is proud to bring you FenRecs.com - a new site that's designed to share fanfiction and other fanworks recommendations, as well as places for community discussion, from writing advice to beta requests to fandom and pairing recommendations. The site uses open-source software called Lemmy, and it is designed to be much like Reddit. If you don't know what Reddit is, it's a website that allows people to have different communities (subreddits) where they share things - from pictures to news to stories.

Additional info

For privacy reasons, you won't be able to access FenRecs.com unless you have an account. This seems to be the best way to keep people's privacy requests fulfilled. The site allows you to block other accounts, but the one thing it does not have (at least at the moment) is tags. So you cannot search for or add tags to posts, nor can you block tags. We'll be continuing to research and see if we can add this in the future. Additionally, there is the ability to have downvotes for posts, but it is disabled at the current time. If and when the site rollout goes smoothly, downvotes may be rolled out as well.

If you are familiar with Reddit, then FenRecs.com will be second nature to you. You'll find Fic Recs and other discussions that you can upvote. A post with lots of upvotes will mean to the casual visitor that this is a fic that many people like. A post with fewer upvotes doesn't mean the work is any less valuable than a higher upvoted fic. It just means that not enough people have red it to recommend it.

User registration is going to be fully open from 10am Pacific Time until 4pm Pacific Time January 2nd, 2025 - just a six hour period. We're doing this because we do need an influx of people to come in, poke around, create some communities, and add in some fic recs and/or other discussions. After 4pm Pacific Time 1/2/25, registration will still be open; however registration will need to be approved by admins.

On the one hand, a forum place for community discussion that is not joining a dozen separate Discord servers. On the other hand, six hours to make a decision about a site that I can't see a demo of before joining. Hm.

Day #1: In your own space, update your fandom information.

I've done a bit of an update to my Dreamwidth profile and Intro post. Most of my Pillowfort entry this year was a slight update to tags:

I tend to use Pillowfort to share personal reactions after an episode or grumble-slash-vent in a view locked space, so I don't have a lot of fandom content on my fort that I'd consider interesting. I'm not even sure I'd say I'm a 'fan' of some of the series I've mentioned, if someone expects me to like the canon and engage with fannish work relating to it. However, I have some of my tags below the read-more for anyone who'd like to get an idea of what I've grumbled about.

I have a tag that goes on all fannish content of my own - fan scribbling. Due to the naming conventions of some shows, I also tag tv shows if applicable. As of January 2025, I've tagged such shows as: All Creatures Great and Small, Annika, Ghosts, Killing Eve, Only Murders in the Building, Magpie Murders, Monarch, Pose, Prodigal Son, Supernatural, The Ark, and What We Do In The Shadows.

Due to the nature of venting, some content is view-locked and other fandoms have also been referenced without being explicitly named or tagged (example: Harry Potter). My view-locked tags: #followers only, #mutuals only, #login only.

Copied from my fort sidebar:

Links: About Me || Fort Brochure || Tags

Instead of a daily post, each day will go in a separate comment on this post.

Some part of my brain just keeps gnawing away at bits of Fire Country ideas, but I'm just collecting them all in the comments on this post.