Fashion Friday :: rewind a couple of episodes, because Trudy rocks my socks.

Like I am always saying.  Trudy (Alison Brie) is a lovely woman and I may have actually applauded when she told Pete off.

I feel like “I’m having to do this more modern and/or interpretive” is a going theme this season so far.  But, still stands.  New Apartmint Top, ModCloth.

And actually, I can totally see Trudy wearing this together.  Jukebox DJ Jumper, ModCloth.

Because Trudy Campbell is badass enough to pull off matchy-matchy.  Pecking Border Heel, ModCloth.

A bit smaller than Trudy’s, but cute and I like their vibe.  Freshwater Girl Earrings, ModCloth.

–your fangirl heroine.

Fashion Friday :: so begins 2013′s Mad Men series.

And it is begun with cutesy hipster party dress versions of gowns worn by some of the ladies in promo photos.

First, my darling beauteous Joan, rightful queen of all she surveys.

It was this dress that made me decide to avoid looking for proper gowns and just do this hipster party style.  Grecian Glamour dress, ModCloth.

A bit cutesier, but that’s another part of the game here.  Drops of Enchantment Earrings, ModCloth.

Just go with it.  I don’t think you can see her shoes in any of the pictures, but these feel quite Joan.  Everything’s Aglow Heel in Gold, ModCloth.

Now, darling Peggy.

This is a bit edgier, a bit more casual, but I think it suits Peggy’s overall style.  Sanguine Outlook Dress, ModCloth.

Well, those are just about perfect.  Glamour Pearl Earrings, ModCloth.

Because I assume that were Peggy a modern semi-hipster, she’d be one of those modern semi-hipsters who’s preppy but in a vintage way so it’s still cool.  Right Here Heel in Black, ModCloth.

I wish this picture didn’t also have Pete in it.  But here, Trudy (Alison Brie).

Very cute, but then Trudy is a cute woman.  Window Trappings Dress, ModCloth.

Because Trudy feels like the kind of woman who would wear floral earrings, really.  Stylish Genealogy Earrings, ModCloth.

I mean, I suspect she’d be wearing heels, but in semi-hipster modern times, flats are fine when they’re four-times-over Mary Janes.  Homemade Ice Cream Flat in Vanilla, ModCloth.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 6 ladies who are not “my own” but who I will nonetheless defend and love forever

Ladies who are “my own” are, for example, the eight women in my header .  Ladies who are otherwise ones I’ve claimed as being in one way or another or had assigned to me (via friends dibsing characters, via deciding it in my own head, via cosplay, via whatever).  Ladies who belong to the elusive chart that I keep hinting at forever.

Ladies who are not “my own” but who I will nonetheless defend and love forever are generally ones I don’t relate to as intimately or latch onto in quite the same way, for any number of reasons.  And I’m sure there are more, but this is a starter list.  One per canon to keep it simple.

6. Trudy Campbell (Alison Brie, Mad Men)
I don’t even have that much to say because I mention my slightly irrational Trudy feelings all the time, but I love Trudy, the end.

5. Priya Tsetsang (Dichen Lachman, Dollhouse)
This is also an obvious list.  I haven’t really gotten into a lot of Priya-by-herself meta, but this is not because I don’t have feelings about it.  Hey, I’m just going to do the thing of pointing you guys yet again to incomprehensiblelentils on tumblr, specifically her Priya tag.  Amongst all of the pretty pictures, there is far more articulate meta than I could ever come up with, and it’s well-reasoned and thought out and completely accurate because Priya is awesome okay you guys.  She first caught my attention in a “whoa, pretty” kind of way, yes, but as time went on and she was developed, I absolutely fell in love.

4. Jessica Hamby (Deborah Ann Woll, True Blood)
Actually, this is also a list of me reiterating what I’ve said before and putting it all in one place, case in point.  Jess is fantastic, Jess is assertive, Jess is a badass, Jess knows what she is and is not comfortable with doing and who she does and does not want to be in her life.  For all the ways that she’s relatively teenage-human-girl-”normal,” a type often associated with flightiness and foolishness (and indeed, she’s teased accordingly by Pam [Kristin Bauer van Straten] on the regular), with romantic idealism and emotionalism, she’s actually one of the more practical characters and at times a voice of reason.  Sure, she’s a romantic.  Sure, she does silly things sometimes, and sometimes she regrets them.  Sure, she gets really emotional sometimes.  Sure, she’s kind of “normal” and girly.  Are any of these things character flaws?  Well, in the eyes of some characters, maybe, but overall nope.

3. Tara Maclay (Amber Benson, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Like I was saying.  Tara is lovely forever, and I will have her back forever.

2. Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner, Game of Thrones)
I used to say “I guess I get why people can be frustrated with Sansa, but no,” and I won’t even do that anymore.  There are specific instances in Sansa’s past that were not good calls on her part, but you know what?  There are specific instances in basically everyone’s past that were not good calls.  Especially in Game of Thrones spotlessness is impossible.  I’ve heard people say Sansa deserves certain things that happen to her before, and, plainly put, nope.  I have actually gotten into real life arguments with people over their judgments of Sansa, and while they may not have been effective overall, they nonetheless took place, because I adore Sansa and cannot abide by blanket judgments of her.

1. Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin, Firefly)
As evidenced by the amounts of Inara meta I have produced over time.  I honestly think Inara is my all-time favorite lady character who is not “my own” in any medium.  She is so many things: suited to glamorous society, well-educated and talented in many regards, sexually confident (and bisexual!), a badass when she needs to be and not just by violence but with her words, a wonderful friend.  She is psychologically knowledgeable, feminist, artistic, sarcastic, mannered, determined, wonderfully flawed and yet fully realized.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 10 (sometimes ridiculously) minor television ladies I have (sometimes ridiculously) latched onto

What it says on the box.  I get weirdly attached to really minor characters, sometimes for legitimate reasons and sometimes for reasons that are somewhat silly.  Which you all should know by now.

10. Nora Gainesborough (Lucy Griffiths, True Blood)
I mean, technically she’s main credits but she’s only been present for three episodes so far and honestly I still have not figured out why I am so attached to her already.  I mean, there’s the capable ladyvampire thing, there’s the British thing.  I think that’s part of it?  I still haven’t figured out what her game actually is, because for all we know she could still be lying right now (since she’s all good at that and stuff, which I also enjoy in fiction sometimes I think) and maybe she is and maybe she isn’t and I’m pretty sure that won’t change that I just enjoy her presence and want her around more.  And I do not enjoy that every episode and next week’s preview so far has basically been an “oh god is she meeting the true death not yet nooo” situation.

9. Drusilla (Juliet Landau, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Yes, she was in more overall episodes of Buffy and Angel than, say, Miracle Laurie was in Dollhouse, but I did the percentages.  Miracle Laurie is not on this list for Mellie/Madeline who I love so much because she was in 57.7% of the episodes in the series.  That’s more than half (barely, but still).  So she was supporting cast.  Juliet Landau was in 11.8% of Buffy episodes and 6% of Angel episodes, or 9.4% of episodes in the overall collection of the Buffy/Angelverse.  SO.  And anyway, yes, I love Dru a lot.  I love Dru because I love the crazy ones and I love the ones who are unabashedly evil and I love the British ones, yes, and I just love her.  And one of my favorite discussions to have is the one with someone who has just fallen in love with Dru because I like to remember when I first discovered how awesome she is.

8. Ruby/Little Red Riding Hood (Meghan Ory, Once Upon a Time)
Granted, she has been present in 77% of the first season’s episodes and has been promoted to main cast for season 2 (YES YAY).  But she’s really only had one episode to actually do anything, and a few moments in others, and mostly she’s just sort of there.  Honestly, I loved her from the start; I think it was the red lipstick that did me in.  Aside from her waitress clothes, she sort of dresses/accessorizes like she came from my everfavorite now-defunct rockabilly/quasi-alternative store.  Also, she’s just very genuine and seems like a good person and I am excited and also terrified to get to know her better (terrified because I don’t want anything strange to happen to her character-wise I guess).

7. Trudy Campbell (Alison Brie, Mad Men)
As I mentioned last week, basically.

6. Aylesh Rohan (Emma Kenney, Boardwalk Empire)
Literally she was in one episode.  Literally I have already discussed every reason I loved her, but oh wow, it was pretty much instant affection for that bookish perceptive little girl who should really be more present.

5. Ros (Esmé Bianco, Game of Thrones)
I do not care.  She was not in the books, and serves mostly for people to have sex with while they talk about important plot points.  I have developed a strange affection for her anyway.  This, I will admit, is largely because I discovered that Esmé Bianco is a burlesque performer and pinup model, and also because of my latent tendency to latch onto what is the obviously-not-musical version of the chorus whore, after my days being such.  I look at Ros and go “oh, yep, that’s who I played in Oklahoma! and Once Upon a Mattress, just in Westeros.”

4. Saffron (Christina Hendricks, Firefly)
I first watched Firefly before I started watching Mad Men, though not by much; even still, “because Christina Hendricks” is a valid reason at play here.  I really do love Saffron for other reasons, too.  A lot of them being the aforementioned “I love when fictional women are really good liars and are unabashedly [somewhat] evil” reasons.

3. Trinity Ashby (Zoe Boyle, Sons of Anarchy)
This is actually just a list of fictional women I have mentioned before, basically.   I seriously have no reason why I love Trinny so hard, but I really do adore her, except for that whole “whoops, almost boned my brother” thing which wasn’t her fault, so.  She’s just all Irish and sweet and I want to know more about her, dammit.  She sparks my curiosity.

2. Mag (Felicia Day, Dollhouse)
(You can all see where this is going, can’t you?  Really?)  “Because Felicia Day” is of course a reason; “Joss’s redheaded lesbians” is also a valid reason, though a belated one as per that was not made known till the second of her two episodes.  And wheelchair!Mag at the end of “Epitaph Two” was also important to me at a point in my life, so there’s that.  I dunno.  I like women who are badass not necessarily because they’re kicking ass but because they’re just sticking it out through tough times and doing what they have to and not giving up.

1. Bennett Halverson (Summer Glau, Dollhouse)
WOW SHOCKER I KNOW.  But seriously, I have discussed before how crazy it is that I am so attached to a character with so little screen time; other than the oft-mentioned “dear holy god it is disturbing to me how much I self-identify sometimes” kinds of ridiculous things, there is the fact that for so little screen time, she actually had a pretty reasonable amount of development.  Backstory, check.  There were fuzzy details, sure, but there were fuzzy details about everyone on this show because of its untimely end.  Also, Bennett is another one of those not-exactly-obvious badasses, in my opinion.  No, trying to kill Echo was not a good idea, and no, the Dollhouse in general and working for it was probably not a good idea.  But damn, I love geniuses who are all geniusy; also despite her various deranged vengeance schemes, she is not someone whogave up.  What happened to her changed her, probably not in a great way, but some people would probably use that kind of thing as a reason to just surrender, and there she is intellectually badassing it up anyway.  I mean.  Headcanon, what?  Irrational, what?  Unashamed, yes.

–your fangirl heroine.

Fictional Friday :: 5 more women I’d love to invent an alternate canon for

5. Trudy Campbell (Alison Brie, Mad Men)
I think Trudy is the absolute cutest.  I fully recognize that we don’t really ever get to see a whole lot of Trudy’s personality; she exists largely to provide a happy family life that is a source of angst for perpetually dissatisfied Pete (Vincent Kartheiser).  But this is why I want something more for her: Trudy deserves a life that does not include and has never included Pete.  I’ve always believed this and it’s just getting worse: I want a world where she gets to be her own woman and hey, if she wants to have a husband and children, that’s her right, but I want her to have a husband who is not a jerk, not a perpetual sleaze, not Pete.  I want her to be happy, and though I don’t see Trudy and Pete’s marriage actually falling apart, I think season 5 showed that socially speaking, Pete is subconsciously attempting to turn into a dangerous shade of Don.  And Trudy does not deserve that.

4. Shilo Wallace (Alexa Vega, Repo! The Genetic Opera)
This is one of those situations where yes, I love her canon as a whole, but wow, babygirl has been dealt the absolute worst hand of life cards that can be.  Although Repo! is kind of a canon where every single character’s life is in one way or another (and probably more than one way) terrible, so I actually sort of want alt-canon for… well, some of them.  Shilo, though, I feel like any of her personal failings are because her life is utter crap and, you know, she’s been locked in a house for seventeen years, perpetually poisoned by her father, and people keep dying right in front of her, and essentially, she just needs a new life where nobody dies or poisons her and she gets to breathe fresh air and maybe kick some ass (literally or metaphorically) or something.

3. Magdalene “Blind Mag” DeFoe (Sarah Brightman, Repo! The Genetic Opera)
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before how irrationally attached I really am and always have been to Mag.  And her life?  Her life is also a pile of crap.  It was all oh yay friend!  Oh yay bionic eyes!  and then oh no dead friend.  Oh no bionic eyes = life-ruining contract with a man who is actually a huge bastard, wow, I will never be free again.  Oh no I guess all I can do is stab my bionic eyes out.  And that sucks.  Mag strikes me as a fairly decent woman who deserves to get to sing opera in a world where body parts are not routinely harvested under protection of the law.

2. Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films, or Lara Pulver, Steven Moffat’s Sherlock)
BECAUSE ORIGINAL CANON IRENE WAS JUST FINE.  Original canon Irene was the woman who bested Sherlock, and that was that.  She could go on her merry and be awesome.  The Ritchie films’ Irene was sassy, but what was up with the love plot with Sherlock?  They were never romantically involved.  Also, she had the worst ending.  Such an insult to her talent.  And okay, I love BBC Irene.  I love the Irene who loves ladies and is a dominatrix and does her lipstick all bright red.  But wow, I do not like her ending either.  I like it even less, actually, because it turned into this hideous damsel in distress thing.  The one woman who almost bested Sherlock, had way too much sexual tension with him despite being sexually attracted to women, and then needed him to rescue her?  Gross.  I want a modern Irene who is allowed to be her own white knight for crying out loud.  

1. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games)
Okay so I’m all for ladies leading action films.  I’m a big fan actually.  And I can generally deal with Katniss as a character.  But wow, I wish she got to live in a different world that didn’t force her to un-introvert and get wrapped up in dumb love triangles that she specifically said at the beginning that she didn’t want.  I want her to have a world where she’s allowed to be by herself when she wants and where she’s allowed to not have any romances if she wants and where she doesn’t have to save the increasingly ridiculous day all the time and where she is just allowed to be herself for goodness’ sake.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: one thing (temporarily) ends and another begins.

Aka, the Sunday I wished the Tonys weren’t because I wanted immediate Mad Men season finale and True Blood season premiere and the weekdays I made up for it.

Obviously I’m into a lot of television programs.  But of currently-running programs I think I am the most intensely into three right now: Game of Thrones and Mad Men and True Blood.  (As evidenced by massive collections of posting pertaining to them, often in sequence, and the immense ladyfeels I have about some of their characters.)  So it was sort of neat and tidy that Game of Thrones ended one week and the next week Mad Men wrapped up and True Blood its place. The tried and true HBO Sunday night pattern will not fail me.

So.  SPOILERS I GUESS.   Bullet-pointy as always.

Mad Men:

• After two weeks of everything happening quickly and all at once, the season finale actually felt sort of slow.  Not bad-slow, at least bad in terms of boring; it was just a different pace than the breakneck speed of angst and tragedy we’ve been subjected to recently.  It’s what aftermaths feel like though: the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the fact that this episode was finely scripted fallout and building tension.  Building to what?  Well, I guess in eighteen months or however long they make us wait this time we’ll find out.
• One of my people compared it to the series finale of The Sopranos: it’s fascinating, and lots is happening, but it’s all so relatively small compared to what’s gone down in the past that you just have to feel like it’s just paving the way for something horrendous.  It doesn’t matter that not a lot of horrendous actually goes down.  It’s the art of making you think it could.
• We’ve had a season now of Megan (Jessica Paré) as a main character, and I still can’t decide how I feel about her.  I like that she’s willing to call Don (Jon Hamm) on his bull.  I don’t necessarily like how he sometimes babies her.  I like that she’s ~going after her dreams~ in theory but it also makes me wary for future plot dramatics.  I don’t know if I have any defining feelings about her a a person.
• I still can’t decide how I feel about Don’s getting Megan the commercial.  On one hand, it was the right thing to do (although seriously, that was their Beauty and the Beast setup?  She looked like a German beer festival waitress in that costume) but on the other hand, it makes me very, very wary.  That look on Don’s face at the end, I think I know what that might mean and I don’t like it.  He’s been so good this season.
• I think it’s interesting that every time we’ve seen an adult female’s mother on the show this season, it’s served the function (at least for a little while) of questioning the daughter’s modernity.  Megan’s mother Marie (Julia Ormond) has shown up a couple of times now to be passive-aggressive and to wind up boinking Roger (John Slattery), but this time she also basically told Megan to give it up and let Don have her as a kept wife, essentially as arm candy or a trained housepet that cooks dinner.  Peggy’s mother Katherine (Myra Turley) really only showed up long enough to criticize Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) for deciding to cohabitate with her boyfriend Abe (Charlie Hofheimer) without marrying him.  And Joan’s mother Gail (Christine Estabrook) has been there to support her and to help take care of her child, but she still had plenty of things to say in the first few episodes that made Joan (Christina Hendricks) really cranky.  (“Greg’s not going to allow you to work.”  “Allow me?”)
• Oh and while we’re on the subject of Joan.  Let’s talk about Joan.  My darling should have some proper meta slated for sometime in the nearish future, so I’m not going to spend time going into the subject of what transpired two episodes ago right now.  (Except to say ow, my heart.)  I just want to buy her a drink and give her a hug and tell her it’s okay.  She shouldn’t feel like she’s expected to solve everyone’s problems, and she should know that she certainly shouldn’t feel like her only worth in problem-solving or in anything else is her ability to use womanly wiles.  She can use them like nobody’s business, but this way of thinking is legitimately not her fault.  This way of thinking is the bull that she’s surrounded by on a daily basis; the if only I mentality is understandable, it really is, but baby, it wouldn’t have solved the problem.  I also want to tell her that yes, the guys are basically jerks, and yes, she deserves better coworkers.
• Completely shallowly, though, I will (again) exclaim GLASSES CHAIIIIN. 
• You know who I want to hit the most lately?  Pete (Vincent Kartheiser).  I want to punch the smug little smirk off of his face and shake the weird entitlement/white knight hybrid mentality out of his skull.  He is not a good coworker.  He is not a good husband.  He is not a good self-actualized person.  He should really work on those things.  He owes it to himself as a person and he owes it to Trudy (Alison Brie) who I will irrationally defend forever.  I’m not saying he’s a bad person (though these last episodes haven’t exactly given a lot of evidence that he isn’t), but he needs to figure out his issues.  He needs to sort out why he behaves in such ways as he does and not do it.
• Also, this is the second Mad Men season finale that has had a sequence that made us stare at each other and go “wait, this must be a dream.”  We had that reaction regarding Don’s proposal to Megan, and we had that reaction to Pete’s weird avenging hero-that-fails scene on the train.  I’m still coming to terms with the whole business of Pete and Beth (Alexis Bledel) and her husband Howard (Jeff Clarke).  I still don’t know what to make of it.
• Basically, you know.  Feelings.

True Blood:

• WELL.  Unlike Mad Men, which picks up months and months and months later, True Blood picked up this season literally right after last season ended.  Actually backtracked to a couple of events that transpired in the finale.  Considering the cliff-hangery nature of said events, that made sense, but.
• I have fewer things to say about this, because I love True Blood a lot but it does not get me quite as feelingsy right off the bat; also premieres don’t get me as feelingsy as finales.  Probably because they’re introducing plots and ideas and things, not wrapping them up (for now).  But this is not from a lack of enjoyment.  I did enjoy it quite a lot.
• Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) is brilliant and I really really hope that she and Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) have a chance to make up amid all the AVL political messes and surprise-vampire-Tara (Rutina Wesley) (??) and many other things that are going to be going on.  She may be apologizing to Eric, but she is not apologizing for who she is.  She’s still good ol’ caustic Pam.  And I love her for it.
• Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) is beautiful.  I don’t really care about her hanging around with drunk college kids, though I see the point it served, and when did she put green in her hair, and that was a fancy Rock Band setup.  (Makes sense, it being all in King Bill’s Grand Mansion and all.  Though I can’t imagine Bill ever playing Rock Band.)  Mostly I am just devoting a bullet point to Jess because of when she burst into Jason’s (Ryan Kwanten) and told off Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian) and… whoops.  That sounded a hell of a lot like babygirl verbally declaring her intent all assertively.  (And while wearing a corset, which… yes, was there before, but.  But.)
• Well, I’m worried that Nora (Lucy Griffiths) is eventually doomed.  I don’t know when, it might not be for a while, and I hope this is one of my failure predictions.  I like her.  I am fully aware that this is completely irrational since she hasn’t been there for that long and my best reasons for liking her are that I like vampire family structure stuff, I like ladyvampires who are capable, I like that she was wearing leather wristlength gloves while she and Eric got, y’know, reacquainted and that she kept her bra on even though it’s True Blood where you can show all the boobies you want (and the gloves and the bra coordinated), and I like British people talking.  But.
• The synopsis on our television for the episode contained, after the descriptions of what everyone else was up to, the phrase “Alcide warns Sookie.”  Seriously, other than wolf politics what does Alcide (Joe Mangianello) do but warn Sookie (Anna Paquin)?
• Eric and Bill (Stephen Moyer) are buddies now, okay.  They couldn’t have thought they were getting out of this that easily though.  If it was going to succeed, it wouldn’t have happened until the second-to-last or last episode of the season.
• Also, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) is a pro.
• This is officially nothing like the book.  And I do not care at all.

–your fangirl heroine.

Spoiler Alert Saturday :: my thoughts on The Five-Year Engagement

Honestly, I put off seeing this.  Jason Segal is good business, Emily Blunt is good business, Rhys Ifans is good business, Alison Brie is really good business, but the premise looked like it had a 50/50 chance of being decently done or just tiresome.  And I’m getting pretty sick of wedding comedies or the trend that to have women play an active not-just-girlfriend role in a comedy it has to be either a wedding comedy or a baby comedy (or, irrelevant to this, a comedy about fashion).

But the cast won out over the theoretical premise, and I’m actually pretty glad it did.

This is not to say that there weren’t a couple of moments that made me facepalm.  There were.  The fact that Jason Segal’s Tom more than once said something about how he was a man and men don’t do that, or when he pulled the “that’s just what people do” card too (I severely dislike that as an excuse). The fact that a fair amount of the tension seemed to revolve around the fact that he was a man uprooting himself for a woman in the relationship, which is naturally just so!!! shocking!!!

The fact that of course Winton the professor (Rhys Ifans) would have to hit on Violet (Emily Blunt).

The fact that immediately after Susie (Alison Brie) gave a speech about how she wasn’t into marriage or kids or anything but congratulations you two she had to go and have sex with Alex (Chris Pratt) who she said she wasn’t going to have sex with and then get pregnant and then get married.  Of couuurse.  Because the only alternatives for women who say they don’t want to get married or have kids are then doing it, a la this, being secretly just saying it because they were bitter, or being shunned and judged a la Megan Fox’s character in Friends With Kids.  God forbid a plot allow a woman to just want to not have kids or get married and have everyone else, including the writer, respect that.

But I digress.  As comedies go, it was fairly realistic.  Though Tom occasionally said punchable “but I am a man!” things, he was also a sympathetic character some of the time.  Violet sometimes had valid points, and I understood her tendency to psychoanalyze every situation.  I could look at both sides in the arguments that Tom and Violet had and see their points.  That’s not unheard of, but it’s still refreshing.  Nobody was 100% irrational all of the time.

Though I honestly thought that how they had the wedding at the end was what they should have done from the beginning.  I was hoping when they started planning the ridiculous accordion/barbeque/whatever wedding, they were just going to elope or something.  But then, that’s using silly logic, clearly. That would have been like if that episode of How I Met Your Mother where Marshall and Lily decided to go to Atlantic City had actually ended with them getting married then and there.  Perhaps logical, but also perhaps unsatisfying for the majority of viewers.

Honestly, though, let’s talk about Alison Brie.  I love the others, but I love her the most.  Just in an always context and also in a this movie context.  No, I don’t love what they did to her character re: the plot.  And I fully admit my bias because I think she is adorable always.  But even though the speech at the first engagement party was an elaborate setup for the silly plot, I just love her giving it.  Trying to stay calm by talking in a deep voice.  I appreciated that she didn’t start dressing differently or more “momlike” when she had children.  I thought the singing at the end was silly, but it’s all right because I like when people I like sing cute. Also Alison Brie’s British accent was worthy of a thumbs-up.

And holy crap, the argument between Susie and Violet where Susie was being Elmo and Violet was being Cookie Monster.  That was easily my favorite scene in the movie.  Alison Brie’s Elmo voice was brilliant, and she had an Elmo face going too; Emily Blunt’s Cookie Monster was pretty good too.  “C is for condommmm!  That’s good enough for me.”  Just.  Perfect.  And being someone who carries on entire conversations in voices sometimes, or at least someone who is willing to do this, I say congratulations.  That is my kind of pop-culture humor.

Oh, and the “come as your own superhero” party?  Well, I approve of Super Bunny, that is just weird and cool.  I wanted to hear more of an explanation re: Princess Diana.  And did Susie come as, like, the Dessert Princess or something?  I approve of that too.

Also, a Swell Season cover thrown in there.

So… yes.  I’d go ahead and sum that up as a pleasant surprise.

–your fangirl heroine.

Fashion Friday :: and now it’s Trudy’s turn.

I have made no secret of the fact that I find Trudy (Alison Brie) adorable.  She’s cute, and she’s too good for Pete, and she represents a side of the sixties style that is largely otherwise unused in the show.  Peggy is all professional, Joan is all sexy-professional, Betty is all… Betty, Megan is a little mod.  Trudy is the fluffy, girly type.  She’s a “good girl” through and through, all cute things and pouffy dresses and florals, and she is darling and well-suited to suburban dinner parties.

So here goes.

It’s not quite the same.  Trudy’s dress is a floatier fabric, a larger floral, one that’s green with yellow, not yellow with green and pink.  It’s straps, not haltered.  And there’s no little pink belt.  But this feels close, emotionally?  Made in the Shade Dress in Floral Flurry, ModCloth.

Trudy’s necklace and bracelet are a bit chunkier and a bit more abstract, but I couldn’t resist.  These ones are designed to match.  And they’re gold and they’re cute and they’re not exorbitantly priced and they feel appropriate.  Pearl of my Dreams Necklace and Bracelet, ModCloth.

I think Trudy’s earrings are also more jewel-clusters than dangly ones, but these have little bitty bows.  That seems very Trudy to me: classy yet adorable.  Tea Party Planner Earrings, ModCloth.

And then, a whole collection of heels, getting progressively kickier as they go.  All of these are out of stock or on limited availability, but it’s ModCloth, they may reappear.  And they’re all adorable.  The plainer ones are probably closer to accurate, but the funkier ones are more suited to making this modern, perhaps.  Wishing and Taupe-ing Heel, Cafe au Lady Heel, Like It or Knot Heel in Rose, Gussied Up Heel, For Your Information Heel in Pink, all ModCloth.  Of course.

–your fangirl heroine.

Fictional Friday :: 6 more real life faces for more Disney princesses

The term “princess” being used loosely, and to define basically any Disney heroine.  (Anyway, the ones that aren’t properly royalty are often the most badass.  Mulan.  What.)

6. Alison Brie (Snow White, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves)

Much like how I imagine Reese Witherspoon can speak to mice, I imagine Alison Brie can in fact understand birdsong and whatnot.  She’s just the cutest ever.

5. Elle Fanning (Alice, Alice in Wonderland)

We wanted an Alice who was actually close to Alice-age.  Because Mia Wasikowska was a rad grown-up Alice, but Alice isn’t grown up in the cartoon.  (Not that most of our other casting choices aren’t grown up, but Alice is younger than the others, so it works.  Okay?  Also, Elle would just be a fantastic Alice.)

4. Jennifer Hudson (Tiana, The Princess and the Frog)

She’s a good fit.  She’s triumphed over professional adversities and stuff, like Tiana.  She didn’t win American Idol, but she kept at it, and then she won an Oscar.  So.

3. Liza Lapira (Mulan, Mulan)

So technically, she’s part-Chinse, part-Filipino, part-Spanish, but I think she’s adorable, and I love her, and I think she could be a super badass.

2. Moon Bloodgood (Pocahontas, Pocahontas)

A lot of Hollywood actresses have some Native American heritage.  But a lot of the are the ones who look like Cameron Diaz, who have some, but it doesn’t count for much.  I’ve only seen Moon Bloodgood in the most recent Terminator, really, but she does have the most awesome name of all time, so that counts for something.

1. Lara Pulver (Meg, Hercules)

Meg is my favorite.  Meg is my girl.  We’d originally discussed Maggie Siff as Meg, which I thought would have been equally brilliant, but my friend said “OH!  What about the girl who’s Irene on Sherlock?”  I hadn’t yet watched this season (and I’ve only watched the first episode, so don’t spoil me, I don’t have a good excuse, but I haven’t got around to the other two yet, I’m a busy girl) so I made a mental note.  Then I watched it.  And I went holy hot damn.  Irene is also my girl.  It makes perfect sense.  (And I didn’t realize until right now that Lara Pulver also played Sookie’s fairy godmother on True Blood, so that’s irrelevant, but my mind is still a little blown.)

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 4 doomed Mad Men relationships and 1 maybe-not-doomed one

5. Trudy and Pete Campbell (Alison Brie and Vincent Kartheiser)
And actually, I think this is the only one that doesn’t spell certain, absolute doom.  Trudy is too sweet for Pete.  Pete is kind of a d-bag at times.  But I think that Trudy brings out the good in Pete, even if he doesn’t always benefit her as much, and they have a pretty good chance of being happy, at least for a while.

4. Betty and Henry Francis (January Jones and Christopher Stanley)
They’re still in the early years of their relationship, but any marriage that begins with a proposal while the woman is still married to someone else can’t end well.  And they’re neither of them particularly good people.  I’m just… wary.

3. Megan Calvet and Don Draper (Jessica Paré and Jon Hamm)
Similarly, I’m skeptical of any relationship that Don finds himself in.  Especially one so completely whirlwind as his engagement to Megan.  Megan, who we still don’t have a feel for; Megan, who just seems like the next woman, not the woman for him.  Don hasn’t got the greatest track record, and Megan doesn’t interest me that much as a character, but the odds that she’s too sweet to get wrapped up in the hell of being Don’s wife and looking the other way (’cause you know he can’t stop himself from cheating) are pretty good.  I don’t know.  Maybe they’ll wind up being good for each other.  Maybe it will work out for the best.  But it’s Mad Men, where most relationships nosedive, without fail.

2. Jane and Roger Sterling (Peyton List and John Slattery)
Well, they have to.  Roger knows in his heart that Jane was a mistake.  He’s been seeing that since season three: that marrying Jane just gives him another emotional infant to look after.  Jane should be off having fun, stupid fun, and Roger should be with someone who isn’t so absolutely terrible for him.  Because, despite his age, Roger is really just a child, too; and while he’s not always a particularly good person, Jane isn’t either.  Jane is young and silly and shallow, and she hasn’t committed any grievous sins of character, but she’s… not nice.  She’s not responsible.  She’s not a good influence on Roger’s temperament.

1. Joan and Greg Harris (Christina Hendricks and Sam Page)
As mentioned before, I’m firmly in favor of the “Greg dies in Vietnam” plot.  Mostly for the fact that it would allow for theoretical Don + Joanie bonding friend times, and I friendship that so hard, I do, but also because, while I don’t think that Roger is the ideal for her, exactly, I think that the only time I like Roger is sometimes with Joan.  I think that she helps him be not a child.  I think that, even though she knows it’s stupid, she does love him, and she doesn’t love Greg.  Not in the same way.  It’s not the smart match from her end, but it’s the one that, ultimately, is what they go back to.  They’ve already gone back to it.  I don’t know how they’re handling the Joan+Roger baby; season five begins sixteen months later, or something, I read, and that could mean many things.  But I hope it turns out okay, because I want a happy something for my Joan.

–your fangirl heroine.