things I love: basketball and James Ellison

[pellucid]

As a distraction from my current professional anxieties (waaaaaaaaaaaiting, graaaaaaaaaaaading), let's talk about basketball. Specifically, WOOT, DUKE LOST!!! Always happy times, and I take particular delight when Duke loses before we do (even if it's technically in the same round, because let's face it, my Kentucky boys are going to need the game

Comments

[beccatoria]

Ahahahaha, my mother went to Duke. Does this mean we are now on opposite sides of some arcane blood feud? ;) (If it helps, I'm pretty sure she didn't enjoy it that much and had a much better time as a grad student at UMass...)

But yes, JAMES ELLISON. You're so right that the show gets better the more you watch it - I think it's because one of it's strengths is a very solid, intricate structure and such a huge amount of forethought that clearly went into it and doesn't go into many shows. So you don't notice it first time around, but it means it bears up to rewatch sooo well because there's more to notice, and if nothing new to notice, the competent elegance of the structure is just such a joy to watch unfold when you know where it's headed and realise how much was planted and how early.

BUT BACK TO JAMES ELLISON. He really is just the kind of hot, stoic, earnest, undramatic woobie that I can never understand why fandom isn't all over. You're lucky I'm already married or we might be on the opposite sides of another arcane blood feud... :p

IDK what it is about him really. I do think that a lot of it is the competence and the determination, but the way he does it without melodrama. Which, I suppose, is pretty much the same quality I appreciate in a lot of my favourite characters - Laura Roslin, Sarah Connor, Olivia Dunham, hell, even River Song because her melodrama is calculated and never at a time when it will cost someone something. She puts on a helluva show, but it's never emo and when stuff gets serious, she's quietly fixing the teleporter.

In conclusion: OH JAMES. The fact that he and Sarah never got to make out in glorious season three technicolour on my computer screen is a source of endless tragedy for me.

[pellucid]

I'm no great fan of Duke as an educational institution, but the blood feud is really between the basketball teams, so if your mother doesn't care about basketball, we're probably all good! Though really, the true feud is between Duke and North Carolina, but everybody hates Duke on principle, and there's certainly no love lost between Kentucky and Duke, in particular. (To illustrate the general sentiment, there is a famous GQ list of America's 25 Douchiest Colleges, in which Duke is number 2, even though "they're probably number one. But we'd rather not have Duke be number one at anything.")

But yes. JAMES ELLISON!!!!!!!!

He really is just the kind of hot, stoic, earnest, undramatic woobie that I can never understand why fandom isn't all over.

I know!!! Except that fandom does tend to prefer its male woobies to be dramatic, doesn't it. Preferably stoic and dramatic at the same time, what with the whole stereotypical hero thing, and I've never quite understood that--all the brooding and the great tragic past and manpain and stuff. Whereas James is just the kind of guy who gets shit done. Even when he doesn't have all the pieces, he acts rather than broods, and I like that. And I swear he just keeps getting hotter the more I watch. Objectively speaking, Richard T. Jones was probably hotter in his Judging Amy days, but while I do enjoy Bruce Van Exel, there's just something about the older, wiser, more jaded and more broken James Ellison. *melts*

The fact that he and Sarah never got to make out in glorious season three technicolour on my computer screen is a source of endless tragedy for me.

Truly, there is no justice in the world.