Happy 2026, friends, fans, foes, and everything in between!
It’s been a while since I updated my website, so I figured I should. Starting this year, I’ll be focusing the site on blogs pertaining to my writing, whether that be updates, reflections, or promotions, etc. Other pieces will be saved for the Substack I’m seriously considering launching as one of my New Year’s resolutions. My working title is “The Words of Nathan Marchand, the Mad Millennial.” Stay tuned for more!
Recently, I finally published an overdue Christmas special for my kaiju podcast The Monster Island Film Vault. It’s a fanfic audiodrama entitled “Gamera Saves Christmas.” Yes, a Christmas special about the (usually) corny giant rocket-powered turtle who loves kids. It was a crazy idea my friend Joy Metter gave me, and after several months of co-writing and, at points, even co-directing, we finally got it done. We took it far more seriously than we had any right to do, but that’s how I roll.
The story’s protagonist, an angry teenage girl named Susan, has a crisis of faith when she’s whisked away to the North Pole, where she meets Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, Krampus, and a kaiju reindeer (you read that right!), among other things, and learns that Gamera is, in fact, still alive despite a suicide attack on an alien spaceship in 1980. Belief and faith might seem like obvious themes for a Christmas story, and honestly, I thought that, too, for most of the production. But while I was scrambling to edit the hour-long drama, I experienced what I can only call “Tolkien moments” several times.
While hearing my sister, Sarah, perform as Susan after I added music to the scenes, I got weirdly emotional. The most intense one came toward the end where (SPOILER WARNING!) she takes Santa’s magic Wreath to Gamera to revive him. Susan gives a speech about her struggles and why she’s now angry that when she needs Gamera most, that’s when he “go[es] and dies” (he was defeated by the aforementioned reindeer kaiju). In desperation, she throws the Wreath at him, and to her surprise, he rises to fight his foe again. It was, as Tolkien famously said in “On Fairy-Stories,” a eucatastrophe. It was the sudden turn where the hero improbably survives. Some would call it the “stand and cheer moment.” But it was also the moment where Susan’s faith is also revived. The “resurrection” of Gamera was merely an outgrowth of that. From there, we had the exciting finale where Gamera battles the reindeer, winning this time, which is made even more potent thanks to this.
Later, I experienced two more “Tolkien moments” in quieter scenes with Susan. One was when she spoke with Santa, who told her to hold onto her what she experienced, even when the concerns of adulthood overwhelmed her. It gave me flashbacks to Aslan speaking with the Pevensie children in several of the Narnia books. Then in the next scene, Susan makes the audiodrama’s thematic statement with its final line after being reunited with her disbelieving parents: “Some things…you just have to take on faith.” Gamera’s roar is heard in the distance as confirmation. Then a kinda corny rock song called “Gamera Always Wins” starts playing. These moments didn’t push me to the edge of tears, but I did feel them in my gut.
I’ve heard some say that J.R.R. Tolkien (and also his friend and fellow Inkling, C.S. Lewis) didn’t create stories so much as he “found” them. In other words, he presented the world as it is and how it operates. To put it even more simply, he showed the truth. Beneath this seeming simplicity are the deeper things of life. What appears obvious suddenly overflows with depth and richness. Tolkien called this “sub-creation,” the act of using the “primary world,” which according to his Catholic faith was God’s creation, to fashion another world. Art has a way of reframing things in unexpected ways that helps us see the obvious in new ways. Suddenly, Susan’s struggle with believing crazy things like Santa Claus and a living Gamera brought to mind those times when I grappled with doubts about my own faith. Contrary to popular belief, it’s rarely easy to hold true to one’s beliefs. But the mere words on the page didn’t affect me. I needed to hear my sister’s performance combined with music to get the full impact. Perhaps I should add “Gamera Saves Christmas” to my short list of kaiju stories that nearly made me cry.
Or maybe I was too invested in the kaiju fanfic audiodrama I was creating to be taken seriously. Ha!
Regardless, you can hear “Gamera Saves Christmas” on MIFV”s website, YouTube channel (see below), or wherever you get your podcasts.