And this time, I actually know what everyone is talking about while they are talking about it!

[sour_idealist]

By which I mean: Tonight I saw X-Men: First Class.

To the surprise of nobody, I have thoughts!

So, I was going to say "Y'all can go enjoy the Erik/Xavier, I am OVER HERE IN THE CORNER WITH EVERYONE ELSE," and then I got to the 'move the satellite' scene and realized my hands had started miming the process of physically shoving their faces together without asking for my permission first. SO UM THAT. Look, they're jerks and all, but snarky domesticity and the possibility of mindporn sort of did me in. That said, OTHER THINGS I SHIP:

• Raven/Angel: Potentially adorable. They can swap stories of their different lives! Raven can forge Angel's wings! (Wow, I spent way too long in Inception fandom.) They can get drunk and cuddle a lot and wake up in the morning and go "Oh Lord did we have sex? We didn't, did we? We didn't? Great.... :(" And then they do, once the hangover is gone. (This can, really, happen either before everything blows up or later.) GIRRLLFRENS, BASICALLY.
• Raven/Emma Frost: Shapeshifters! Bonding over the true-forms thing! Liking each others' true forms without being all Pygmalion-y about it (Magneto.) Giving Emma characterization up in here!
• Emma Frost/Moira MacTaggert! Okay, so this is basically one I came up with earlier in the movie because I was determined to come out armed to provide femmeslash, and then the bit where Moira was sneaking through the nightclub and it cut from her view through the bookcase to another gratuitous shot of Emma's cleavage, which probably wasn't meant to be a POV shot, and there turned out to be easier femmeslash ships to work, but I kinda got attached to this. Angsty foe-yay and futher mindporn! (All Emma Frost ships may be assumed to involve sex via telepathy, but in this one they lack the opportunity for anything else, SO.)
• Raven/Hank: Yeah, he was a jerk about her mutant form, but given that was his own internalization I have a lot more sympathy for that than Magneto's aforementioned Pygmalion-y approach, and, basically: GET IT GURL. No, really, I did love that she got to be the one making clearer advances there.
• Darwin/Alex: This is based entirely off of two looks and the outstretched-hand thing, but Darwin's general kindness and protectiveness as combined with Havok's loneliness could be interesting, and there is enough space to make up common ground, and DAMMIT DARWIN WAS AWESOME HE DESERVED BETTER.
• Edit: bb!Raven/bb!Charles BFF OTP. The kids were really cute.

So basically I am on allllllllllll of the shipping trains.

Beyond that... I mean, as I said and as can be gathered, my interest in the movie stemmed from thinking I might like to be a part of the fandom, or at least know if I had enough of an interest for that. In and of itself, it had great visuals and passable pacing, fairly well acted, but it was a summer blockbuster. Also, SUPERPOWERED LADIES WITH SEXUAL AGENCY ARE EVIL, BLACK DUDES ARE DEAD, ANYONE BUT A WASP DUDE IS EVIL DEAD OR BORING, OUR HERO IS A HYPOCRITICAL JERK BLIND TO HIS OWN PRIVILEGE (oh yes, you expect better of your sister than a little drunkeness, Mr. Keg Stand), OUR SCREENWRITERS HAVE UNFORTUNATELY NOT BEEN SHOT FORCIBLY SUBJECTED TO SOME LESSONS IN WHY THIS IS BAD. I was expecting that - others have discussed it far better than I ever could - and I was able to compartmentalize enough to really enjoy the movie. I don't feel any need to own it, I don't feel a need to see it again, but I had a fun time watching it and I am now wondering whether it's possible to switch fandoms for thelittlebang, because a) this fandom needs a femmeslash epic, I suspect, and b) it will, actually, be easier to wrestle 15,000 words into existence when I can make some things up and am not constantly distracted by my desire to write about the Farron-Viliers family, which is going to be a problem if I keep trying to write Final Fantasy XIII stuff.

(This is, of course, a decision for the morning. And may not be possible anyway.)

Comments

[sour-idealist.livejournal.com]

Glad to know I'm not the only one, then!

And huh, an interesting idea. Could you do that continuously, I wonder? (I don't actually know a lot about meditation as a thing.) And wow, that sounds like awesome backstory, and definitely a reason for her to be moral. Nothing like your old ghosts to keep you in line, right? And Charles really doesn't have any major mistakes or regrets before the ones we seem him develop, I think. You're definitely right that it's a matter of age, though. And the thing about not meaning any harm is that it makes very little difference to the people who are hurt.

Telekinesis would probably have the least potential for disaster, I think. I mean, teleportation is better than telepathy, but there's always the risk of SORRY YOU TWITCHED WELCOME TO THE MIDDLE OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. (Or, worse, fifty feet underground... you're welcome.)

Hurts so good, yes. And I don't know how much it was penalized, but I'm pretty sure it was still technically illegal - and definitely a stigma; hell, being queer can be scary as hell now.

(afdlkjalkfsdjaf schoolboys. I won't start.)

And actually, I was just reading something about that idea, that a Jewish holocaust survivor would feel a certain sense of solidarity regarding queer holocaust survivors, and their commentary was that it didn't really work that way, partly because the two groups (going by how the Nazis sorted them, since obviously there was overlap) had rather different experiences, and there wasn't actually a whole lot of open information at the time. So.

And that's definitely where I would go, but Erik doesn't seem particularly bothered by that notion, as he came down on the side of agreeing with Shaw in the end and admitted it - which was something that really really fucking bothered me in the movie. It felt way too abrupt to me.

I don't much either, but I want to see it again and yet a) am unlikely to get to a theater a second time, and b) am annoyed enough about the political aspects that I don't really want to give them that much of my money. Sooo...

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

Not meaning harm is so much the road to hell by way of good intentions. And as for Paula, it's a complex story, and yeah... Past demons work wonders.

I'd want teleportation to put an end to my transportation woes. :)

Yeah, it's a hell of a stigma and not entirely comfortable now. But I don't think it was entirely illegal to actually be homosexual - as I said, I think there were certain sex acts which were, but not homosexuality itself, by that time. It didn't come up in my class if it was, and even though it was a sociology class, we discussed a lot of laws in the U.S. so I think it would have.

Good point about the camps deal. I could also use a concept that shows up in a fic set closer to modern day that might still apply involving the concept that as the next evolution of humanity, they're not bound by current stigmas. That might work for both of them, since FC Charles definitely seems to think mutants are superior the same way Erik always declares, he just doesn't think they should curb-stomp the humans because of it.

Good point about Erik. The irony - and the biggest tragedy, to my mind - of Magneto is that in trying to prevent a repeat of his greatest fear, he became the thing he hated most. And I don't think he ever realized it. Hence Charles in my fic saying as much. Here's what I have: "But if you kill them now, before they've had a chance to make an informed choice, if you start with them and continue with the idea that all humans are the enemy and they have to be fought and defeated, then how is that different than what you believe they would do to us? It's the exact same philosophy, Erik, it's a mindset you despise and yet you're slipping into a form of it yourself. Can't you see that?"

Still debating Erik's immediate reaction, though I do know his ultimate choice with the missiles.

I won't pay another ten bucks to see any film in theaters again, thank you very much. I haven't got enough money to do that.

[sour-idealist.livejournal.com]

Exactly; very few people consciously mean harm.

True! I would be SO MUCH MORE PUNCTUAL if I could teleport, too. (If I didn't teleport myself to the moon by mistake.)

True, technically speaking, but I believe 'certain sex acts' covered anything that was possible to do without a vagina involved, which would both impede one's life and magnify the stigma - which, yes, needed no magnifying.

That could be interesting, but they seem to maintain most of the rules of human society even as they proclaim mutant superiority (which I agree, Charles definitely bought into that idea to an extent even as he rather wanted to integrate the groups), or at least Charles seemed to want to keep normal societal taboos - clothes, for instance. On the other hand, it isn't as if there weren't gay couples, and I suspect that a fairly common dynamic was an open secret sort of thing. Which is what I'd imagine being most comfortable for them anyway - I mean, I can't imagine Erik being a fan of a great deal of blatant PDA.

That might work, that might make a lot of sense; I'm guessing that Erik would start by freaking out even more - nobody likes to be wrong, especially not about something so raw, so personal. But I do believe that it would work out in the end.

Yeah, the other factor as to why I'm not going again. That would be another benefit to teleportation, come to think of it; just show up in the back of the theater, no tickets necessary.

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

They don't mean it, but it happens.

I'll have to look it up, the laws, I mean, to be sure. Though they'd probably find themselves locked away for their mutations first. Or their relationship used as the excuse to... Oh. Oh no. Now there's a thought.

*snicker* I just tried to imagine Erik being all right with blatant PDA. Definitely not. He and I are agreed there, I am so not the openly physically affectionate (or really easily physically affectionate in general) type. Open secret works very well.

A freak-out is definitely a likely possibility; I'm trolling opinions with one or two other authors I like, since I'm unsure and brainstorming is always a good thing.

Now that would be fun, using teleportation to see movies.

[sour-idealist.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

!!!!!! Write it, oh my God, ouch but that could be fascinating. Ouch.

Yeah, barring very extreme circumstances. (OH YOU'RE NOT DEAD, and that's about all I can imagine. He'd have to have been pretty convinced, too.) I'm sort of a contradiction in that I want to be physically affectionate but I'm always uncomfortably nervous about it.

Yeah, always a good way to kick things off. Good luck!

It would! Slightly unethical, but fun. And I bet you could skip a lot of lines, too.

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I could write something like that, it has the potential to get even darker than I am really good at, but I'm seriously considering having one of them consider the possibility. Because the government is good at using an excuse to imprison someone when they can't get them on what they'd like to. Like Al Capone. They had to use tax evasion to get him in jail, which amuses me greatly for some reason.

Yeah. That would probably do it. I know what you mean about that contradiction, I can be like that myself when I actually want physical affection.

Thanks! :) I'm currently leaning toward Heroic BSOD (why yes that's a trope) moment for Erik rather than a tearing-into-Charles type of freak-out, since it seems to fit just a little bit better.

Slightly unethical I can live with as long as no one gets hurt. Just don't tell my journalism profs, they wouldn't like it. ;)

[sour-idealist.livejournal.com]

That's true, the mix of humiliation and guilt and everything else, but contemplating it might be a way to use the idea without either diving too deep into that.

Sudden absence of death is always a useful plot device. ;) And oh good, it's not just me.

Oh, I speak fluent trope, I practically lived on that site for a while. I can see that, and certainly it pulls it a little bit further from canon and makes it easier to keep them from splitting, this time.

I think 'does anyone get hurt' is essentially the defining line between ethical and unethical anyway, so. :)

[fae-boleyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I think so too.

I love sudden absence of death. Mostly because I love clonking characters - usually the ones in denial - over the head with incidents where the person they are in love with, no matter what they try to say, end up seriously hurt. I physically whump one to emotionally sucker-punch the other, it's super effective! Witness most of my A/E fic.

I'm mid-level skill in speaking trope, but I am continuing to practice the language. It's a very fun one.

Agreed on the defining line, though journalistic ethics are a little different. But where life ethics are concerned, I agree completely. (It's a bit hard to explain.)