Lashings; X-Men; icons

[raven]

I suspect real happiness is getting up far too late on a sunny Friday morning, stumbling into the kitchen and finding a split croissant, with cheese inside, on the table, and just in case I didn't get it, a note propped on it saying "breakfast!".

So, three things make a post, right?

Firstly, last night was lovely. Lashings of Ginger Beer were doing a gig at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, and I wasn't planning on going, originally, but gavagai talked me into it and then it turned out that nearly every friend I have in the world had had the same idea. (Also, a tonne of other people! I adore Lashings, as well I might, considering I went to school or university with nearly all of them and my partner does their photography, but they're swiftly turning into an act loads of people go and see even if they don't know them personally. It's a good thing.)

Anyway, I went and had coffee with Shim and caught the 4.15 with about forty seconds to spare - guess what, my watch is slow - and rescued forthwritten from King's Cross, and I rang Laura to let me in and happydork answered, which made me very happy. (Hi, Laura, I love you.) There was delicious food and glitter eyeliner and we found the venue with surprisingly little trouble, and oh, so many people I knew, it's such a joy. apotropaios and I were explaining to some friends of his how we helped sebastienne learn the lyrics to "You're the Top" four or five years back, with him hitting me with a baguette on Christ Church Meadow, and Lashings obliged by opening with it. They also did "Fat", the one that always gets described as a consensus on social construction of fatness to the tune of "Take Me Or Leave Me" from Rent, among many others, but that's one of my favourites.

Oh, and I got to see such_heights for the first time in a long while, and tell chains_of_irony that she's enabling all my recent fic-reading, and I went out into the night to catch the last train feeling that particular kind of deliciousness of belonging.

*

Here is the second thing in this post. X-Men. Hi. A few days ago gavagai discovered I'd never seen it and showed me the first movie having just poured me a glass of lemonade plus two and a half measures of gin. Possibly as a consequence, I enjoyed the film thoroughly. Yay, Patrick Stewart. Yay, Ian McKellen. Yay, my continued crush on Anna Paquin. Anyway, I enjoyed it enough to watch X2, and then again on gavagai's advice I skipped the other two and watched First Class instead.

That film. My god. I am totally not watching it for what the people making it thought I should be watching it, but still. I was sort of expecting a moody period piece and got a summer blockbuster instead, but given that I enjoyed it: I liked the snippets of Oxford, especially where no one does the thing where people walk through an archway in one college and emerge somewhere halfway across the city, and I liked baby Charles and slightly-less-baby Charles, and Erik, yes! And Raven, who is just all cuteness, I adored her. And oh, the incredibly sweet, kind of kinky scenes where Charles can't use a gun and Erik can't move a radio telescope and there's telepathy and it's kind of lovely.

My problem, I suspect, is that I don't sympathise with the cause that the script thinks I should. In the scene where it looks like Angel and Darwin have swapped sides, I remember thinking, well, there's a harsh fact of life neatly evoked - people who aren't white, people who are discriminated against on more than one axis, are far more likely to say fuck this for a game of soldiers and join up with the plaform of kill-all-humans, because why would you empathise with people who want you dead? Power and privilege aren't the same thing, but, I don't know, one of them is damn useful when you don't have the other, it's why nice middle-class brown people like yours truly get an easy ride of things. So there's power, and they take it. It's not a moral choice, but you can't deny it's a sensible one. And they play with the metaphor a little more explicitly when discussing visible versus invisible mutations - it's much easier to be noble and upstanding when people don't look at you funny. Of course on the other hand, the black guy dies first and then the brown girl goes to the dark side. (Ahaha, the dark side, I'm so hilarious.) So on the other hand it's kind of a racist summer blockbuster, what a shock.

The problem with all of this is that I'd have a lot more credibility when making faux-profound statements on narratives and social politics if I weren't shipping Charles/Erik like a twelve-year-old just discovering fandom. Seriously. Bring me your angsty schmoop. Bring me your kidfic AUs. Bring me your recs. I have no shame whatsoever. I kind of want to write an AU where they run a cake shop. I thought about plotting it last night and it turned into angst. Angst and cakes. What is even wrong with me.

*

And here is the third thing I want to write about! thingswithwings gave me some of my icons to talk about.



[Karen Gillan, wearing red and green and looking up]

This, in case there is anyone left who does not know, is Amy Pond from Doctor Who oh by the way I love Amy Pond. I have had this icon since before Amy was on television, since before we knew she wasn't actually a policewoman, I love her so. The icon was made by the very lovely calapine and people always comment on how pretty it is. I love the colours, I love the pose.



[black bird sitting on white Macbook computer]

I think this was made by iconomicon. I think. I've used "Raven" as an online pseud for mumblelots years by now, and the computer it's sitting on looks precisely like mine, so I use this icon when posting fic for fandoms I don't have an icon for specifically. Is that kind of ridiculously specific? I suspect so. But I like it anyway.



[text: "There's a full and very reasonable explanation that mostly does not involve me being drunk"]

From shoebox_project, of course, but, really, applicable to so much of my life. I used it more as an undergrad, when I clambered over roofs stole a door out of a skip came home with a gigangic inflatable flamingo drank more than I do now.



[Dax in a purple dress, grinning]

DAX. I love Dax more than most people, I think; I love how unashamedly, unapologetically herself she is. Would that every woman had three hundred years' of joy and confidence inside her. And it really shows in this shot - the dress, the grin, the whole episode which she spends refusing to be erased by her marriage. When I had my leaving party last year, I dressed up as her, and picked the purple dress rather than the uniform.



[placard with text in caps: "I can't believe we're still protesting this shit"]

Well, because sometimes I can't. And if I had an icon for every stupid thing people do that I disagree with, I would have no space for Dax and Amy Pond.

*

Now I am going to write fanfic! Maybe. Three more days of freedom. Not that I wanted to be unemployed for the rest of my life, far from it, but I will miss writing fanfic at 3pm.

Comments

[starlady]

XMFC! Ah ha ha, welcome to the fandom that will suck your life away.

She says, having stayed up til 01:30 writing and reading more in it this morning.

Things I have stayed up way too late reading this week: Inception crossover AU! It's complete, unlike the next two I'm going to rec you.

Fratboy AU! WIP, awesome.

Sort of a White Collar fusion AU? Probably one of the most brilliant things I have read in a long, long time. WIP, though.

Various recs by me. mrkinch and kuwdora also have lots of tasty recs.

you are adorable, i am on tiny phone screen

[gavagai]

gavagai.dreamwidth.org/453746.html?#cutid2 Links I was telling you about if you want to be srs

http://mariness.dreamwidth.org/193674.html is less srs and makes me so happy with the snark

Tl;dr http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/60667104.html?thread=10391982816#t10391982816 lololololol

Re: you are adorable, i am on tiny phone screen

[gavagai]

Ps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqUfPhMxmAg PICARD WAS GAY TOO?

[passerida]

...so that's what happened to the inflatable flamingo!

[raven]

YES. There are pictures I believe of you, me and the flamingo. I believe.

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

Did you notice that they replaced Hertford witha pub, though? Possibly an improvement on our Oxford :P

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That is the door to Herford bar, though! At least it's spatially possible. :)

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

True, it wasn't like the sort of things they do on Lewis.

[sophiahagia.livejournal.com]

This has nothing to do with anything, but I just wanted to say I really appreciate the time you took to caption the icons. Hardly anyone does it, so I miss out on a lot of the icon... stuff (which is why I've had the same icon for 8 years or something). So, thanks. :)

Also, yay for surprise breakfasts and time with friends and such.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, no problem, no problem. :) I am eating another made-for-me breakfast and feeling super decadent.

[fyrdrakken]

I went checking seperis' journal for recs because I was sure I'd seen bunches of them after the movie came out -- her x-men first class tag is mainly either her own fic or vid recs, but take a look through her June entries, there's a lot of X-Men FC recs and meta. ETA: Especially read her long thinky-yet-humorous review of the movie.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll check those out.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

You have Amy and I'll have Rory. Deal? You have also reminded me that I need an icon rejig.

I loved the first X-Men film (and not just because of glimpses of Vancouver) but haven't quite brought myself to watch First Class yet. Mostly because it isn't Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

But but James McAvoy! But but! He is so doe-eyed and adorable ohmygod and THEIR LOVE IS EPIC AND ANGSTY. I am such a fangirl.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Atonement? JA is very pretty in that.

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

I love Dax so very, very, very much. I love how, even after however many lifetimes (six? seven? I forget) she's lived, she hasn't lost one iota of her enthusiasm for her universe. She's completely unjaded. She wants to try everything. I adore her.

I had a similar problem with X-Men, even though I liked it quite a lot. While I found Shaw completely unsympathetic, by the end of the film, I wasn't convinced that Erik was wrong and Charles was right, as I think I was supposed to be. Erik might become a mutant supremacist at some point in the future, but he isn't one yet despite what he said, and I think that he could still go either way.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Me too! Oh, me too. DAX <333

Yeah, I think that's right. The film sort of forgets that Erik's got every reason to have a lot of hate and anger, and that these aren't bad, necessarily! It's a weird thing to end on.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

I don't understand how anyone can watch first class and come away with impression that Charles is the one on the side of good. Okay, Erik wants to kill some people, but those people are an army who are attempting to kill them. In the general moral stakes they are the most killable people ever, and many films would portray the fighting back against them as heroic finale that saves species rather than "dude, that's not okay". Whereas Charles is a douchy idiot who invades people minds/personal space without their consent and is followed only by white dudes who are completely unforgiving of those who waver in their alligence and crappy at people who embrace their differences rather than fighting thm. How is Charles the hero?

I had very love/hate relationship with first class. Because I love the montages, I would watch a film composed of nothing but those montages extended to two hours. But the ruin hank mcCoy for me (he's supposed to be very zen, very at peace with who he is) and the Anti-bromance shoving women into men's arms in case any gay got on the movie was a bit tiresome.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

With some more thought I'm beginning to think that the problem with the film is that its ideas are too much for its space. It's trying to be a summer trashy superhero film, where with its plot, it ought to be a serious, moody, character-driven thing about two guys who are for various reasons driven to make certain choices: none of which are right or wrong or good or evil but what they think is best against a rapidly constricting freedom of choice. It ought to be how Charles and Erik go different ways at a cruicial point - because each one thinks, in good faith, that their way is best. I mean, I don't think that Charles is wrong for not wanting the thousands of people to die in front of them. But then Erik's also perfectly right that "following orders" is not a defence. It ought to be about the rigidity of that choice. But because it has to fit in a tonne of objectified women, random explosions and yellow spandex, it's the wrong sort of movie entirely to have the plot that it has.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Recs! I can do recs. I made some in this post (http://fahye.livejournal.com/737954.html), and will also rec How Deep the Bullet Lies (http://vnilla.livejournal.com/36674.html).

I haven't been reading many AUs because I think it's very hard to keep Charles and Erik consistent as characters if they lack their powers and their upbringings; they are so SHAPED by these things that transplanting them creates people with the same names and similar personalities who nevertheless seem...shallow.

THAT SAID.

thehoyden somehow manages to make me read her AUs anyway, and in this one (http://archiveofourown.org/works/247757) they are a wedding planner and an architect and the fun and ridiculousness manages to overcome my objections.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yaaay! Thank you for recs. I am not a big AU girl mostly, but I like them in this fandom because they're a bit distancing from the faily bits of the movie, which do kind of grate.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Yes, most of those recs make some effort to MAKE SENSE of the fail. I can also indulge in some shameless self promotion if you have any interest in my 13,000-word mission to make sense of Raven's character!

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

I liked the snippets of Oxford, especially where no one does the thing where people walk through an archway in one college and emerge somewhere halfway across the city

I got to see the filming for that! Namely, the part filmed just outside Hertford (which they made into a bar), which helpfully managed to be directly between my house and the Rad Cam/college, the main two places I go when leaving the house. Slightly irritating, but exciting all the same.