X-Men first class!

[the_ragnarok]

Went to see it last night, with my darling and some friends. AND LO IT WAS AWESOME.

My main impressions:

- Raven is my favorite EVER. I think she's the only hollywoodean character I've seen showing the issue of being an ugly woman semi-believably. (yes, a lot of people still find her hot in her real form; but that's also true for a lot of women who are deemed Conventionally Unattractive.)

- I wanted to ship Charles/Erik so bad. SO BAD. But Charles is a world-class putz who's in love with his own ideals and Erik is a dick who doesn't really see beyond his agenda. Though he does care for his people, I just don't see him as capable of romantic involvement. (That kiss he gave Raven? Totally to get her on his side. And also I think he sent her to her own bed after that.)

- Cases in point: Erik on the beach cradling Charles' wounded body... until Charles tells him in no uncertain terms it ain't gonna work out. Then Moira takes Erik's place. Subtle. Also in the ending, when he comes for Emma Frost (Magneto doesn't leave a woman behind!) - "[Charles is] gone. I'm looking for someone to replace him." I sorta mentally added "in bed" to that. XD

- To reiterate: Poor Raven. No wonder in the comics she ended up with Azazel. (well, or Destiny, but I'm not holding my breath for THAT to happen on film. :/)

- Hank. HANK. I want to cuddle him. Even if he is kind of an idiot (telling Raven she's only pretty when passing for normal? Smooth, dude). HE IS THE PRETTIEST CHARACTER EVER. If I may be shallow - pale skin, blue eyes, soft lips, kinda soft-looking expression, glasses. WANT.

- I wonder if his treatment of Raven comes from just complete obliviousness to her interest in him and a belief they should be able to ~bond over being ~hideous freaks or w/e, or if he's genuinely disinterested in her. Gay or asexual or idek. Or just seriously not into blue chicks. Again, possibly he's just young and a dork. I won't hold that against him, since he does get better. (I think?)

- Fail!Time: Way to kill the black guy first, movie >:| and make the brown woman (who's also a sex worker for added fail points!) turn evil for no apparent reason. Actually, the only woman in the movie who WASN'T evil by the end was the agent. Who got the amnesia treatment from Charles. SO YEAH.

- Mind you, that line of though only works if you consider Magneto evil. Which at the end of the movie? I'm REALLY NOT. Magento wants to fight for mutant rights! Xavier wants to ask nicely for them, and when he doesn't get them, to sorta say OH WELL I WILL EVADE ALL CONSEQUENCES WITH MY TELEPATHY! I guess it sucks to be you, Raven!

- General problem was that most characters never got that developed. Charles and Erik, yeah, and Raven to a reasonable degree, but other than that all we really know about the chars is what their power is. WHAT ARE EMMA FROST'S INTENTIONS? WHAT IS THAT TORNADO GUY'S NAME? It's a mystery.

- These complaints aside - THE MOVIE WAS FUCKING AWESOME. I will basically be happy if you just give me 3 hours of less-known mutant origin stories, but even beyond that it was excellent. ERIK LENSHERR - NAZI HUNTER! How he figured out a way to kill Shaw! Raven's progression into self-acceptance! Charles' stupid pick-up lines! DARWIN, WE HARDLY KNEW YE ;___;


Also, I will reiterate that I promised butterflythread that I will write her Charles/Erik porn if she picks a prompt from my kink_bingo card. I think vanilla kink might work actually - playing house! :D

Also I want to write Raven-centric fic - 5 times she masturbated wearing other people and once she did looking like herself? That could be kinda awesome I think.

Comments

[butterflythread.livejournal.com]

Okay fair warning, I saw this a couple of hours ago and am still just all LALALALA, so this is all raw rambling and therefore might not make sense/I might amend and/or tweak my thoughts after processing properly. THAT SAID:

Raven is my favorite EVER. I think she's the only hollywoodean character I've seen showing the issue of being an ugly woman semi-believably. (yes, a lot of people still find her hot in her real form; but that's also true for a lot of women who are deemed Conventionally Unattractive.)

I also liked this. It was just so compounded by the fact she COULD choose to be conventionally beautiful; as Hank says when she puts the human face back on, “you’re beautiful like this”. And even Charles’s reaction when she then went into the kitchen, and his earlier one when she was feeling insecure and asked if he’d date her looking like that... ugh, my heart broke for her. I was like Raven, bb, ):

- I wanted to ship Charles/Erik so bad. SO BAD. But Charles is a world-class putz who's in love with his own ideals and Erik is a dick who doesn't really see beyond his agenda. Though he does care for his people, I just don't see him as capable of romantic involvement. (That kiss he gave Raven? Totally to get her on his side. And also I think he sent her to her own bed after that.)

WHERE DO I START I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS.

Okay so I pretty much agree. Right off the back of seeing it, I feel like in order to ship it as close to canon as possible you have to be okay with the fact that for all that they had moments, in the end they’re both too tied to their own ways of thinking to change, even for each other. I don’t really see it as ~romance, so far as it’s possible to have ~feelings and be emotionally entangled/have chemistry/some kind of relationship without it being rooted in romantic feelings. If that makes sense? I mean I see a lot of people about the internets going FIXIT FIC, I WANT IT/AM WRITING IT but I don’t want to fix it, I want tense sort of angsty-sort of fluffy-sort of usty stuff set around when they took the kids to the manor for training montages, THAT IS ALL THE MORE TENSE FOR KNOWING THAT IT WILL NEVER WORK. I think they both know it, too, somewhere... I mean fuck, Charles has been in Erik’s head, surely he had a sense that it was never going to end well, even in a platonic canon sense.

Which is kind of weird for me I guess, I am usually HAPPY ENDINGS PLSKTHANKS, but something about this dynamic is hitting my buttons.

- Cases in point: Erik on the beach cradling Charles' wounded body... until Charles tells him in no uncertain terms it ain't gonna work out. Then Moira takes Erik's place. Subtle. Also in the ending, when he comes for Emma Frost (Magneto doesn't leave a woman behind!) - "[Charles is] gone. I'm looking for someone to replace him." I sorta mentally added "in bed" to that. X

I think the beach exchange shows that there was something there, even if it was canonically platonic. But yeah, it’s the ultimate evidence really of what you were saying. I WANT YOU WITH ME CHARLES, LOOK WHAT THE HUMANS DID TO YOU, WOE, OH WAIT YOU’RE STILL NOT GOING TO AGREE WITH ME? WELL WHATEVER THEN, THERE YOU GO MOIRA.

Allan actually leaned across to me when Erik told Emma he was looking for someone to “fill the hole” Charles left, and said “i can think of a couple of holes Charles might be leaving empty”. Have I mentioned recently how much I love my boyfriend?

Hank. HANK. I want to cuddle him. Even if he is kind of an idiot (telling Raven she's only pretty when passing for normal? Smooth, dude). HE IS THE PRETTIEST CHARACTER EVER. If I may be shallow - pale skin, blue eyes, soft lips, kinda soft-looking expression, glasses. WANT.

I ALSO WANTED TO PET HIM AND HIS RIDICULOUS ADORABLE NERDINESS JFC. SOFT PRETTY NERD BOYS IN GLASSES, YES PLEASE, FOR ALL THAT I LOVE BIG BULKINESS ALA EAMES AS WELL.

- I wonder if his treatment of Raven comes from just complete obliviousness to her interest in him and a belief they should be able to ~bond over being ~hideous freaks or w/e, or if he's genuinely disinterested in her.

I personally felt like he was interested, but it was more of the LET’S BOND OVER HOW BAD WE FEEL ABOUT OUR AESTHETIC MUTATIONS thing. Also being young and adorkable and stupid around a girl.

Mind you, that line of though only works if you consider Magneto evil. Which at the end of the movie? I'm REALLY NOT. Magento wants to fight for mutant rights! Xavier wants to ask nicely for them, and when he doesn't get them, to sorta say OH WELL I WILL EVADE ALL CONSEQUENCES WITH MY TELEPATHY! I guess it sucks to be you, Raven!

I think it’s undeniable that Erik is kind of an OTT asshole about the whole thing. Although, I feel like his attitudes toward that is kind of supported by his history; like he says, he’s seen the way human beings can treat each other due to differences far more minor than being a mutant, he’s seen people killed and victimised by people ‘just following orders’. I think it’s understandable (if not ‘good’ or ‘right’) that he’d take the aggressive, proactive stance. He didn’t have the power to stop what happened to his family, but he has power now and by fuck is he going to use it. Charles on the other hand doesn’t have that, he wasn’t tempered the same way, so I think his (possibly naive) belief that being the ~better men~ will be enough to make things cool with humans also makes sense. They essentially want the same thing, but their approaches reflect who they are as a result of their past. And those approaches are totally fucking incompatible.

General problem was that most characters never got that developed. Charles and Erik, yeah, and Raven to a reasonable degree, but other than that all we really know about the chars is what their power is. WHAT ARE EMMA FROST'S INTENTIONS? WHAT IS THAT TORNADO GUY'S NAME? It's a mystery.

I think that’s always a problem when you have big ensembles like this. WE HAVE TWO TEAMS OF MUTANTS, FUCK. A problem with some movies is when they try to spread themselves too thin, so I’d rather have a heap of characters just be support/window dressing and get a stronger story/more development on the central characters. And I think this movie was definitely Charles’ and Erik’s, it’s about Professor X and Magneto and what their deal is. So I didn’t mind that too much.

ALSO CAN WE TAKE A MOMENT TO DISCUSS THE SCENE WHERE ERIK IS ALL, SHOOT ME IN THE FACE CHARLES GO ON :D AND CHARLES IS ALL NOOOOO. JFC. JFC. JFC.

I approve of this Raven idea, it could work really well as a thing about her learning to accept herself/her own body. Also I WILL GET BACK TO YOU WHEN I HAVE HAD A FEW MORE HOURS TO PROCESS A BIT MORE OKAY, FFFFFF. BUT IT IS TRUE I AM KIND OF BADLY WANTING SOMETHING ABOUT THEM DEALING WITH THEIR FEELINGS WHILE HAVING TO PLAY DADDIES TO THE FLOCK OF BB MUTANTS. Actually I also have vaguely formed thoughts re: Erik being kind of fascinated by the idea of letting Charles into his head/influence him, even while he’s absolutely DNW about it. IDK. WILL CONTEMPLATE.

In conclusion:

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm9errfu9Y1qc99rq.gif

[the_ragnarok]

first: BWAHAHA THAT GIF :DDD "pass the tea, vicar" XD THEY ARE SO BROMANTIC.

Yeah, I think I quite like this idea actually, both of them knowing they're ideologically committed to ~opposing goals. IT WILL NEVER WORK OUT and they know it, but just for now, while there's a temporary piece... they can be togther? in a limited way? ;___; I don't want fix fics either. THEIR LOVE IS SO POIGNANT.

My main problem is that - yes, their goal is really the same. But Charles' attitude doesn't just come across as naive. Ultimate forgiveness for EVERYTHING is well and fine, but when you're forgiving shit people did to your loved ones... those loved one are going to worry just how loved they are, exactly.

Also RAVEN RUNNING TO CHARLES FIRST YES. ;___;

Also also, I see your point re: character emphasis. Accepted.

I personally felt like he was interested, but it was more of the LET’S BOND OVER HOW BAD WE FEEL ABOUT OUR AESTHETIC MUTATIONS thing. Also being young and adorkable and stupid around a girl.

Yeah, exactly. mmm, now I REALLY want that Raven ficlet. Turning into Hank, moving her hands all over her/his smooth pale skin, watching in a mirror... "fixing" his feet and then changing them back because it's just not right otherwise. <333 YESSS I HAVE BODIES AND BODY PARTS ON MY CARD, CAN TOTALLY DO IT FOR THAT :DDD

ALSO CAN WE TAKE A MOMENT TO DISCUSS THE SCENE WHERE ERIK IS ALL, SHOOT ME IN THE FACE CHARLES GO ON :D AND CHARLES IS ALL NOOOOO. JFC. JFC. JFC.

THAT SCENE OMG YES. I wonder if Charles later snuck into Erik's mind to check for suicidal tendencies :((( and maybe found s/t else instead? :3

PLEASE DO GET BACK TO ME W. FURTHER IDEAS. I APPROVE OF THIS. <333