Entry tags:
Recs: XMFC, The Killjoys/bandom
X-Men First Class
X-Muppets!
X-Men: First Class soundtrack with extra songs (including the end credits track!)
vids!
watch me fall apart on vimeo ANNNGGST
ready for abduction
Friday night LOL
I find that I don't really care for most of the XMFC vids I've seen (not that I've seen a lot, I've mostly been following![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kuwdora's guidance on fic and vids), because I am so leery of reading random fic in this fandom, so leery. And true enough many of the vids I've seen have really focused monomaniacally on Erik's past and…that's not what I'm interested in exploring. The movie isn't a story about salvation (and the idea of Charles being able to save anyone is laughable, hello, Charles Xavier has massive issues of his own, they just don't make for good summer celluloid), it's a story about survival, and I find Erik's choice at the end, even though I don't actually think it's terribly consistent with the writing up until that point, to be the more interesting part of the story. Giving up true love for what you believe? Yeah, that's heroic, and interesting to me partly because I doubt I could do it. So, in conclusion, the XMFC vid for me is still talitha78's Til The World Ends, it is the essence of the story that I am interested in. But Set Fire to the Rain manages to address Erik's past without getting bogged down in it, and I liked it a lot too.
On another topic entirely
Draculoids Will Never Hurt You by![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
sassbandit and were_duck
My Chemical Romance (Killjoys 'verse)
Gerard hates his job in the art department at BLI. The only good part of his day is hanging with the smokers downstairs, especially Frank, who shares Gerard’s frustration and rebellion against the corporate norms. But when Frank is fired, Gerard quits his job too, and with Mikey’s and Ray’s help, sets off to find Frank, irritate Korse, and turn art into revolution.
I've been hearing about this fic for months, and now it's finally here! I've never read bandom fic before in my life, and I don't know that I will again, but this fic is so good, it's the postapocalyptic anti-corporate art-based music-making revolution fic that you never knew you needed in your life, but you do, YOU DO. ♥ The master post contains art and three fanmixes, too. ♥
X-Muppets!
X-Men: First Class soundtrack with extra songs (including the end credits track!)
vids!
watch me fall apart on vimeo ANNNGGST
ready for abduction
Friday night LOL
I find that I don't really care for most of the XMFC vids I've seen (not that I've seen a lot, I've mostly been following
kuwdora's guidance on fic and vids), because I am so leery of reading random fic in this fandom, so leery. And true enough many of the vids I've seen have really focused monomaniacally on Erik's past and…that's not what I'm interested in exploring. The movie isn't a story about salvation (and the idea of Charles being able to save anyone is laughable, hello, Charles Xavier has massive issues of his own, they just don't make for good summer celluloid), it's a story about survival, and I find Erik's choice at the end, even though I don't actually think it's terribly consistent with the writing up until that point, to be the more interesting part of the story. Giving up true love for what you believe? Yeah, that's heroic, and interesting to me partly because I doubt I could do it. So, in conclusion, the XMFC vid for me is still talitha78's Til The World Ends, it is the essence of the story that I am interested in. But Set Fire to the Rain manages to address Erik's past without getting bogged down in it, and I liked it a lot too.On another topic entirely
Draculoids Will Never Hurt You by
My Chemical Romance (Killjoys 'verse)
Gerard hates his job in the art department at BLI. The only good part of his day is hanging with the smokers downstairs, especially Frank, who shares Gerard’s frustration and rebellion against the corporate norms. But when Frank is fired, Gerard quits his job too, and with Mikey’s and Ray’s help, sets off to find Frank, irritate Korse, and turn art into revolution.
I've been hearing about this fic for months, and now it's finally here! I've never read bandom fic before in my life, and I don't know that I will again, but this fic is so good, it's the postapocalyptic anti-corporate art-based music-making revolution fic that you never knew you needed in your life, but you do, YOU DO. ♥ The master post contains art and three fanmixes, too. ♥
no subject
I must admit to preferring my head canon for X1-3, in which Charles and Erik were together for 30 years and Charles did manage to provide enough stability for Erik to heal as much as he ever could, until the worsening situation for mutants finally made their political differences too much to ignore. XMFC is a little too insta-angst for me, what with the love at first sight, the whirlwind romance, the bitter breakup a few weeks (?) later. Of course one could argue that it's harder and more heroic to give up true love for your beliefs when that love has lasted for decades, and you're not young anymore and you're uprooting every bit of stability you've ever known.
Oh, god, why must Charles/Erik be so sad? *whimpers*
no subject
Yes, exactly.
XMFC is a little too insta-angst for me, what with the love at first sight, the whirlwind romance, the bitter breakup a few weeks (?) later.
I stand by whoever said that they should have made two movies out of XMFC. Fwiw, historically, there was an interval of six months between the U.S. putting missiles in Turkey in April '62 and the Thirteen Days in October, and I've seen some fic that uses that to good advantage, but the movie itself blows right past it.
It is so fucking sad, seriously.
no subject
That's useful to know. The movie somehow makes it look as if about two weeks pass between "Charles meets Erik" and the beach scene.
no subject
Perhaps the most charitable reading of Charles in the movie is that his journey is about figuring out if he's willing to go all the way with Erik. Erik already knows his limits, knows what he is and isn't capable of if things get dark enough. He starts the movie already having 'graduated', already trained, while Charles's graduation scene, which is literally shown, shows a man just stepping out into the world. (It's likely a useful metaphor to consider in a film that calls itself First Class)
And what does he learn? He learns that a) he's willing to hold a man down while another man kills him figuratively with his bare hands. But what he's not willing to do is commit an act of casual mass murder, even in self-defense. And isn't that a fascinatingly complex and really human discovery process?
no subject
Hmmm, this is making me think about the way, in the film, Charles has a future while Erik has a past. XMFC Charles is at first the brilliant student full of possibilities, then the young academic establishing himself. Erik, on the other hand, is entirely focused on redressing his past; I wonder if he ever thought about what he'd do after finding and killing Schmidt/Shaw. In a way, his taking up of the mutant cause gives him a reason to live and to think about the future (beyond "when I catch Schmidt") for the first time ever.
in my read of the movie, by the time they're at Oliver Platt's facility Charles has already read Erik's mind completely
That's certainly compatible with how we see Charles use his powers. I like to believe that he didn't, because I like to believe that he treated Erik with more respect than most other people (Raven being the other exception). I guess my own preferred interpretation is that he took a peek and decided that on second thoughts, he didn't want to go wandering around in Erik's intense and rigidly controlled suffering without permission. But that's not exactly about Charles having ethics, it's about his feelings towards Erik.
no subject
I don't wonder this at all. I feel sure that he has clear plans that go far beyond Schmidt. I think we see an inkling of that in his Geneva hotel room where we see his map of Europe, but most of my feeling on this issue are from the scene with Erik and Charles the night before they go to Cuba, the one where in my interpretation Erik is saying subtextually something like "Charles, I know you read my mind back there at the CIA facility and you know my plans. You knew it was never about peace for me. You know that once I kill Schmidt I move on to the next part of the plan and this temporary alliance of convenience I formed because you and Moira could help me kill Shaw will be severed. But I like you and would want to keep working with you if you're willing. Are you in or are you out?"
But again, I saw the movie I wanted to see, not the real movie. I have no barometer to tell me how legitimate a reading of the film this is.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Yes, totally. I think that reading also fits well into something I've seen other people say, which is that the movie is about Charles fumbling towards his ethics as a telepath/mutant.
no subject
I think this thought of mine has mostly manifested in my hope that the next movie will try to do the Proteus/Mutant X storyline, which is one of my favorite X-Men storylines and which is all about Charles's chickens coming home to roost, especially in the Ultimate version.
no subject
I don't think that Charles at the end of the film has yet reached a truly adult ethics of telepathy.
Definitely not. One can only hope that the fact that all the people he cared about left him will provide a massive cluebat for him.
no subject
It's just like... all of the problems with Charles as a character that you can ignore most of the time come out really glaringly and the reader gets to see just how much of the pain people around Charles feel is directly attributable to Charles being an incredibly insensitive human being.
But it eventually leads to Moira not being isolated on Muir Island and being awesome and the X-Men realizing that she can do so many things to help them that Professor X can't.
no subject
And Wolverine's like "Damn, even I'm not as much of a dick as Professor X."
Now I mean, I love Wolverine as much as the next girl, but that is a pretty low standard to be failing right there.
no subject
I think a lot of the cognitive dissonance people are having with the ending of XMFC is that they expect like a Darth Vader narrative- Erik turning into a being of pure evil- and the ending doesn't justify that. But putting on the Magneto costume and ditching Charles isn't tantamount to turning into Darth Vader, if you know what the two characters are like in comics continuity. There's a lot more ambiguity and even heroism to Magneto's struggle, and there's a lot that is extremely dangerous about Charles's path.
I just hope that in XMFC2 we see the way the twisty interconnections between Charles and Erik and Moira and Raven continue to unravel because all four of them are damaged and incredibly flawed people. I mean, frankly I just hope that Moira gets a role in the new movie in any form.
no subject
That would be awesome, really. I'm encouraged by this iteration of the movie people having explicitly discarded the earlier movies.
As for Moira, I could see ways they could include her, which would be excellent. It depends on how soon after this movie they want to set the next one, among other things including Hollywood being itself, I think. Presumably they're going to stick pretty close in time if they still want to use the current cast/Fassbender & McAvoy.
no subject
no subject
no subject
I agree about female astrophysicists, btw. There's a few more if you throw in movies, but not many.
no subject
Assuming that XMFC is considered as part of the same canon as the previous X-Men movies, Charles's behavior that is revealed in X3 shows him to be a character with deeply problematic ethics. So I sort of choose to believe we are intended to read him that way in XMFC and in subsequent movies.
no subject
But I'm pretty sure that the first three movies are coloring everyone's perceptions; I know they do mine.
no subject
no subject
damn it, did i never upload my art is the weapon icon
no subject
ME EITHER
ahhahahah oh my vid in progress, ahahah
p.s. glad you are enjoying my recs~
no subject
no subject
no subject
watch some stuffclear some space on my hard drive…