任是无情也动人

"Star Trek is one of those happy, clean, bright futures which means there is a high ratio of adults to children in adult bodies."

Came across this comment - actually an author's response to a comment on a fic - and the sentiment kinda just struck me. It does seem to be one of the aspects of my dissatisfaction with the reboot Star Trek film - the playing up of angsty manchild trauma as the main fill-in for character interaction.

And, even looking beyond just the Trek franchise, it's a little pervasive in Hollywood films as a whole, isn't it? I mean, the reboot Superman and Batman are all about revisiting their childhood traumas over and over again in every film and reboot. Perhaps this is also the reason why Iron Man is not my favorite MCU film/character.

I think it says a bit about my personal tastes...

Finally saw the movie today. I actually went in with...fairly low expectations, so at least I was pleasantly surprised. If you treated it as a sequel to Avengers 1 and ignored all character development in IM 3 and Cap 2, it's a decent sequel.

I would have liked to see the process of the team actually building up into the dynamics we're dropped into, but I guess team building would've required a separate plot all on its own and there was no way to squeeze it in without ruining the pace. Still, even a throwaway line about how long they've been working together as a team again would've helped the audience get a general idea of the background events since Cap 2.

Also couldn't help but feel that Joss was trying to jerk around the fandom just for the purpose of jerking around the fandom rather than for the sake of a good story. The characterization of Clint and the giving him a family I feel was also his FU to the odd masses of Clint/Coulson shippers -- not that I minded this particular development for Clint, personally, since I wasn't one of those shippers. The real litmus test will come in the following Avengers films, to see if they'll kill that family off like they did in the Ultimates for the cheap shock value.

The Nat/Bruce thing was a total waste of character development that could've been better spent elsewhere. They did such a good job staying away from making the strong female lead a romance focused role with Avengers 1, Cap 2, and the Peggy Carter series. Pity they blew it here. Also, the whole sterility = monster thing was just as horrible as everyone said it was. If that wasn't the message intended by the film, then your scriptwriters totally blew it.

What I did like...

Action scenes were pretty good. Didn't drag on for too long aside from the Hulkbuster one (that one was obviously pandering to the fanboys).

Clint and Steve's interaction with the twins were good buildup.

Steve had some really sassy lines and some really inspirational lines. As he's still my favorite, I liked. that. Also loved his scenes with Thor, the two make a really good pair on the battlefield. He also budged the hammer just a tiny bit... (my headcanon is that when the Bucky arc is finally over he might be able to lift it.)

I also actually liked it that he didn't throw a fit at Tony over the Ultron thing, that he was only a little passive aggressive about it but still trusted Tony to be on the team afterwards. Most fangirls who project too much of themselves into fics tend to forget that as far as shown onscreen, Steve is more about doing what needs to be done than indulgent in melodrama. And that he's not an actually a closeminded asshole just because they want to make Tony a woobie. /rant

Ultron and Vision weren't as bad as I feared they would turn out to be, which is good. Still a lot of hand-wavey about how it all happened but I'm going to just chalk all of it up to space magic.

Some further thoughts and concerns...

It's already somewhat evident that with the expanded cast, it's hard to squeeze in enough characterization for everyone. Even if they're permanently dropping Hulk from future Avengers movies, they are still accumulating major characters like whoa, which will make things even tougher in the next film. It's not that I want them to start axing more characters in the films until then...but I do wonder how they're going to handle it.

There's not a lot of decent post-AoU fanfics, at least on AO3, period. Usually there's a glut right after the movie comes out. Even the Steve/Tony ships aren't drawing from it. Not sure what that means in terms of the fandom reaction to the movie...

Because this has been eating up my brain for over a month now and I have 80 pages (WTF brain?) of stuff written down on Google docs...

( cut for those who don't care )

So I have been reading a lot of Worm fanfics on the Spacebattles Creative Writing forum. A lot of the best crossover fics I've seen have been with the Exalted RPG. The discussions on those threads invariably get inundated by Exalted game mechanics, so I've learned more about those than I've wanted to.

Anyway, so then I was watching CA:TWS. And throughout the movie, I kept thinking - My god, Cap is such a Zenith (Exalted "sub-class" for the Solar "class"). He would make a great Exalt expy. And then afterwards I ran a google search to see if any Exalt games/fans have tried to create a character sheet for Cap and came across this discussion.

( So anyway my imagination runs away with me... )

EDIT: For my own reference

Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don't want largely female audiences

What.

Just. What.

I don't even...what is this BS...

A more calm and knowledgeable analysis of the marketing economics that's probably behind this idiocy.

I hate this trope. I really really do. I hate it more when it shows up in science fiction.

( [rant] )

One final thought. Do you know what I want to see in a modern sci-fi story? The covert SpecOps team rescuing the brilliant scientist from a luddite (super-)villan who wants to destroy the scientist's knowledge/research, so that said scientist can publish their findings to the world and improve life for everyone. Bonus points if the Snarky!Commando refutes the villain's claims that humanity "is not ready" for the horrors that said discoveries will bring, by pointing out humanity already has existing technologies that is more readily weaponized, and yet seems to be doing just fine. Is there any of that around?

http://ishtar79.dreamwidth.org/tag/erik+and+charles+in+canon

(And oh, deleted movie scenes...)

EDIT: OMG *dies*


EDIT2: For real?
EDIT3: d'aww

Insert evil laughter

(Also, recs list continues to be updated)

EDIT: More, not quite brain breaky evil laughter.

In a fab montage, the pair go on a recruiting drive, in which they perch on a strip-club bed.

"That scene got exceptionally silly at one point," says McAvoy. "I don't know if I'm even allowed to tell you what originally happened. But it got pretty f---in' kinky. I'm not joking."

Was the dashing duo's bromance, uh, consummated?

"Unfortunately no. But there was a little bit of cross-dressing going on. That's all you need to know."

(For the record, McAvoy would have preferred it if Xavier and Magneto stayed together. Like, really together. "It is a little bit of a mini-tragedy that him and Magneto don't, you know, have sex and become married and become best friends.")

EDIT2: *cracks up*
EDIT3: *squee*

These are all Erik/Charles fics. So yeah, slash. As promised, I tried to stick to non-epic/one shots with no angst.

( Read more... )

EDIT6: Still going...

super-oblivious!Charles - Crack. Erik gives himself a concussion with head-desking.

Holiday Lights Battle - Crack and Holiday Fluff. Mitosis cookies!

--- Some non XMFC recs! ---

The Dementors of Azkaban - AU for HP year 3. Pure crack.

Lessons with Hagrid - More crack. In which Hagrid teaches Occlumency.