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Jun. 18th, 2011 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlofpreyHello. I am totally still around. Now I'm going to Prague tomorrow, and I still haven't picked out any clothes to pack, packed, or tidied my room a bit like I wanted to. Eek.
I don't think it'll be too hard to pack for Prague though. We're only going for six days, and two of them are going to involve travelling, so we'll only really be there for about 4 full days. And from what I feel like I know about Prague, and what my mum has seen on the weather forecasts for there, the weather will probably be pretty much like it is in England, if not slightly worse. So I'm mostly planning on taking a few pairs of jeans, maybe some lighter trousers for if it's sunny, some t-shirts, something nice to go out in of an evening, and something to sleep in. Plus the basics, obviously.
What I have done is listened to the Adam and Joe show this morning, which came complete with a bit about Labyrinth, which was lovely because I just rewatched it the other night, so it was very apt for me; went into town today and finally bought another pair of jeans, so I now I actually do have (including the ones I'll be wearing) a 'few pairs' to take on holiday with me; I also managed to get some vests, a nice dress, and a free pair of sunglasses because I spent more than £35 at New Look (the free sunglasses started falling apart not long after I started trying to clean them, but I managed to get the little screws and put it back together, so hopefully that'll be fine); and I also went for my yearly haircut this week, and shaved my legs and underarms, as is my yearly tradition. Mostly I am pleased about my hair. It is short and doesn't get in my face as much. I would like to make a note to try to keep it this short more regularly.
I also got my period this week, not that long since my last one. But there was quite a big gap, I think, between my last one and the one before it, so it's probably fair enough. And as I said to my mum, I'd rather get it now than when I'm in Prague. So hurrah.
So yeah. I've had a fairly busy week. I've also been watching lots of stuff and having things to say about them, but not massive things to say.
One of them, though, was that I was getting a bit annoyed with the apparent habit screenwriter's have nowadays of making pregnant professional female characters have miscarriages. In Silk the main female character got pregnant, and it was a brilliant pregnancy, to her sort-of rival, sort-of friend, and then a couple of episodes later she miscarried. Bailey miscarried her baby in the last episode, and it's not quite the same thing, but apparently Debbie is going to miscarry her baby in Emmerdale next week. I know it's a thing that happens and it's worth dealing with, and I know it's probably difficult to try to have a professional female character have a baby and it not massively affect her life and the show. But it sort of suggests - to me, at least - that single professional women just can't have babies, even if they want to. Or that their lives have to be tragedy or something. It's just something I noticed and that annoys me, that's all.
Also, with regards to Scott and Bailey, I can't believe they keep having Bailey's ex get involved in her life and be such a dick to her. It's really annoying for me, because he's the guy who plays Lestrade in Sherlock, and I really like him there, so I keep wanting to like him in the show. Or at least, if Bailey has to keep being involved with him, for him to start being at least a bit nice to her so her life isn't just constantly awful. Although now we've pretty much gone past that point, I guess. Still, unless he's going to turn out to be the serial killer who killed Scott's friend when she was a child, so it all wraps up quite nicely, I want him to either stop being a dick or just go away. Please.
I also went to see X-Men: First Class last week. And I have mixed, and then changing feelings about it. In fairness, I was never that jazzed up to go see it. I do quite like X-Men and superheroes and special effects and everything, but Xavier and Magneto have never been my favourites. But then it looked quite good in the trailers. But then I remembered it was still about Xavier and Magneto. In the end, it was the fact that Kevin Bacon was in it that made me really want to go see it, even though I could kind of guess from the fact he was in the publicity pictures wearing a suit and talking to a glamourous blonde in a weird lounge in the 60s that he was probably going to be a villain.
So. I went to see it. And I thought it was okay. It was a bit stiff in some places, in a way that I sometimes find that comic book films are. Like they have scenes that would work in a comic book, in a couple of static pages, but don't really work in a film. The scene where young Erik starts flinging metal around, but not at Shaw (which I don't think was his or the scene's intention, but still it was hard to tell) I found a bit awkward and weird. And the scene where grown-up Erik basically told those guys in a bar that his family had been in a concentration camp and he knew they were Nazis, and then they just drank beer awkwardly for ages was a bit weird as well. And Kevin Bacon showed up as a Nazi. And not even a Nazi, but a Nazi collaborator, who didn't share the ideals of the Nazis but was happy to go along with what they were doing for his own purposes. Which I generally find worse. So I wasn't really massively enjoying it.
Then Xavier showed up, being kind of dick and not very nice to his sister, and I disliked it because I thought it was meant to be one of those things where it was okay because he was Xavier/a hero. When I realised that no, they were actually trying to have him be a dick I was a bit happier about it. I liked Michael Fassbender and Erik better than James McAvoy and Xavier though.
And yeah. It kind of continued being sort of good, but sort of stiff, for me. And then, out of all the mutants, the only latina mutant switched sides, and the only black mutant died. The one who was supposed to be able to adapt to survive anything. There has been some talk in the fandom about whether he actually died, or just adapted and changed into a different form to survive and might get back into his human body at some point in the future. Which is possible, but they didn't really put anything like that in the film. AND, this death came after some slightly odd scenes/lines which sort of made me worry that he was doomed, and makes me wonder if his death wasn't also supposed to be part of a set-up to cause one of the white character's pain. Just before he dies, the black guy (Armando) is playing pinball with Alex, whose powers are used to kill him, and he says something about "You're killing me, man". And then later on when Alex is meant to be training, he says something about how when he uses his powers bad things always seem to happen. Which, if it's true, is obviously much worse. But that's only a theory.
Anyway. So then they only have white mutants to build up into a team and train. THEY MUST HAVE BEEN SO GLAD TO GET RID OF THE NON-WHITE MUTANTS SO THEY COULD GET ON WITH THE REAL TRAINING, YOU KNOW? Which was weird. And then blah, blah, blah, the ending, I desperately wanted Angel (the latina mutant) to have switched sides so she could work against the bad guys from the inside, but no, she was just kind of evil, and tried to kill her previous friends. The ending, the only female mutant left on the good guys' side changing sides, although for slightly better reasons. Although it was a still a matter of choosing between one slightly jerky guy in her life, and another. She didn't exactly go off on her own, did she? But there you go. Then the big break-up, Charles' legs get paralysed, they form the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants. And there you go.
So there it was. It was fine, but not without it's massive massive problems. Added to it's bizarre race issues was also the weird fact that they made two characters who were in the comics (and cartoon show) Irish and Scottish both American. I get that they had to put the team together quickly, and it was the 60s so they couldn't travel that far, so they wanted to keep everyone local. But still. They could have made them Scottish-American or Irish-American, couldn't they? Or is that not a thing? Anyway. It was a bit weird.
And yeah. As for Charles/Erik, I saw it, and I actually quite liked it, and I came out thinking I wouldn't mind reading some fic. But I didn't love it, and I think a lot of their scenes together had that same stiffness a lot of the other scenes had, and there wasn't much room for a real relationship to sort of grow, in between the set pieces and the Political Issues and stuff. Or not the kind that I'm interested in, anyway.
But, actually, as I say, since I saw the film, my feelings have sort of weirdly changed. I totally liked Erik and Fassbender the best probably throughout the film, but having come out and thought back on it, I really think I prefer Charles now. Mostly I think, because I find it hard to get my head around Erik's position by the end of the film - because he literally says he thinks the same things as Shaw and wants the same things as Shaw, it's just that Shaw killed his mother. And I know emotions and feelings are difficult and not terribly rational, but by his other logic, she was also one of those humans he thinks are inferior to him and 'his kind'. And I don't know. I just find it really weird. And just, you know. I get the idea of a concentration camp prisoner being part of another oppressed minority and not wanting the same thing to happen with them, and wanting to protect them. But Erik also says he agrees with Shaw, who thought that the whole race of humans were an inferior species and should be wiped out. Which I cannot really understand. Unless the people who suggest that Erik's attitudes and political views are due to ptsd or some sort of mental illness are right. Which brings with it a whole other set of issues.
Anyway. I got a bit confused as well about how this film contradicted the 'later' films, but when I got out I found out it was supposed to be a whole new franchise with a whole new canon, it made a bit more sense. But yeah, now I like idealistic, super-powerfully telepathic, sort of dickish Charles the best. And my attitudes to Shaw changed sort of during the film, when he was still awful but at least made the effort to be fabulous. Cravats, fancy lounges on a nuclear submarine, and all. Although the Nazi collaborator thing still creeps me out a bit. I'm not sure how well they matched that bit of his characterisation up to the later one, to be honest. Because he didn't seem to be torturing many of his fellow mutants then, or killing their parents or whatever. It was weird, anyway. But then I have plenty of other problems with him, because his plan was just sort of mad. I don't know if there was supposed to be any scientific evidence that nuclear energy created mutants or gave them energy or whatever, but I find it hard to believe that if you put Charles or Raven in a room with some nuclear radiation, they would be just fine. And even if the mutants weren't killed by a nuclear blast, surely it would still pretty much kill of all the plants and animals? So they would have nothing to eat? Perhaps he had a mutant stashed away somewhere that could create food from out of nothing. Maybe.
But anyway. So yeah. Despite their being plenty of Charles/Erik fic about (obviously), and despite my being able to read and enjoy some of it, I'm mostly interested now in Charles, Shaw, and Charles/Shaw. Even though they didn't actually get to interact on screen together, just talk about each other. Because I am shallow and they basically fit some character types I like and a pairing type I like, and one is played by Kevin Bacon, most likely. But still. There is some fic, which is nice. I am hoping there will be more, but not exactly expecting it, really.
Anyway. So those are my (apparently fairly long) thoughts on X-Men: First Class.
Right. I have other thoughts, but mostly they are about how I love Becky McDonald and I love David Platt and Gary Windass is acting a bit creepy at the moment. And other things. But I really need to go and pack. I am going on holiday tomorrow. So you probably won't hear from me until next week sometime, at the earliest. So, bye!
I don't think it'll be too hard to pack for Prague though. We're only going for six days, and two of them are going to involve travelling, so we'll only really be there for about 4 full days. And from what I feel like I know about Prague, and what my mum has seen on the weather forecasts for there, the weather will probably be pretty much like it is in England, if not slightly worse. So I'm mostly planning on taking a few pairs of jeans, maybe some lighter trousers for if it's sunny, some t-shirts, something nice to go out in of an evening, and something to sleep in. Plus the basics, obviously.
What I have done is listened to the Adam and Joe show this morning, which came complete with a bit about Labyrinth, which was lovely because I just rewatched it the other night, so it was very apt for me; went into town today and finally bought another pair of jeans, so I now I actually do have (including the ones I'll be wearing) a 'few pairs' to take on holiday with me; I also managed to get some vests, a nice dress, and a free pair of sunglasses because I spent more than £35 at New Look (the free sunglasses started falling apart not long after I started trying to clean them, but I managed to get the little screws and put it back together, so hopefully that'll be fine); and I also went for my yearly haircut this week, and shaved my legs and underarms, as is my yearly tradition. Mostly I am pleased about my hair. It is short and doesn't get in my face as much. I would like to make a note to try to keep it this short more regularly.
I also got my period this week, not that long since my last one. But there was quite a big gap, I think, between my last one and the one before it, so it's probably fair enough. And as I said to my mum, I'd rather get it now than when I'm in Prague. So hurrah.
So yeah. I've had a fairly busy week. I've also been watching lots of stuff and having things to say about them, but not massive things to say.
One of them, though, was that I was getting a bit annoyed with the apparent habit screenwriter's have nowadays of making pregnant professional female characters have miscarriages. In Silk the main female character got pregnant, and it was a brilliant pregnancy, to her sort-of rival, sort-of friend, and then a couple of episodes later she miscarried. Bailey miscarried her baby in the last episode, and it's not quite the same thing, but apparently Debbie is going to miscarry her baby in Emmerdale next week. I know it's a thing that happens and it's worth dealing with, and I know it's probably difficult to try to have a professional female character have a baby and it not massively affect her life and the show. But it sort of suggests - to me, at least - that single professional women just can't have babies, even if they want to. Or that their lives have to be tragedy or something. It's just something I noticed and that annoys me, that's all.
Also, with regards to Scott and Bailey, I can't believe they keep having Bailey's ex get involved in her life and be such a dick to her. It's really annoying for me, because he's the guy who plays Lestrade in Sherlock, and I really like him there, so I keep wanting to like him in the show. Or at least, if Bailey has to keep being involved with him, for him to start being at least a bit nice to her so her life isn't just constantly awful. Although now we've pretty much gone past that point, I guess. Still, unless he's going to turn out to be the serial killer who killed Scott's friend when she was a child, so it all wraps up quite nicely, I want him to either stop being a dick or just go away. Please.
I also went to see X-Men: First Class last week. And I have mixed, and then changing feelings about it. In fairness, I was never that jazzed up to go see it. I do quite like X-Men and superheroes and special effects and everything, but Xavier and Magneto have never been my favourites. But then it looked quite good in the trailers. But then I remembered it was still about Xavier and Magneto. In the end, it was the fact that Kevin Bacon was in it that made me really want to go see it, even though I could kind of guess from the fact he was in the publicity pictures wearing a suit and talking to a glamourous blonde in a weird lounge in the 60s that he was probably going to be a villain.
So. I went to see it. And I thought it was okay. It was a bit stiff in some places, in a way that I sometimes find that comic book films are. Like they have scenes that would work in a comic book, in a couple of static pages, but don't really work in a film. The scene where young Erik starts flinging metal around, but not at Shaw (which I don't think was his or the scene's intention, but still it was hard to tell) I found a bit awkward and weird. And the scene where grown-up Erik basically told those guys in a bar that his family had been in a concentration camp and he knew they were Nazis, and then they just drank beer awkwardly for ages was a bit weird as well. And Kevin Bacon showed up as a Nazi. And not even a Nazi, but a Nazi collaborator, who didn't share the ideals of the Nazis but was happy to go along with what they were doing for his own purposes. Which I generally find worse. So I wasn't really massively enjoying it.
Then Xavier showed up, being kind of dick and not very nice to his sister, and I disliked it because I thought it was meant to be one of those things where it was okay because he was Xavier/a hero. When I realised that no, they were actually trying to have him be a dick I was a bit happier about it. I liked Michael Fassbender and Erik better than James McAvoy and Xavier though.
And yeah. It kind of continued being sort of good, but sort of stiff, for me. And then, out of all the mutants, the only latina mutant switched sides, and the only black mutant died. The one who was supposed to be able to adapt to survive anything. There has been some talk in the fandom about whether he actually died, or just adapted and changed into a different form to survive and might get back into his human body at some point in the future. Which is possible, but they didn't really put anything like that in the film. AND, this death came after some slightly odd scenes/lines which sort of made me worry that he was doomed, and makes me wonder if his death wasn't also supposed to be part of a set-up to cause one of the white character's pain. Just before he dies, the black guy (Armando) is playing pinball with Alex, whose powers are used to kill him, and he says something about "You're killing me, man". And then later on when Alex is meant to be training, he says something about how when he uses his powers bad things always seem to happen. Which, if it's true, is obviously much worse. But that's only a theory.
Anyway. So then they only have white mutants to build up into a team and train. THEY MUST HAVE BEEN SO GLAD TO GET RID OF THE NON-WHITE MUTANTS SO THEY COULD GET ON WITH THE REAL TRAINING, YOU KNOW? Which was weird. And then blah, blah, blah, the ending, I desperately wanted Angel (the latina mutant) to have switched sides so she could work against the bad guys from the inside, but no, she was just kind of evil, and tried to kill her previous friends. The ending, the only female mutant left on the good guys' side changing sides, although for slightly better reasons. Although it was a still a matter of choosing between one slightly jerky guy in her life, and another. She didn't exactly go off on her own, did she? But there you go. Then the big break-up, Charles' legs get paralysed, they form the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants. And there you go.
So there it was. It was fine, but not without it's massive massive problems. Added to it's bizarre race issues was also the weird fact that they made two characters who were in the comics (and cartoon show) Irish and Scottish both American. I get that they had to put the team together quickly, and it was the 60s so they couldn't travel that far, so they wanted to keep everyone local. But still. They could have made them Scottish-American or Irish-American, couldn't they? Or is that not a thing? Anyway. It was a bit weird.
And yeah. As for Charles/Erik, I saw it, and I actually quite liked it, and I came out thinking I wouldn't mind reading some fic. But I didn't love it, and I think a lot of their scenes together had that same stiffness a lot of the other scenes had, and there wasn't much room for a real relationship to sort of grow, in between the set pieces and the Political Issues and stuff. Or not the kind that I'm interested in, anyway.
But, actually, as I say, since I saw the film, my feelings have sort of weirdly changed. I totally liked Erik and Fassbender the best probably throughout the film, but having come out and thought back on it, I really think I prefer Charles now. Mostly I think, because I find it hard to get my head around Erik's position by the end of the film - because he literally says he thinks the same things as Shaw and wants the same things as Shaw, it's just that Shaw killed his mother. And I know emotions and feelings are difficult and not terribly rational, but by his other logic, she was also one of those humans he thinks are inferior to him and 'his kind'. And I don't know. I just find it really weird. And just, you know. I get the idea of a concentration camp prisoner being part of another oppressed minority and not wanting the same thing to happen with them, and wanting to protect them. But Erik also says he agrees with Shaw, who thought that the whole race of humans were an inferior species and should be wiped out. Which I cannot really understand. Unless the people who suggest that Erik's attitudes and political views are due to ptsd or some sort of mental illness are right. Which brings with it a whole other set of issues.
Anyway. I got a bit confused as well about how this film contradicted the 'later' films, but when I got out I found out it was supposed to be a whole new franchise with a whole new canon, it made a bit more sense. But yeah, now I like idealistic, super-powerfully telepathic, sort of dickish Charles the best. And my attitudes to Shaw changed sort of during the film, when he was still awful but at least made the effort to be fabulous. Cravats, fancy lounges on a nuclear submarine, and all. Although the Nazi collaborator thing still creeps me out a bit. I'm not sure how well they matched that bit of his characterisation up to the later one, to be honest. Because he didn't seem to be torturing many of his fellow mutants then, or killing their parents or whatever. It was weird, anyway. But then I have plenty of other problems with him, because his plan was just sort of mad. I don't know if there was supposed to be any scientific evidence that nuclear energy created mutants or gave them energy or whatever, but I find it hard to believe that if you put Charles or Raven in a room with some nuclear radiation, they would be just fine. And even if the mutants weren't killed by a nuclear blast, surely it would still pretty much kill of all the plants and animals? So they would have nothing to eat? Perhaps he had a mutant stashed away somewhere that could create food from out of nothing. Maybe.
But anyway. So yeah. Despite their being plenty of Charles/Erik fic about (obviously), and despite my being able to read and enjoy some of it, I'm mostly interested now in Charles, Shaw, and Charles/Shaw. Even though they didn't actually get to interact on screen together, just talk about each other. Because I am shallow and they basically fit some character types I like and a pairing type I like, and one is played by Kevin Bacon, most likely. But still. There is some fic, which is nice. I am hoping there will be more, but not exactly expecting it, really.
Anyway. So those are my (apparently fairly long) thoughts on X-Men: First Class.
Right. I have other thoughts, but mostly they are about how I love Becky McDonald and I love David Platt and Gary Windass is acting a bit creepy at the moment. And other things. But I really need to go and pack. I am going on holiday tomorrow. So you probably won't hear from me until next week sometime, at the earliest. So, bye!
