Andraste

Verdict: this film delighted me! It is like a filthy love letter to the Fox version of this universe as it walks out for one more encore before we wave it goodbye and the mutants join up with the MCU. Some individual scenes and bits dragged on for too long, but on the whole I loved it and I'm glad it's doing well. Even though I cannot quite imagine what anyone who doesn't understand all the fan service is going to get out of it. Although I guess Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are still very charming and good at their jobs even if you aren't the kind of person who literally screamed when ( spoiler. ) Conversly, if you didn't like the previous Deadpool films this one is unlikely to win you over.

It did not pull any punches - or rather any graphic stabbings and crotch punches - and it's not only the the first R-rated Disney film, but AFAIK the first Marvel movie from any studio to dromp the c-bomb - twice! It would have to be one starring an Australian, obviously. (I am still highly entertained that the first MCU film to drop an f-bomb is actually Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. I guess Wade and Logan had to escalate after that.)

And despite the director's recent complaints and the film literally opening with Deadpool ( more spoiler ) it's actually very respectful of Logan as a story in its own bizarre way.

( Many more spoilers for the film. Also spoilers for Marvel's SDCC Hall H announcment from this weekend. )

Brick By Brick (1954 words) by Andraste
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Characters: Charles Xavier, Hank McCoy, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Ororo Munroe, Jubilation Lee, Erik Lensherr, Raven | Mystique

Summary: Sometimes a house has to become a home all over again.

(This one has been sitting on my hard drive since the week after I went to see X-Men: Apocalypse. Sometimes I am so slow I don't know why I bother, but hey, maybe someone will enjoy this anyway!)

I am currently five episodes into Doom Patrol, which I have been meaning to watch since it came out. Part of the reason I put it off is that, well, I've read the Morrison era comics and also seen Timothy Dalton in Penny Dreadful* and I am self-aware enough to know exactly what would happen when I watched it. I wanted to make sure the whole thing was out so I wouldn't be fretting between seasons, and it nearly is! Besides which, I need something to do with my HBO subscription in between Last of Us episodes. I am having a good time with it so far, but it's less that I've gotten freshly attached to Niles Caulder and more than I have finally pulled up in the Blorbo Bus to let him on.*

It's funny to reflect that Dalton wouldn't even have been in the frame for the part if Patrick Stewart hadn't gotten famous in America to the point where nobody was going to ask him to do a fake accent when they finally gave him the job nerds had been demanding he get for more than decade. (Well, a different fake accent from the one he got famous with, anyway. Although now I kind of want to see the timeline where Professor X is inexplicably from Yorkshire.)

This isn't even a Question and Rorschach or Superman and Hyperion situation. It's just that over time the X-Men became so much more popular and well-known than the Doom Patrol that, despite first coming into fictional existence a few months earlier, Niles Caulder now exists in the shadow of the other wheelchair-using man of questionable ethics who recruited a team of weirdo superheroes in the early sixties, to the point where I guess they have become quantum entangled. It's a hell of a thing when you become English in the TV version just because a completely separate character owned by a rival company was played by someone who was a Frenchman in Star Trek.

Now, obviously the casting also has plenty to do with Dalton's own previous work (not least his time as James Bond) and he's more than earned the role. In fact, all of the casting in this show is terrific - I'd heard the buzz about Brendan Fraser, but also a shout-out to whoever realised that Matt Bomer would be absolutely perfect for this version of Larry Trainor. It nevertheless amuses me greatly that there's a straight line from 'Star Trek producer Bob Justman takes a UCLA course that happens to have a certain actor doing a reading' to 'Timothy Dalton gets paid to flirt with a blue CGI horse.'

Given that Reginald Hargreaves is also played with a British accent - albeit by an Irish-Canadian - I am curious about whether the nationality swap of terrible superhero dads is permanent or whether the MCU is going to go back to comicverse canon and cast an American as the next Charles Xavier. (I mean, if they're asking me they should call Lance Reddick, but unfortunately I am not in charge of this decision.)



*I mean, among other things, but it's Malcolm Murray who's the relevant reference here.

*It is just as well for everyone that this is a very metaphorical bus. Any vehicle filled with my favourite characters would be unlikely to make it to the first intersection without something going catastrophically wrong.

Happy Hour (2785 words) by Andraste
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: X-Men (Comicverse)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Frederick Dukes, Jean Grey, Victor Borkowski, Sarah | Marrow, Philippa Sontag, Irene Adler (X-Men), Charles Xavier

Summary: Fred Dukes didn't set out to become Krakoa's head bartender, but that doesn't mean he's not trying to be the best there is at what he does.

1. Wow, that was really stupid! Which is about what I was expecting - no idea why they handed the next chapter of all this over to Benjamin Percy, of all the current x-writers, but here we are.

2. ... I actually sort of liked it. And this version of Moira. I can see why the people who loved the human geneticist have been upset since HoXPoX and are more upset now, but I have to admit I find the ( very specific spoilers for the end of this mini ) a more interesting character. And oh boy I want to see Charles attempt to explain all of this to poor Banshee, one of these days.

3. Also I desperately want a real throw-down between Erik and Moira. (Optionally, alien zombie Lilandra crashes the party while Charles sits in a corner and facepalms and Amelia laughs her arse off in the background.)

4. Charles's family tree and timeline are now even more of a mess. I am not sure Benjamin Percy knows what a timeline is, actually.

5. I will be happy to see Beast try to overthrow the Council if it means that his character arc actually goes somewhere. We've been doing this for years, let his descent into Hell pay off somehow! Watching him say and do evil things and never actually accomplish anything is boring. Charles and Erik (and Moira!) being morally questionable has been so satisfying lately; I wish Hank the same sense of purpose.

So, a month from now, Jonathan Hickman's run on the x-books will be finished when the fourth issue of Inferno comes out on January 5th to get the mutant new year under way with a bang.

A lot of people are saying that whether Hickman's run is good or not depends on the ending, but honestly, whatever happens now I've enjoyed the ride so much and the shake-up has brought about so many things I love that I don't even care. I'm just delighted that they've decided to not pack everyone up and send them back to Westchester yet. Since 2019, the line has actually felt fresh again, and that's worth a lot to me even if it doesn't stick the landing.

( No specific spoilers for anything outside the initial HoXPoX issues, just a lot of mutant-related rambling. )

I saw a thread on meme today where you take your two favourite pairings and swap the partners and see if the results are still pairings you would like. This brought me to the realisation that G'Kar/Magneto is a perfectly cromulant pairing of freedom fighters bonding over REVOLUTION and I would certainly be into it.

On the other hand, Charles Xavier and Londo Mollari would just would not work as a pairing on any level. Charles would find Londo fascinating and entertaining in small doses, but also exhausting, and I just can't see Londo being interested at all. Besides which, if Charles was in the B5 universe somehow he would be far too distracted taking over the Psi Corps to date anyone from there. (Obviously he is intending to run it in the best interests of the telepaths rather than EarthGov! Which I'm sure would work out for the best with absolutely no negative consequences at all ...)

Meanwhile, I do not think Jean Valjean and/or Javert have done anything to deserve being anywhere near any of these people. (Javert deserves lots of things, but being dragged into the complexities of mutant rights and/or a very confusing space station is not it.)

More good ways to spend lockdown: getting back into old fandoms. I've got a friend who is devouring all the Alex Rider books again (a bit after my time, but I'm glad she's having fun) and having put myself into a mutant mood while slowly working on that remaster of Be My Hero I'm always saying I'll get around to finishing, I decided to finally catch up on some comics.

I fell behind on reading the x-books during Age of X - a combination deck-clearing and stalling exercise performed before Hickman took over the line - and then tried the first couple of issues of House of X and Powers of X before deciding that it would probably read better once the mini was complete. (I was not wrong, it's much more digestible taken all at once.) I'd been a bit reluctant to read these, having heard grumbling about them in some quarters. And I knew that it was another 'let's create a mutant homeland!' story, which I usually don't like much, and that Charles was being ethically questionable somehow, which often puts my teeth on edge because so few writers handle that right. But it turns out I am head-over-heels in love with the entire thing.

Over the past four days, I've read all of HoXPox and every subsequent issue of an X-Book that's up on Marvel Unlimited. I am trying to think when the last time I was this excited by the state of X-Men comics was, and to my surprise the answer is: never. There have been individual titles that have delighted me more than anything happening here, but I've never actually bothered to sit down and read every title in the line at once. Even Fallen Angels which was ... not good. (For once I am happy Marvel hastily cancelled something.)

I saw someone somewhere describe HoXPoX as 'X-Men comics for people who hate X-Men comics' and maybe that's true - I can see why lots of long-time fans would be annoyed by some of the stuff going on here. But it turns out that they have also given me many things that I've always wanted to see, and not just Charles and Erik being in love on an island again. Although that part is pretty great, not gonna lie.

Most delightfully: after decades of stories (be they fanfic or some version of canon) where Charles is keeping secrets and manipulating everyone and being generally questionable while I've thought 'yes, sure, in principle, but not like that ...' I can at last point at one and yell 'THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS!!!'

Back in the day when everyone was raving over Dr. Benway's X-Manson, I found it unsatisfying despite loving most of his stories and agreeing that 'what if Xavier was running the X-Men like a cult?' was an interesting premise. After much contemplation, I realised that it was because Benway was writing about the X-Men as if they were a real-world cult - a perfectly worthwhile goal, and clearly a story that worked for a lot of people. But what I wanted to read about was the cult that comicsverse Charles Xavier would actually run. And here comes Jonathan Hickman to deliver that story to me, finally! (I wonder if Hickman was ever a fanfic reader back in the day. I mean it's been, what, twenty-five years give or take?)

I never imagined that one of my favourite single issues of any x-book ever would be the one where Charles and Erik and Apocalypse put on nice suits and go to a Davos lunch meeting and terrify some humans together while calmly eating steak, but hey, here we are.

The only problem now is that I'm six months behind the release schedule, and I don't think I can justify paying for a subscription for eleven different series I paid for already as part of Marvel Unlimited. But also, I want them.

Fresh from Vividcon! I'm glad I was able to contribute something to the last one ever. (I guess that from now on I will have to find some other motivation to actually finish vids ...)

Bodies (348 words) by Andraste, LokisRose
Fandom: X-Men (Original Timeline Movies), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, Raven | Mystique, Rogue (X-Men), Hank McCoy, Kurt Wagner, Logan (X-Men), Jean Grey, Bobby Drake, Ororo Munroe, Scott Summers, Warren Worthington III
Additional Tags: Fanvids, Vividcon, Embedded Video, Download Available

Summary: Mutation is not a sin.

While I did all the clipping and cutting and exporting and other technical stuff on this vid, it would have never have happened without my collaborator loksirose. She came up with the song and the summary and then physically stood over me (well, sat on the bed behind me) until we actually finished the damn thing in time.

This is the twentieth vid I've made! In the same fandom as the first one, appropriately enough.

This afternoon I went to see Deadpool 2! Which may not have been as surprising as the first film, but still worth watching if you liked the first one. (If you didn't: stay away, this is more of the same.)

I feel like my favourite joke should be ( spoiler. )

However, I really have to give the vote for best joke to Domino( spoiler. )

Speaking of which, every single moment Domino was on screen was a gift. Glad we're getting more of her in X-Force.

I was annoyed that they ( spoiler. )

I am kind of sad that ( spoiler. )

Anyway, a fun afternoon, even though I ended up wearing way too much icecream. (We went to the fancy cinema where they bring you dessert half way through the film, which is fantastic except that eating icecream in the dark while trying to watch action scenes is a test I did not pass today.)