tsukinofaerii (
tsukinofaerii) wrote2011-07-04 12:35 am
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Groovy <3
I love you all~
And yes, I'm completely and utterly toasted. I can't feel my nose or my fingertips, which means writing legibly is almost impossible. This is how much I love you all. I'm spending more time fixing drunk typos than I am writing them, because I want you to be able to read my love. So there.
Tonight, I shot off explosives (some of them homemade by other people) and drank lots of alcohol. FOR AMERICA. I have soot marks. It's amazing. There was also meat cooked over an open fire, which (now that I think of it) is kind of freaky and weird. The entire scope of human evolution has been to get away from that, but we do it for fun? WTF? It's like camping. WE USED TO LIVE IN THE WILDERNESS. WHY DO WE GO BACK?
Still hacking from being sick a few weeks ago, but I'm finally hacking up things, which is good. I'm kind of worried that it might have been something serious (well, more serious than the strep which started this whole spiral of illness), and any day I'll wake up dead because I couldn't afford to go to a doctor. :\ Ah, well. I sort of plan to die young from something treatable anyway. Que sera sera, welcome to only-technically-not-poverty in the USA.
My cat says HI.
I have... nothing else to say, actually. :\ Bang seems to be on a roll (-ish, always -ish, because I have no confidence in my ability to ever complete anything), but I am not so drunk that I think writing it is a good idea right now. A couple other things seem to be on the burner, but my writing is just weird at the moment. I really have no excuses for it. :\
One of these days, I should do a post about X-Men: First Class, and how much I love it, even if they did... Well, spoilers. D: IT HAD SOME FAIL. SERIOUS FAIL. But someone (Jazzy?) linked an article on Twitter that kind of sort of made it sound like this segment of the movieverse is aiming at portraying mutants as a parallel of the gay rights movement instead of the civil rights movement (racial rights? civil rights doesn't seem accurate for some reason, even though it's the accurate wording as agreed upon by people who make money writing about these sort of things), and I can almost buy that. Not quite, because the waffling makes it pretty clear that the X-franchise is still trying to be all minorities ever. But there's a fairly obvious parallel between the way some mutants can pass and some mutants can't that seems more Gay Rights to me than Civil Rights. I could be wrong, but I don't think there's an equivalent when it comes to racial minorities? (If I'm wrong, someone please tell me, I would love to know.) But at the same time, it's pretty obvious that the movies (and comics to an extent, though I'm clearly much less involved in those since I've only poked the Avengers) invoke the symbols and feel of the Civil Rights movement. Maybe I'm naive, but you can't really invoke one while drawing from the other. Yes, the Civil Rights movement was powerful and is so easily recognized, which makes for an amazing tool from a writer's standpoint, but it's lazy, because the shoe doesn't really fit but they shoehorn it on because it's easily recognizable. And it just sort of drives me up the wall wanting to build these castles in the sky comparisons, only to have them shot down because canon is so god damned fucking heteronormative and pulling from the wrong angle. And it's even worse when they have so much to work with. I mean, even aside from Erik/Charles or obvious gay couples in canon (which I wish they'd have, but aside from those), there's no reason not to touch on the whole concept of passing, and what it means to find out you're one of them and learning to belong or not belong and what about Mystique? She could completely and utterly blend into human society if she wanted, and she chooses not to, and the possibilities there are so amazing and (IMO) not all that unlike a bisexual fighting to not pass while its still so damned easy to and... GAH.
(flails)
As Erik says, "You want society to accept you, but you can't even accept yourself." I can't even BEGIN to start on how that statement hit me. I just sort of choked up and stared. IDK if the screenwriters even know what they did there, but it's beautiful and heartaching and just beyond words.
And that's why I would have gone with Magneto.
I just have a lot of feelings. :(
waterofthemoon is in AIM right now, and she says HI. IL her very much. ♥ She's listened to my drunk all night and been terribly nice about it.
Sober ETA: This makes it clear that DW needs some sort of sobriety check. ♥ Thank you all for not teasing me about my navel gazing and swiss cheese like attempts as philosophy.
And yes, I'm completely and utterly toasted. I can't feel my nose or my fingertips, which means writing legibly is almost impossible. This is how much I love you all. I'm spending more time fixing drunk typos than I am writing them, because I want you to be able to read my love. So there.
Tonight, I shot off explosives (some of them homemade by other people) and drank lots of alcohol. FOR AMERICA. I have soot marks. It's amazing. There was also meat cooked over an open fire, which (now that I think of it) is kind of freaky and weird. The entire scope of human evolution has been to get away from that, but we do it for fun? WTF? It's like camping. WE USED TO LIVE IN THE WILDERNESS. WHY DO WE GO BACK?
Still hacking from being sick a few weeks ago, but I'm finally hacking up things, which is good. I'm kind of worried that it might have been something serious (well, more serious than the strep which started this whole spiral of illness), and any day I'll wake up dead because I couldn't afford to go to a doctor. :\ Ah, well. I sort of plan to die young from something treatable anyway. Que sera sera, welcome to only-technically-not-poverty in the USA.
My cat says HI.
I have... nothing else to say, actually. :\ Bang seems to be on a roll (-ish, always -ish, because I have no confidence in my ability to ever complete anything), but I am not so drunk that I think writing it is a good idea right now. A couple other things seem to be on the burner, but my writing is just weird at the moment. I really have no excuses for it. :\
One of these days, I should do a post about X-Men: First Class, and how much I love it, even if they did... Well, spoilers. D: IT HAD SOME FAIL. SERIOUS FAIL. But someone (Jazzy?) linked an article on Twitter that kind of sort of made it sound like this segment of the movieverse is aiming at portraying mutants as a parallel of the gay rights movement instead of the civil rights movement (racial rights? civil rights doesn't seem accurate for some reason, even though it's the accurate wording as agreed upon by people who make money writing about these sort of things), and I can almost buy that. Not quite, because the waffling makes it pretty clear that the X-franchise is still trying to be all minorities ever. But there's a fairly obvious parallel between the way some mutants can pass and some mutants can't that seems more Gay Rights to me than Civil Rights. I could be wrong, but I don't think there's an equivalent when it comes to racial minorities? (If I'm wrong, someone please tell me, I would love to know.) But at the same time, it's pretty obvious that the movies (and comics to an extent, though I'm clearly much less involved in those since I've only poked the Avengers) invoke the symbols and feel of the Civil Rights movement. Maybe I'm naive, but you can't really invoke one while drawing from the other. Yes, the Civil Rights movement was powerful and is so easily recognized, which makes for an amazing tool from a writer's standpoint, but it's lazy, because the shoe doesn't really fit but they shoehorn it on because it's easily recognizable. And it just sort of drives me up the wall wanting to build these castles in the sky comparisons, only to have them shot down because canon is so god damned fucking heteronormative and pulling from the wrong angle. And it's even worse when they have so much to work with. I mean, even aside from Erik/Charles or obvious gay couples in canon (which I wish they'd have, but aside from those), there's no reason not to touch on the whole concept of passing, and what it means to find out you're one of them and learning to belong or not belong and what about Mystique? She could completely and utterly blend into human society if she wanted, and she chooses not to, and the possibilities there are so amazing and (IMO) not all that unlike a bisexual fighting to not pass while its still so damned easy to and... GAH.
(flails)
As Erik says, "You want society to accept you, but you can't even accept yourself." I can't even BEGIN to start on how that statement hit me. I just sort of choked up and stared. IDK if the screenwriters even know what they did there, but it's beautiful and heartaching and just beyond words.
And that's why I would have gone with Magneto.
I just have a lot of feelings. :(
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Sober ETA: This makes it clear that DW needs some sort of sobriety check. ♥ Thank you all for not teasing me about my navel gazing and swiss cheese like attempts as philosophy.
Hmm
On paper, that makes sense, in that Magneto was pretty much all for 'separate but equal' - people forget that Magneto went and got an asteroid for his neophytes to live in peace -whereas Charles Xavier is all for softly, calmly, gentle integration. That however, works to a point.
In the glossing over MLK Jnr, people tend to forget that he was speaking hard truths as well. For instance, in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail when he calls out white allies and liberal whites for telling people of colour to 'wait', just 'wait' when for certain things you have to agitate and push for. But I understood his peaceful movement and the fact that with the optics of the TV with fire hoses against poc and their allies (I think there was a heavy Jewish involvement in this) made a lot of white people think. Also, it helped that there were politicians who saw the winds of change and decided to ride them. But in the comic world - there are Sentinels, and Senator Kelly and a lot of politicians who score points against mutants - well... I don't know re: Professor X. What are his optics, you know?
In addition I think Malcolm X got mellow when he discovered Islam and went on a trip to Mecca. He found a sort of peace that Magneto is still looking for.
But all that is me just waffling. I think that it's poor form to talk up Civil Rights allegories and then do the optics with the poc that they did. I think the only thing that makes me stay my hand (and why I haven't flayed the movie as much as I think I would have done) is the fact that Magneto is a minority. That he is passing, but he knows that he is, and his history is writ on his body and drives his being. That he gives Raven confidence to go blue
and not a blue eyed blondeand be proud of her own form.As much as I know that fandom tends to wail about Erik and Charles separating, I think for the discussion re: mutants and how they choose to interact with the world, it is necessary. If Erik and Charles had been on the same side, it would have stifled the conversation re: mutants and what they needed to have. Should they stay and fight for a world that hates and fears them, without any conceivable bench marks of success? Or should they go forth and take theirs, because authority doesn't fall down to reason, but in the face of the greater show of power that Erik has. Erik, as Magneto has shown in the comics that he can do that. He can rip Sentinels apart, can create his own asteroid for his people.
In addition, the great thing about Erik and Charles X- the very best thing- is that they can sit down and converse. That if a mutant wants to deflect to either side, Charles or Magneto will accept them.
Man, I do have meta about this movie, it seems, but I want to bring that with some recs.
Re: Hmm
I wouldn't really say there's a conversation between the Xavier and Magneto ideals (though there clearly is between the people involved). They're two extremes, and they both know it. I think that just might be the heart of the tragedy for me—together they might have been able to find that sweet spot between too militant and too passive. Or they could have ended up too much one or the other, but within their own groups it's accepted that the other side is wrong, and so there's no pressure to self-correct.
Of course, it's all hypothetical at this point. Things might have been worse if they'd worked together. I just can't fight the feeling that Charles' methods aren't enough by themselves, and even being the Good Mutants to Magneto's Bad Mutants doesn't do enough. :\