Candy Assortment

[thedeadlyhook]

Although I hate doing these poke-my-head-out-of-the-gopher-hole posts, they're about all I'm going to be capable of for awhile. My deepest apologies to being behind on responding to comments, and also to being semi-brain-dead when I do make them (which seems to be the norm these days).

While I still have some lucid neurons firing, though, some items.

Save Nazanin. I've been meaning to post this link for awhile. Please, read and sign the petition. Because this type of "justice" should NOT just go by without even an attempt at protest.

X-Men 3. I liked it, although I had to agree with rusty_halo's reasons for not liking it too. It's a movie that skews toward rewarding knowledge of the comics on one hand, except for one major difference.

Dark Phoenix.

Speaking as someone who has read quite a lot of the comics. I do know this story well. It's actually what got me back into comics after a long hiatus from childhood, when I read my brother's old stash of Superboy and Legion of Super-Heroes and Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Avengers. So here's what I noticed about the way the Phoenix story was changed.

It's no longer about Phoenix. It's about Xavier and Magneto. And Scott and Logan. Not Jean. Jean is...

Well, in the movie, she's sort of like Sadako/Samara from The Ring, somebody who really wants to hurt people because she's a) just bad and b) been mistreated. That's a pretty radical change from the original story. It made sense in the context of the movie, BUT--

Okay, here's the deal. The original comic-book story featured a self-determined female who made her own choice to die a hero (as replicated in X2, although modified), was resurrected with absolute power which then spiraled out of her control (thanks in part to villainous meddling with her mind), which ended with her again choosing to die a hero by killing herself, thus removing the threat of her evil id-monster that she couldn't control (essentially, the classic Star Trek episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" crossed with Forbidden Planet). It's a story about Jean triumphing and failing and then triumphing again over her own best and worst impulses. It's a story about Jean.

The movie story, however, featured a self-detemined female being used as the rope in a tug-of-war in a methodology dispute between two men. Jean is essentially a pawn, to fit the chess analogy, in X3. She's not given much choice about any of it. Xavier, who she trusts to help her, violates her mind and reprograms her; Magneto, who firmly believes in living up to one's potential, sees her as a weapon to be used. Even Jean's status as the centerpoint of the Scott/Jean/Logan triangle becomes another push-pull - did Jean choose Scott of her free will, or was she reprogrammed to want the 'good' choice? would she have chosen Logan, if her mind was free (the conclusion the movie seems to draw, but also not quite, since at that point she's out of control, which also equals.... evil?)? From the point of view of an Xavier vs. Magneto story, there's great material here, BUT... it's a male-centric story. Jean practially disappears as a character with any free will - that her only free act in the movie was to beg Wolverine for release, which means that even her fate was decided by a man in this version. As a story, it works... but it's different. Jean as frightening power-of-woman-as-destructive-force (that she herself solves through her own heroism) vs. Jean-as-power-of-woman-as-destructive-force (that she asks someone who loves her to solve for her). A changed nuance there, you know?

So, low marks on the girl power. High marks in other places, such as the ethics discussion bewteen Xavier and Magneto, but....

New topic: I've seen several people's answers to this one, but the latest entry I grabbed the text from was bogwitch's:

The Writing Meme

1. What is your penname/nom de plume/author name/alias/handle?
The Deadly Hook

2. How did you choose it?
The full explanation is on my user info page, but it's from a kung-fu movie, one of those things that was such the joke of the moment that when it came time to pick an LJ handle, it was the first thing that came to mind. That said, though, I've come to rather like it for the odd symbolism one can read into it. None of which was intentional, which is I guess why I like it. Feels like there's a narrative lesson there somewhere.

3. What fandom(s) do you write for?
BtVS. That also includes AtS as a rider, but Buffy is primarily the thing.

4. What fic(s) are you currently working on?

Oh, geez....

WIPs in progresss:

*Does It Have to Mean Something (just needs the finishing chapters, but they're taking forever to get right)
*Jack the Giant Killer (supposed to have been a fast shorty, but of course it spiraled up and out, and now I'm struggling with the ending)

And WIPs on the back, back burners:

*Life Happens (Kinkathan fic that I never quite got around to finishing... one of those Spike-gets-the-Shanshu fics, but with my own whole mini-drama in Dawn's POV worked in, plus flashbacks to post-"The Gift," and... ugh, it just got difficult to maintain the angst. When I get back in that right state of mind, I will finish it)
*Bad Eurotrip (on hiatus for... actually, I'm not gonna look how long it's been, but I do so want to get back to it, because the story as plotted was damn cool)
*The Dead Walk (Spike, Connor, and Illyria fic I started way back when that I want to revise and continue when I get a moment to get in that AtS mood, and rewrite Connor so he sounds less like Xander)

Cooking in the Brain-Kitchen:

*Sequel to "The Center," picking up in the "Does It Have to Mean Something?" continuity. This one's got a title and everything, and I've written big swatches of it, but DIHTMS has to be finished first. God only knows when this one'll get off the ground, but I really want to write it.

More Brain-Kitchen, in the 'May Never Get Written, But Fun to Think About' Category:

*An AU S6 story in which Buffy gets caught outside the police station whilst beating Spike's face in, and arrested. Things proceed to get thoroughly messy from there. I wrote an outline for this one in a feverish white heat one day, and it still surprises me how much detail just boiled up out of nowhere, although I didn't write down what I'd planned for the ending - whups!
*Another AU S6 story of that classic favorite, Halfrek grants a vengeance wish to Buffy. A little too terribly close in some ways to a story that fer1213 is already writing, so not likely to happen, but I'd had this whole bunny about Buffy wishing that Spike wasn't a vampire and that he really wanted to help people, and that ending up translating into a) a human Spike who b) goes straight to the media and outs himself as a former vampire on the talk shows. The idea from his POV would be to help Buffy lighten her load AND assist the average person by alerting them to the dangers lurking in the darkness, setting up a neat little discussion about the logic of keeping the reality of vampires secret if your real goal is protecting people. But in story terms, also a huge excuse to show a media circus in Sunnydale looking for "real" vampires, ala Blair Witch, and Buffy fuming over Spike's sudden celebrity. Almost more potential than I think I could pull off.

Clearly I have a case of great ambitions vs. limited ability. : (

5. What fandom did you start in?
This is my first "real" active fandom, as in writing fanfic, but I have deep roots in comics and anime fandom (sort of dancing around the sidelines, more or less). I would've probably been involved in something for Star Trek: The Next Generation had I found anyone else to talk to about it at the time.

6. What is your deepest darkest fic-writing secret?
Hm. Probably that I have this tendency to write Spike as sort of... jerky. Not perfect-prince-y. I'm kind of bad at romance in that regard.

7. Do you have any particular quirks/habits to your writing?
The vomiting thing probably counts. *g* And it's probably becoming clearer over time that I'm not much for prose, really, and would be almost happier writing scripts if I could, but I can't get away from all the stage directions. I should really be drawing all these stories as comics. As if they don't take me long enough to write!

8. Do you have any fanfiction pet peeves? (Anything that appears in fiction that irritates you, anything at all)
Unambiguous Buffy-the-bitch stories that aren't trying for darkfic - in other words, Buffy-bashing. One-dimensional Demon!Hater!Xander. The word "'splainy" as a shorthand marker for wacky-Buffy dialogue (a canon word, I know, but it does make me grate my teeth every time, because I think it's dumb-sounding and makes Buffy sound dumb, unlike a lot of earlier Buffy jargon, which tended to be sharp and witty).

9. Do you have an OTP?
Writing, Spike/Buffy. Reading, I'm pretty easy, as long as the writer sells me on it, although some pairings just don't do anything for me in terms of larger resonance, and I need the connection to the bigger world for it to work for me. Hot chemistry alone is never enough. And I'm kind of a canon whore.

10. If you could get someone to write a fic for you right now, what would it be? (please include fandom, characters, scenario, as much detail as possible)
My significant other, toysdream keeps coming up with cool ideas that I'd love to see him actually execute, such as the Buffy/Immortal fic he promised me once, and the Angel story he's been talking about for about a month now, and the other Angel story which spins AU during "A Hole in the World" after that scene on the bridge (where Angel says "the hell with the world," and this time he means it!), not to mention getting back to "Bad Eurotrip." Otherwise... sheesh. There are WIPs I'm still hoping to see continued, but as tardy as I am on my own, I shouldn't even open that can.... although irfikos's sequel to "Chain" is perhaps topping my list.

How are all of you guys?

Comments

[adriana-is.livejournal.com]

Hey there, thanks for posting the Save Nazanin webpage. I went and signed it.

Take care!

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I don't post as much political stuff as I probably should, but that one really stuck with me. Thank so much for checking it out.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I should probably do a longer review at some point that addresses some of the other items I liked about the movie, because there were a lot - as a followup to the ethical issues separating Xavier and Magneto, it's pretty ace, definitely more clearly applied than anything I can point to in the original source material. So whereas I have issues with Jean being reduced as a character to serve that plot rather than being given a plot in her own right, the plot she was made to serve was also a good one. It's actually far more faithful to the comics than either of the first two films (Toys pointed out just today that the plot of X1 rather strongly resembles that of the '60s Batman film with Adam West, and you know.. he's right. It's not related to anything in the X-Men comics.)

[toysdream.livejournal.com]

Whee, I'd forgotten how fun it was posting back and forth to each other's journals while we're sittting in the same room! :-)

Total agreement on the Phoenix issues. The writers essentially took a story about Jean's internal struggle and subsumed it into the Xavier/Magneto debate, turning Jean herself into little more than an object lesson for the men in question. I think they did it with tremendous skill, but that's still what they did, and I wonder what it might have been like if they'd used a different character as the centerpiece of the Xavier/Magneto clash - Proteus, AKA "Mutant X," would have been ideal in this role - and then given Jean a movie all to herself.

It's complicated, I suppose, by the way they "killed" Jean in X-Men 2, which pretty much ruled out the cosmic power aspect which was such a huge part of the comics storyline. Once that's removed from the equation, the Dark Phoenix story becomes a parable about a woman who simply can't control her own power, rather than somebody who's playing host to divine forces beyond human comprehension. I really wonder how much of this, if any, was planned ahead of time... but whether or not it was deliberate foreshadowing, rewatching the first movie with the events of X-Men 3 in mind is seriously creepy.

and the Angel story he's been talking about for about a month now

I thought the virtual season/King of Hell thing was being conceived of as a kind of group project. If you've been waiting patiently for me to write it myself, then heck, I'll start today. :-)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I wonder what it might have been like if they'd used a different character as the centerpiece of the Xavier/Magneto clash - Proteus, AKA "Mutant X," would have been ideal in this role - and then given Jean a movie all to herself.

I'm not even sure if it's that it were so much necessary to use a different character; the part that annoyed was more that Jean's reaction to all this is so passive. She has no real active rage, it's all her subsconsious or some such, acting out. Plus the heroic Jean of X2 is called into question in retrosepct - the whole thing plays as an incredibly restrained juvenile tantrum, Jean rebelling against Xavier/daddy. She'd reduced to a child, with childlike reactions, no conscious goal.

I thought the virtual season/King of Hell thing was being conceived of as a kind of group project. If you've been waiting patiently for me to write it myself, then heck, I'll start today. :-)

Oh, I plan to help with it - never fear there! But I was kind of hoping you'd get the ball rolling, since it was your basic idea to start with, and since I do have a few things of my own I should finish first... ; )

[toysdream.livejournal.com]

the part that annoyed was more that Jean's reaction to all this is so passive. She has no real active rage, it's all her subsconsious or some such, acting out.

On the one hand, the backstory we're given doesn't make it seem as if Jean's psychic anger comes from anywhere specific - unlike Sadako she's not implied to be of demonic ancestry, and unlike Samara she's not a neglected child of eldritch origins. Rather, Young Jean just seems to have been born bad, and the writers don't really give us any indication that her power itself is to blame. Perhaps they're operating on a Forbidden Planet-esque assumption that the subconscious is always bad, and the unrestrained id is always a recipe for trouble. I guess that makes for a better refutation of Magneto's power-worshipping ideology, but removes Jean's own personality even further from the equation.

(Not to mention that Xavier's promise that Phoenix will be "all rage, all joy" is hard to square with the reality that she kind of stands around watching and waiting between bursts of psychic destruction. I'll rap the writers' knucles for that one.)

And as for the transition from X-Men 2... Whoo baby. In rewatching the first two movies last night, I think it's not hard to reconcile Jean's depiction in X-Men 3 with the first movie, which in hindsight appears full of ominous hints and shows Jean as being weirdly emotionally "flat" and deferential to Scott and Xavier. But Scott isn't kidding when he comments that Jean has changed at the start of X-Men 2 - she's virtually a different character in the second film, full of spark and wit and decision-making ability, and even if she has a little more power than she knows what to do with it's almost impossible to square this with what we see in the third film.

And as for King Of Hell: So I'm supposed to kick this one off, eh? Well, okay, but I don't want to be responsible for distracting you from your own stack of WIPs with something new and shiny. :-)

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I'll rap the writers' knucles for that one

I think some knuckle-rapping is definitely called for, judging by the wtf reactions I've seen from various people. As a standalone character arc, it's sort of... not. And yeah, good point about where's all this "rage and joy" coming from, and then where did it go?

I don't want to be responsible for distracting you from your own stack of WIPs with something new and shiny. :-)

Not to worry - I tend to bounce from one to the other anyway depending on mood, so all stimulus is good, I figure. The biggest distraction right now is actual work... or should be anyway. ; )

[bluekaty.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting about the Nazanin petition. I signed it but I still feel so angry about it. I really do hope that International pressure will help to set her free.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reading and signing. It's hard to be hopeful when you read about cases like this, but at the very least I feel we should try. The only thing we know for sure is that doing nothing isn't going to help, and just lets this sort of thing go by unchallenged.

[shapinglight]

Agree completely with your assessment of Jean's role in the film. Was very disappointed in it. I think the fact that she spent so much time just standing there staring off into the distance says a lot.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

The way they had her standing there all silent was the oddest part - not that the whole "Jean's alternate subsconcious personality" thing wasn't sketchy to begin with. But then to have that personality be just near-autistic... yeah. Didn't work at all as a sort about Jean, but it did sorta/kinda work as a metaphor for the power Magneto likes to wield, a sort of living H-Bomb. And the previous movies had been so personality driven that it's a pretty severe change in tone.

[shapinglight]

My daughter and I were agreed that this film was really all about the Xavier/Magneto conflict of approaches - which is fine, as it's quite interesting. Some good stuff in their scenes both together and separately.

However, apart from Wolverine, the other characters were very ill-served. Dark Phoenix was considerably less proactive and scary than Dark Willow in BtVS season 6. Also, it was so obvious they got rid of Cyclops so they could have that whole 'I had to kill the woman I love' conflict thing with Wolverine instead.

Oh, well. I can't say I didn't enjoy it but it was still a bit of a mess.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

>>What fic(s) are you currently working on?

Well, I'm keen on all of them! I like the Spike on chatshows idea, though when I read the bit about wanting to help people a fleeting thought of Spike working for Oxfam came to mind.

I think Toys needs a kick up the bottom to make him write.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

a fleeting thought of Spike working for Oxfam came to mind.

Hee! Yes, that was exactly the sort of thing that was driving the idea when the initial bunny came to me. I had this whole scene in mind where he wakes up human in his crypt - and this is at the height of the S6 dirtybadwrong shagfest, mind you - and comes over with this whole attack of conscience and really wanting to help, both people in the abstract and Buffy in particular, and coming up with a typical elaborate Spike plan to do so. Very, very goal-oriented.

And most of this would've been detailed out in a scene where at Xander and Anya's, because he'd head straight there to talk to Anya about the turning human thing, and would end up pacing up and down the rug at their apartment rambing about how he's got to do things differently, and really make a change, and see that Buffy gets some help instead of just selfishly letting her cry on his shoulder, yadda yadda. So part of the fun of this also would've been in X and A's reactions, Spike begging them not to tell Buffy what's happened to him as "that would be best for her", they'd go along with it because why not, and then he'd disappear, Buffy would quietly freak out about her one confidant going missing and try not to show it, and with X and A not knowing the details of the B/S relationship, they'd be all "oh, it's for the best that he's gone, right?"

Like I said, I had elaborate notes. : )

I think Toys needs a kick up the bottom to make him write.

I keep trying, but he's so busy these days! But he still comes up with all these cool ideas, so it's kind of maddening. I really want to read this stuff.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

Spike stuffs the last of his clothes into his bag. "Sorry, Buffy. I have to go."
"But you can't! I need..."
He raises an eyebrow. This really is a first.
"You." Buffy says in a tiny voice, pretending that she isn't feeling the first pickle of tears. "You're the only thing that..."
"But Oxfam needs me, love. I already have my ticket to the Sudan; these people need fresh water. We're going to get some wells dug and put in standpipes."
Buffy's lip quivers. She doing well, reining in the hurt, but its showing. "But I thought you dug me?"



Sorry, it's a bit weak.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Weak? It's awesome! I "dig" the pun. ; )

And I mean, really, what could she say? The people need fresh water! Hee.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

And Buffy's hardly likely to say she needs orgasms!

Punning usually isn't my strong point.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm the big joke lover, so I'm likely to like that sort of thing even if groan-inducing. Sometimes even more.

Buffy's hardly likely to say she needs orgasms!

So true! But the question remains, what would she do? Reasses her Slayer role in light of what-am-I-really-doing-for-the-world-at-large, in light of Spike's example? Or following up on her own personal needs instead, by seeing an analyst, trying to get other orgasm friends, working out her issues? Hmm...

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

Well, in this case I think she'll just go back to feeling miserable.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. But then circumstances would surely have to prod her to do something.

I really should just write this one, shouldn't I? Sigh...

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

:D

[toysdream.livejournal.com]

And Buffy's hardly likely to say she needs orgasms!

This is why Anya clearly needs to wander into the room in the middle of the teary parting scene.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

In my perfect world. Anya would always walk into the room during a teary parting scene. Just the idea of former vegeance demon eagerly watching for the outcome puts me in stitches.

Not that she'd know what was going on, necessarily, which is ever funnier.

[ladypeyton.livejournal.com]

I agree with every thing you say about the dark Phoenix storyline but i think an out-of-control/girl-power story would have been impossible due tot he acting limitations of famke Janssen so I didn't have that much of a problem with the switch to a male oriented storyline.

My druthers would have been to leave the Dark Phoenix storyline out completely but that might have caused a riot after the foreshadowing in the second film.

I do think III would have been better off without her, though.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

Hm, that's one hard for me to judge, because I actually quite like Famke. I've seen her be a villainness in other things, so that's kind of stuck with me. I don't really have an objective estimate of her talent.

In terms of the women's roles being downgraded, though, I did at least appreciate that whereas in the comics, it was Storm that went through a whole de-powering storyline, here she doesn't, and remains the team leader, so that was kind of nice. It wasn't seen as necessary to power her down, at least.