What's In Karen's Tabs?
Feb. 26th, 2012 12:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karenhealeyHappy Saturday, Internets! What's in Karen's tabs?
Reading:
If You Liked The Book, You'll Hate The Movie, by paperclipbitch.
Following a rec frombrownbetty, I discovered this X-Men: First Class AU fic, and it is wonderful.
I was reliably advised away from watching the movie, on the grounds that I would probably shout at the screen a lot, but that is not stopping me from enjoying the fic, because who does not love them some Emma Frost? No one who is me, Internets!
There's a hella lot of unpowered alternative universe fic in this fandom, possibly because the movie itself ends with the fandom's favourite pairing as bigass frenemies. AUs where they're a barrista and a novelist, or an antiques dealer and a professor are good ways of glossing over the whole irreconcilable philosophical differences and diametrically opposed views of mutant/human relationships. But, fun as these AUs are, they also tend to skip over what to me as a reader is one of the awesome things about superheroes: which is that people are running around with highly individualised superpowers that do cool things and add a lot of character points in terms of how one deals with one's powers.
"Liked The Book, Hate The Movie" does something I really love, which is take those powers and transpose them to character traits in a high school AU, where the writer appears to have thought a great deal about how that would work.
So Emma Frost is the cheer captain of the Angels, nicknamed the Hellfire Club, and she a) knows everything that goes on around the school and b) has an exterior emotional shell that is very hard to read. Teen delinquent Alex Summers has rage issues that mean he frequently explodes into focused, intense, and brief violence. Charles Xavier is relentlessly charming, to the point where he can get anyone to do almost anything he wants, and has no brain to mouth filter - he always says what he's thinking. His kid sister, the new girl Raven Darkholme, is fine with being a geek's best friend, and a singer in a stoner band, and joining the cheer squad - why, it's as if she can fit in anywhere she likes!
And Sebastian Shaw, who gets not a single line of dialogue, but is nevertheless built up to be a horrible, menacing presence - and that is a neat trick I have to steal sometime - is very clearly bad news. But all the consequences just seem to slide right off him... until guidance counsellor Erik Lensherr steps in.
It's super interesting and finely written, and there's some hilarious dialogue and achingly good depictions of teenage frustration and bewilderment and I'm on my second re-read.
Looking:
Google Image Search: White High Heeled Sneakers
Because Emma Frost in the aforementioned high school unpowered AU wears white high heeled sneakers and I could not visualise them, so I googled.
Turns out they look kinda cool.
Buying:
Con or Bust, the annual auction that helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF conventions, is on, and bidding closes this Sunday evening, American time.
"Oh sigh," I thought. "As usual, everything I want has soared out of my price ra- WAIT A MINUTE."
Because apparently you can bid for plot points and character names and so on in the next Dorgian Galaxy novella.
The Dorgian Galaxy series (NOT AT ALL SAFE FOR WORK OR IF YOU ARE UNDERAGE) is a highly silly parody of sci-fi porn and romance novel conventions that hits a number of my hilarity buttons. There's amnesia, and plots to gain thrones, and soulbonding, and pirates (in space) and spayswurms (in space) and oh, just tons of random stuff, including a choose-your-own-adventure (SUPER UNSAFE FOR WORK), all wrapped up in ludicrous metaphors as expostulated by characters named things like "Chairite" and "Milquetoast Rogers". I don't even know, but hello, if I win one of these auctions I get to dictate some of the hilarity.
I'm pondering a runaway carriage (in space).
Drinking:
Bikini Martini: I thought about trying this, but with mango juice instead of pineapple juice, because mangos are awesome and pineapples are gross.
But:
Long Island Iced Tea: Turned out I had the ingredients for this instead! And it tastes goooood.
Internets, enlighten me. What's in your tabs?
Reading:
If You Liked The Book, You'll Hate The Movie, by paperclipbitch.
Following a rec from
brownbetty, I discovered this X-Men: First Class AU fic, and it is wonderful.I was reliably advised away from watching the movie, on the grounds that I would probably shout at the screen a lot, but that is not stopping me from enjoying the fic, because who does not love them some Emma Frost? No one who is me, Internets!
There's a hella lot of unpowered alternative universe fic in this fandom, possibly because the movie itself ends with the fandom's favourite pairing as bigass frenemies. AUs where they're a barrista and a novelist, or an antiques dealer and a professor are good ways of glossing over the whole irreconcilable philosophical differences and diametrically opposed views of mutant/human relationships. But, fun as these AUs are, they also tend to skip over what to me as a reader is one of the awesome things about superheroes: which is that people are running around with highly individualised superpowers that do cool things and add a lot of character points in terms of how one deals with one's powers.
"Liked The Book, Hate The Movie" does something I really love, which is take those powers and transpose them to character traits in a high school AU, where the writer appears to have thought a great deal about how that would work.
So Emma Frost is the cheer captain of the Angels, nicknamed the Hellfire Club, and she a) knows everything that goes on around the school and b) has an exterior emotional shell that is very hard to read. Teen delinquent Alex Summers has rage issues that mean he frequently explodes into focused, intense, and brief violence. Charles Xavier is relentlessly charming, to the point where he can get anyone to do almost anything he wants, and has no brain to mouth filter - he always says what he's thinking. His kid sister, the new girl Raven Darkholme, is fine with being a geek's best friend, and a singer in a stoner band, and joining the cheer squad - why, it's as if she can fit in anywhere she likes!
And Sebastian Shaw, who gets not a single line of dialogue, but is nevertheless built up to be a horrible, menacing presence - and that is a neat trick I have to steal sometime - is very clearly bad news. But all the consequences just seem to slide right off him... until guidance counsellor Erik Lensherr steps in.
It's super interesting and finely written, and there's some hilarious dialogue and achingly good depictions of teenage frustration and bewilderment and I'm on my second re-read.
Looking:
Google Image Search: White High Heeled Sneakers
Because Emma Frost in the aforementioned high school unpowered AU wears white high heeled sneakers and I could not visualise them, so I googled.
Turns out they look kinda cool.
Buying:
Con or Bust, the annual auction that helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF conventions, is on, and bidding closes this Sunday evening, American time.
"Oh sigh," I thought. "As usual, everything I want has soared out of my price ra- WAIT A MINUTE."
Because apparently you can bid for plot points and character names and so on in the next Dorgian Galaxy novella.
The Dorgian Galaxy series (NOT AT ALL SAFE FOR WORK OR IF YOU ARE UNDERAGE) is a highly silly parody of sci-fi porn and romance novel conventions that hits a number of my hilarity buttons. There's amnesia, and plots to gain thrones, and soulbonding, and pirates (in space) and spayswurms (in space) and oh, just tons of random stuff, including a choose-your-own-adventure (SUPER UNSAFE FOR WORK), all wrapped up in ludicrous metaphors as expostulated by characters named things like "Chairite" and "Milquetoast Rogers". I don't even know, but hello, if I win one of these auctions I get to dictate some of the hilarity.
I'm pondering a runaway carriage (in space).
Drinking:
Bikini Martini: I thought about trying this, but with mango juice instead of pineapple juice, because mangos are awesome and pineapples are gross.
But:
Long Island Iced Tea: Turned out I had the ingredients for this instead! And it tastes goooood.
Internets, enlighten me. What's in your tabs?
no subject
Date: 2012-02-25 01:56 pm (UTC)You REALLY should not watch this movie, incredibly reliable advice, yes.