RatCreature's Journal

Dark Phoenix

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 00:12:19 GMT

( cut for spoilers )

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that was disorienting

Fri, 10 Feb 2017 18:35:34 GMT

I watched the Legion pilot and I'm quite confused.

It started with me trying to figure out when this was even supposed to be set. Obviously it's not supposed to be present day, but it's not the 1960s, 70s or any other consistent era either. And even more disorienting, David's childhood flashbacks didn't seem to be offset in an earlier era than the main story either.

I mean, clearly both the design, the psychedelic interludes and the disjointed story telling are all intentional, but I'm not sure that this works for me. I had a really hard time trying to decipher events and understanding what was going on in between the hallucinations, flashbacks and the body switching in the present? Or was that even body switching? I'm not clear what actually happened with that mental hospital escape.

Though I'm willing to stick with the series for a bit longer.

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I watched X-Men: Apocalypse tonight

Sat, 21 May 2016 23:23:05 GMT

( spoilery reactions )

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is there any XMFC fanfic about Magneto's Brotherhood that...

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 01:45:02 GMT

...is set in the late 60s and puts them in a Black Panthers like role and explores that?

I recently listened to a long interview with the director Stanley Nelson about the new documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, and that made me want a kind of XMFC universe version of such a history with mutants.

Like a slightly AU scenario where Magneto's Brotherhood are actually part of a movement, whose prominent leaders are imprisoned or assassinated, and they are targeted by COINTELPRO infiltration (granted, a bit trickier with mindreading telepaths around, but maybe they just don't expect other mutants to work for the FBI like that), and there are mutants that act as agents provocateurs (could explain more bizarre plans...) and are trying to sow dissent and split the organization, and all that stuff.

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fanart, Christmas Bakery

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 11:29:25 GMT

Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Characters/Pairings: Charles Xavier, Raven
Media used: indian ink and acrylics on paper, minor digital correction with GIMP (original is ca. 25x17cm)
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: This is the gift I made for Papercutperfect for the secret_mutant exchange. Papercutperfect requested a slice of Charles' and Raven's life as children, growing up together in Westchester. I imagined that Charles would introduce Raven to making Christmas cookies.

Please do not distribute my art without my permission, i.e. do not upload my art to other sites, services, archives, or wikis. That includes uploading the images themselves to your own Tumblr, even with credit.

Preview:
( the image and a high resolution detail are behind the cut )

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art, all for me!

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:09:19 GMT

Though you should take a look too at the great XMFC art roga drew for me for yuletart. It's for my XMFC prompt to show Erik using his powers to build something.

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mutant registration story lines

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 09:31:53 GMT

After considering my new health insurance card, now upgraded with a photo ID to "prevent fraud" and an RFID chip with the capability to store all sorts of health information in the future as they expand the electronic systems (all totally secure and confidential of course, we are assured), it occurred to me, that in Modern AUs there is no way the government would try to push a mutant id marker directly in the personal government ID or in a separate database.

They would just "improve" the health insurance system to store medically relevant information, include mutations in that, while assuring of course that it was all confidential to health care providers and no way would the government read it or make a central database. But of course with them setting the security standards in the health care laws, they could access and read such information at any time. And since people often just carry their insurance cards with them in their wallets, probably even more so once they'll store emergency information like allergies or special conditions relevant for emergency medicine, like being on blood thinners, and obviously mutations would be put in that category (for safety of patients and medical personnel), all mutants would just carry their RFID chip identification tag on them.

Of course there wouldn't be 100% compliance, because I assume mutants living illegally like Brotherhood members would not sign up for a health insurance, but then they wouldn't voluntarily line up for extra registration either. And most regular mutants would just get their health insurance card like everyone else, even though in advance of implementing such a system some mutant rights activists probably issued dire warnings that X-gene mutations were included as routinely stored health markers, along with genetic diseases or such, but for the majority it probably didn't look like discrimination.

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a historical X-Men AU I'd love to see...

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 08:01:24 GMT

I'm currently reading Pino Cacucci's novelization of Jules Bonnot's life, and now of course I'm imagining Charles and Erik as turn of the century anarchist mutant activists, with Erik an illegalist, obviously, really bitter from an impoverished background and impatient for change, and Charles some rich bourgeois idealist, financing the anarchists (like Alfred Fromentin), but against violent action and the individual redistribution of property through crime.

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XMFC AU recs

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:06:49 GMT

An absence which could not be more there, by aesc. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 18,000 words)
This is a modern day AU, still with powers, and has quite lovely worldbuilding detail. I liked the exploration of dating with telepaths, and thought it was quite neat how the story contrasted the intrusion of telepathy with the way Erik can also glean information with his powers.

Exegesis, by aesc. Slash, Charles/Erik. WIP (ca. 10,500 words so far)
This is a kind of dystopian fantasy AU with powers and so far quite intriguing worldbuilding.

Omega, by apokteino. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 44,660 words)
In this AU mutants are public but segregated on Genosha, and human born mutants are sent there based on gene tests. Charles parents hid him. I really enjoyed the worldbuilding in this AU.

A Man of Light Virtue, by cygnaut. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 13,500 words)
Charles with telepathy working as prostitute tends to challenge my suspension of disbelief for AU scenarios, but I could at least see this story's premise getting Charles there (more or less a mix of sugar daddy and telepathic scam, that gives Charles good money without stealing, and perhaps was a path of least resistance kind of thing). I liked the atmosphere, and the relationship. Also that it was not a reformation/rescue kind of scenario.

Strict Machine, by euphorbic. Slash, Charles/Erik. WIP (ca. 47,600 words so far)
This is a biker gang AU, without powers. Usually I'm not that fond of no-powers AUs, but this one is very vivid, so it really pulled me in, and I'm enjoying it.

Beloved of ravens, by khaleesian. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 19,100 words, there is also a WIP sequel with about 32,000 words so far)
This is a vivid Viking!AU, which I particularly like because they still have their powers.

Mutually Beneficial Transaction, by Pookaseraph. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 41,500 words)
This is a no powers, modern AU, but quite an enjoyable romance trope story. Erik and Charles meet through a sugar daddy website, because Erik wants to finance college debt and Charles wants something easy and convenient. Of course they fall in love, yet are both clueless.

A Boy and his Bear, by PoorMedea. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 4,450 words)
This is a fusion with A Bear Named Winnie. So there is fluff with a cute bear cub, and a fix-it via bear power.

Phoenix Street, by Quietbang. WIP (ca. 6,900 words so far)
This is a modern AU, but still with powers. Mutants are public, Erik is a cop and Charles a college student, there is a murder mystery. I'm enjoying the worldbuilding here quite a bit. Unfortunately it's not been updated recently.

In London, by rrhiab. Slash, Charles/Erik. WIP (ca. 29,000 words so far)
This is a Victorian AU, with powers, and so far I'm enjoying the setup quite a lot. It has Charles doing charity work, partly as cover to find more mutants, and Erik as a dock worker who tries to find his mother's killer.

Start a War, by stewardess. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 34,000 words)
In this AU Erik is a cyborg.

A Degree of Hope, by TigerDragon. Het and femslash, Charles/female!Erik, Raven/female!Erik. (ca. 77,000 words)
This is a female!Erik AU but has AU worldbuilding that goes beyond this, so I enjoyed it a lot, even though I'm not particularly fond of genderswitch AUs. The switch here tied into the worldbuilding of a somewhat more mundane introduction of mutants to the public than an international nuclear missiles crisis. I enjoyed the take on how a day-to-day mutant culture might develop in the parallels with queer history with clubs and clinics and such.

Father Charles series, by Yahtzee. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 52,800 words; the series is a WIP, the individual stories are complete)
This one has Charles as a Catholic priest, and also the interesting twist that their mutant powers seem to exist in some way, but they are less aware of them.

In Shadow and Silence, by Yahtzee. (ca. 13,000 words)
This AU setup is basically a vehicle for extreme h/c, but really enjoyable for that. Mutants are oppressed and experimented on. Charles, who survived experimentation by his family and was rendered mute, runs a mutant sanctuary, and rescues Erik who has been blinded by experimentation.

Paralyzer, by Yahtzee. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 43,500 words)
Another with Erik as a cop, but set in the 1960s, and this one has a cool twist to the cop premise, in that a big part of Erik's motivation to join the NYPD is strategic infiltration to prepare for the human-mutant war he expects, so he can network with mutants, gain access to weapons and information and such. Charles is an FBI agent here, and they hunt a truly creepy mutant serial killer together.

Dæmon 'verse, by zihna. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 41,000 words; the series is a WIP, the individual stories are complete)
X-Men: First Class with dæmons, what's not to like?

Fix-its

These Bridges We've Built, by alishatorn. Slash and het, Charles/Erik, Azazel/Mystique. (ca. 22,700 words)
Mystique leaves Kurt with Charles, so some contact between X-Men and Brotherhood is started. I liked how the ensemble came together and the way Charles and Erik reconciled against adversity. It also has good fanart.

lay down beside me (so still and so soft) by C_Gracewood. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 53,500 words)
This is a really enjoyable fix-it. It retells the XMFC movie, but with Charles and Erik developing a relationship, accompanying angst, and a happier ending.

Empowerment, by Coriander Tea. Het, Erik Lehnsherr/OFC. WIP (ca. 114,000 words so far)
This is kind of a Mary Sue story, in which the OFC time travels and thus enables a fix-it scenario, but it is a lot of fun to read. So I don't mean it in a negative way. It's a good action-adventure, and I liked the OFC. Unfortunately it's not been updated recently.

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I bet there is a drinking game...

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:20:17 GMT

...for people watching Michael Fassbender interviews where you have to drink every time he says "you know". You can watch any short clip (like this or this) and have almost dozens of instances, so this works well for people who need a drinking game, but don't have the time to watch a whole movie for a quirk to repeat itself. If you add "sort of" on top, you'll likely be in a coma at the end.

I never used to watch random actor interviews but Tumblr encourages this, because these clips just crop up on my dashboard rather than behind cuts or as links as they tend to be on journals. Via Tumblr I also came across this James McAvoy clip where he replies to a question of how he developed the on-screen chemistry with Fassbender with "We had sex every morning, and that helped. You know, you can make the chemistry."

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fanart, Learned Trust (HP/XMFC fusion)

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:11:56 GMT

Fandom: Harry Potter/X-Men: First Class
Characters/Pairings: Werewolf!Erik, Rat-Animagus!Charles
Media used: indian ink and acrylics on paper (original is ca. 24x32cm)
Rating/warnings: Teen? (for naked werewolf)
Notes/comments: This is the gift I made for etirabys for the secret_mutant exchange on LJ. The prompt I filled was "Harry Potter AU. Erik is a werewolf and Charles becomes an Animagus to help him out."

Please do not distribute my art without my permission, i.e. do not upload my art to other sites, services, archives, or wikis. That includes uploading the images themselves to your own Tumblr, even with credit. A high resolution version of this art without the URL watermarking is available on request for private, non-commercial uses.

Preview:
( the image and a high resolution detail are behind the cut )

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venting through tags, y/n?

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:50:10 GMT

View Poll: passive-aggressive tagging?

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XMFC recs

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:26:24 GMT

Fix-Its

The Shadow of the Moon Won't Do, by brilligspoons. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 1,200 words)
This is a straightforward alternative to the beach scene, but a lovely example of this genre.

Possible Worlds, by trailingoff. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 12,000 words)
This is a fix-it via a mutant-ex-machina do-over, or rather it takes even more than one try, and I like that they have to work to make things right.

A Family Portrait In Progress, by Xris. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 47,700 words)
This is not so much a direct fix-it as a later reconciliation, in which Charles ended up raising Lorna initially without knowing she's Erik's daughter. It's a series with two finished stories so far.

Enigma, by Yahtzee. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 11,100 words)
Erik goes back in time, but the turning point here is not Cuba but he goes back to before his mother died, becomes a WWII mutant hero, "Enigma", and changes his life as well as history of human-mutant relations.

Undone, by Yahtzee. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 6,600 words)
Another time travel scenario. Here Charles consciousness from post-X3 goes back to his younger self just after Shaw's attack on the CIA.

other AUs

your head caught in a waking dream, by addandsubstract. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 23,100 words)
One that I recced as WIP on the kink meme that has been finished now for a while, so in case you haven't read it yet I thought I'd link again: The scenario here is that Charles' parents had him committed to a mental hospital, which did not help much with his telepathy. Eventually Raven (whom he met like in canon) manages to break him out with Erik's help, and they hunt for Shaw.

Peregrine, by aeshna_uk. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 6,700 words)
This is wingfic, with a winged Erik. This has lovely detail, and I liked that Erik still has his regular powers too.

Night Fishing at the Seine, by furius. Slash, Charles/Erik. WIP
Charles and Erik meet in Paris before the events of XMFC. I'm enjoying the atmosphere of this, and so far am intrigued by the plot.

Tessellation, by nekosmuse. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 116,700 words)
In this AU both Erik and Charles are mutant rights activists. Erik is based in Genosha, and more militant than Charles, but he sort of has a crush on Charles whose writings inspired him. They meet at an event and things between them proceed from there, along with a good action-adventure plot.

MCIS: First Case, by Pookaseraph. Gen. (ca. 25,000 words)
This a modern AU, a fusion with NCIS I suppose, which I don't know, but I read it as just an government mutant agents AU. Erik is an agent, Moira his boss, and she partners Charles with him. The author says it's the first in a series that will be Charles/Erik, but this first is gen.

Taken By His Majesty, by Pookaseraph. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 27,500 words)
Erik is a Roman legionnaire taken captive in Britain by the Celtic leader, Charles.

The Weight of Water, by pprfaith. Het and slash, Charles/Raven, Charles/Raven/Erik. (ca. 51,000 words)
This isn't too far from canon in the setup, except that Charles forms telepathic bonds, and the consequences of that are really well explored here, not just as romance ploy, but also the scary implications, both of Charles being powerful and subtle effects which accumulate and change all three of them.

Limited Release, rageprufrock. Slash, Charles/Erik, Hank/Alex. (ca. 58,000 words)
Another one I've recced before, but now it's finished finished and posted on the AO3, so it's worth pointing out again. It's a loose fusion with White Collar in which Erik is a mutant in the FBI and Alex is a mutant criminal, released to help him hunt for Shaw. It doesn't try to match up with the White Collar scenario completely, but has good worldbuilding and fun plot.

Imaginary Life Journey, by renata_kedavra. Gen, with implied Erik/Raven, Charles/Erik. (ca. 9,000 words)
Two scenarios in which Erik and Raven, and Erik and Charles respectively, try to recruit Kurt Wagner. This just has a lovely atmosphere (and the bits in French and German actually add to that and work), and is a good character study contrasting Kurt and Erik.

Mr. Xavier's Neighborhood, by SharpestScalpel. Slash, Charles/Erik. WIP
This is a series of snippets is adorable. Erik is raising Pietro and Wanda and has a crush on Mr. Xavier who hosts a mutant-tolerance children's show.

New Beautiful Things Come, by singlecrow. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 17,600 words)
This is a modern AU with mutants being public in which Erik has a kosher bakery. It wasn't a setup I expected to get into, but the atmosphere and worldbuilding works, and it's a happy making story.

Linger by waldorph. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 29,700 words)
This is also a modern AU with mutants being public, in which Erik hears Charles in the apartment he rents, like a ghost haunting it. I liked the ensemble plot in this.

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prompting is hard

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:08:47 GMT

I'm trying to write my sign up for secret_mutant but I suck at coming up with three prompts, especially as the rules suggest short prompts, because the word limit for fic is low. But the only prompts I can think of are somewhat epic in scope.

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fanart process: Methos with a mutant baby

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:56:54 GMT

I'm not sure whether anyone is interested, seeing how the art itself got very little reaction (only two comments and one kudo so far *sulk*), but since I took the pictures of the in-between stages, I might as well post them.

( many images of the work in progress )

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fanart, Methos with a mutant baby

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:49:36 GMT

Fandom: Highlander/X-Men
Characters/Pairings: Methos, mutant baby
Media used: acrylics on paper, original ca. 35x45cm
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: This is an illustration for basingstoke's awesome Highlander/X-Men crossover WIP Unalienable. Among many other things happening, Methos takes care of a mutant baby, carrying her around in a sling: "Methos makes a sandwich with the baby in a sling on his hip. [...] Baby's skin has flushed up bluer now that she's feeling better. Her eyes are a bright, piercing pink. Her eyelashes and eyebrows are thick and orange but she doesn't seem to have any hair on her head or body, not even the normal fine down of a girl's skin. She looks garish and strange."

Please do not distribute my art without my permission, i.e. do not upload my art to other sites, services, archives, or wikis. That includes uploading the images themselves to your own Tumblr, even with credit. A high resolution version of this art without the URL watermarking is available on request for private, non-commercial uses.

Preview:
( the image and two high resolution details are behind the cut )

ETA: I made a process post with photos of the painting as it was in progress.

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fanart, another X-Men/Sesame Street doodle

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:10:23 GMT

Fandom: X-Men/Sesame Street
Characters/Pairings: Hank McCoy, Kermit the Frog
Media used: pencil doodle
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: The XMFC/Sesame Street crossover in my head is still expanding: Hank and Kermit would sing a duet about how it's not easy to be green or blue. (Previously, see Magneto and Super Grover explain the letter M and Erik visits Oscar's trash can.)

Please do not distribute my art without my permission, i.e. do not upload my art to other sites, services, archives, or wikis. That includes uploading the images themselves to your own Tumblr, even with credit.

Preview:
( full doodle behind the cut )

comments

there has to be fic with this trope...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:20:07 GMT

I'm reading quite a bit of Charles/Erik right now, and a number of those feature some variation of telepathic sex.

And it occurred to me that of course direct brain stimulation of the reward system is one of the most addictive things (like those experiments on the unfortunate rats who press brain stimulation levers until they die because they like that better than eating and drinking), and of course some people think even regular sex can become an addiction. So obviously sex with Charles could be addictive, especially if he couldn't control what he does with his brain fully during sex and somehow instinctively tries to pleasure his partner telepathically.

Also this offers fabulous opportunities for angst if Charles is worried about this. According to the wikipedia page on this these rat experiments were first done in the early 1950s, so assuming Charles would be interested in neuroscience to understand his mutation, he would know about these experiments by the time the movie takes place, and could worry. Actually if anyone wanted to write virgin!Charles, you could argue that it is possible he read about these experiments before he ever became sexually active and developed a worried hang-up over whether or not he'd be safe for his partners.

Surely there has to be angsty fic that explores telepathic sex as highly addictive?

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I wonder how other people stay on top of these things.

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:00:15 GMT

So apparently I've missed some sort of kerfuffle/fallout between the mods of 1stclass_kink? Could someone fill me in? I've only noticed because some of the threads I'm following have replies that link to c&p's ongoing prompts to one of the other kink memes, because they are worried about flounce deletions of the whole comm...

Is that likely? I know neither mods nor the kerfuffle, so I can't gauge. Should I be saving copies of my favorite stories on the meme that are not anywhere else as to not potentially loose them, even though it is such a hassle to save comments, especially with long stories where you need to expand comments? Also is there an easier way to save long, nested LJ pages?

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fanart, X-Men/Sesame Street doodle

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 23:28:39 GMT

Fandom: X-Men/Sesame Street
Characters/Pairings: Erik Lehnsherr (as Magneto), Grover (as Super Grover)
Media used: pencil doodle
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: A while ago one of cereta's Grading Hell Theater posts prompted me to think about the X-Men characters visiting Sesame Street. Ever since I've been thinking about the many awesome opportunities this crossover would bring. I mean, Sesame Street started 1969, a few years after the events of XMFC, so in the intervening years I imagine some ending fixit happened for Charles & Erik (and by extension the X-Men and the Brotherhood) or at least a temporary truce. Meanwhile with Charles trying to advance his cause of peaceful coexistence with humans, he'd manage to get Sesame Street to promote mutant acceptance alongside other diversity, and would be enthused about the opportunity to guest star with his students. (Of course in this universe the muppets are real, and working in the entertainment industry or something like that.)

Erik has no idea how exactly he got roped into the project, but it probably started with Charles arguing the importance that mutants who can't pass also appear, so that got the Brotherhood involved (so Hank wouldn't be the token non-passing mutant), and it all went downhill from there. And in the end because he can't refuse Charles anything, Erik somehow finds himself appearing in sketches with Super Grover featuring capes, helmets, and the letter "M" which after all is for so many awesome words as metal, monster and Magneto... (I'm not sure when Super Grover first appeared, but he was introduced later there just has to be some canon bending, because the opportunity of these two is just too good to pass up.)

Please do not distribute my art without my permission, i.e. do not upload my art to other sites, services, archives, or wikis. That includes uploading the images themselves to your own Tumblr, even with credit.

Preview:
( full doodle behind the cut )

comments

and soon the chocolate santas will appear...

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:34:36 GMT

I'm seeing the announcements for holiday exchanges start cropping up (mostly HP, that fandom always seems rather early and well organized with them), and I wondered whether there is one for X-Men: First Class somewhere. If it was open to fanart I might consider signing up, but I haven't seen any mention of one. But then I tend to miss stuff a lot.

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yet more XMFC recs

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:32:28 GMT

AUs

Extended Jam 'verse, by aesc. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 27,000 words so far, the second story is still a WIP)
In this AU series mutants are publicly known, and thus in the late 1960s our characters find themselves in the middle of the mutant rights movement as part of the broader social movements, rather than in the middle of superhero/villain fights.

Searchlight, by Anon. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 2,100 words)
This was absolutely creepy and terrifying, yet awesome. It's an AU in which mutants are dehumanized and kept in research settings and the report-format of the story was ideally suited for this, and I liked the ambiguities that came with it, even though I normally dislike that in fic. Also check out the sequel Methods of Deduction by tawabids in the same thread, which is good as well.

Three Kinds of Learning, by luchia. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 16,500 words)
This is a nice mix of adventure with some humor. Erik tries to recruit Charles to his Brotherhood, after Raven introduced them, and then they are pulled into an adventure as Raven goes missing.

No Yesterdays On the Road, by pocky_slash. Slash, Charles/Erik, Moira. (ca. 42,275 words)
This is a fix-it story in that its premise is that Erik stayed after Cuba to help build the school, but the bulk of the reconcilliation in the story is between Erik and Moira, who have to team up to find Charles after he suddenly vanishes.

other

Triangles, by zombieboyband. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 3,000 words)
In this they are very much pre-Stonewall, and it was rather gut-wrenching with the self-loathing and despair and fear, all made more painful by Erik's history, but I liked that there were also some signs of things becoming better too. So it wasn't all bleak.

comments

fanart, more X-Men/Calvin & Hobbes fusion art

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:30:06 GMT

Fandom: X-Men/Calvin & Hobbes
Characters/Pairings: Raven, Hank McCoy, Erik Lehnsherr
Media used: pencils, ink, then colored in GIMP
Rating/warnings: G, none
Notes/comments: A while ago I did a drawing for the adorable X-Men/Calvin & Hobbes fusion, The best things in life are blue by oddegg which has Raven as Calvin and Hank as Hobbes. And because this is such a happy-making story, I decided to distract myself with it and drew two more pictures for one of the scenes:

"Sometimes Raven has nightmares and her Papa is always the best one at dealing with the monsters under the bed that keep threatening to eat her. Her Dad tries to talk to them and ask them to go away.

When he tries that Raven looks at him in horror as she and Hank lay huddled in each others arms and then she yells out ‘Papaaaa!’

Her Papa comes in with the big long poker from the living room fireplace and jabs it viciously under the bed several times. Then he asks her, did that get them all? and Raven can hear their dying screams so she nods happily."

Please do not distribute my art without my permission, i.e. do not upload my art to other sites, services, archives, or wikis. That includes uploading the images themselves to your own Tumblr, even with credit. (As I'm currently trying out Tumblr myself, I'll upload these to mine as part of the lengthy crossposting process to my site, deviantArt, Wordpress and now Tumblr...)

Preview:
( two colored images are behind the cut )

comments

spork spork

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:11:31 GMT

Dear XMFC fanfic fandom,

computer translation is not your friend for creating German sentences for your fiction. Not even short ones, or single words. It will inevitably get all sorts of grammar wrong, like cases, tenses, sentence structure, form of address, word choice...

Then, just as inevitably, I will be thrown out of your generally well written story by the hilariously wrong German, or stumble while trying to figure out what it was supposed to say, and along with me scores of other German speakers (seriously there is no shortage of German speakers around in media fandom). On the upside that also means that there are many, many German speakers available to you, who'll be willing to write you a quick translation as a beta-type service.

But what if you're shy, or afraid to break anon-status, and don't want to ask a German speaker for help? In that case you should consider to skip the dialog and just settle for paraphrases such as "he cursed in German" or the like.

Yours,
RatCreature

As an aside, I also notice that I skip giving feedback to stories I otherwise like that have
this unfortunate problem, because I feel awkward to tack on some sort of red pen correction section onto my squee, but otoh I also don't want to not say something when there are such embarrassing errors there, and pretend I didn't notice. If I know the author, I usually have no problem to mention such nitpicks, but it's different with strangers or anon posters. The same goes for deciding whether to rec things. Argh.

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some more XMFC recs

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:43:18 GMT

AUs

Big Fish Little Fish, by lilacsigil. Gen. (ca. 5,600 words)
In this AU Erik's comic-verse human daughter Anya is alive, and we see how events of the movie change (and what turns still out the same).

Humane Society, by smilebackwards. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 10,000 words)
A delightful kitten!AU, now finished and reposted from the kink meme. The author sums it up as "Basically, mutant supremacist Erik gets transfigured into a kitten, human Charles takes him in, and Erik really can't help falling in love." I couldn't describe it better.

Show Me Your Teeth, by tawabids. Slash and het, Charles/Erik, Charles/Moira, Raven. (ca. 26,500 words)
Another werewolf AU. In this one Erik is a werewolf, Charles a werewolf hunter and they team up against Shaw. Also, don't miss the short epilogue that is in a different thread.

Crossover

Lost Horizons, by Shadadukal. Slash, Charles/Erik, Nikola/Erik, Nikola/Harry Colebourn. (ca. 8,350 words)
A crossover with Sanctuary and A Bear Named Winnie, how could I not like it? In some places the story gave more of a summary when I wished it to show all this stuff in detail, but I liked the setup.

other

Where There is Darkness, by unveiled. Slash, Charles/Erik. (ca. 2,200 words)
This is a great futurefic, told from the outsider POV of a newspaper reporter interviewing Erik and Charles in the present day.

Finally, you should check out ask-sharkerik and ask-labratcharles, they provide cute cartoons and great examples of the whole Shark & Rat phenomenon.

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