a conspiracy of cartographers

Today I saw X-Men: First Class! Lots of other people have said lots of things about its various fails and issues and layers, and all of that is awesome, but I can offer nothing of the kind, because I am in FULL SQUEE MODE.

( Spoilers need to find the point between anger and serenity. And then have lots of gay sex. )

I am pretty sure that is all my addled brain has right now! In related news, I ... may have two Marvelverse movie kinkmemes open in tabs. What has my life become.

So, the Dawn Treader film.

The usual caveat: I am terrifying about books I love being adapted into movies. I also have what I call the Harry Potter Book:Movie Ratio, wherein how much I love the book is inversely proportional to how much I love the movie. Therefore, I passionately hate the Prisoner of Azkaban film, but I think four through seven are quite good. Voyage of the Dawn Treader is probably my favorite Narnia book. Oh, and I love the first two films to pieces, so it had alarmingly high standards to live up to.

( Alas, the punchline is not that I unexpectedly loved it. Here be dragons. And spoilers. )

...I think the moral of this story is that I want to write lots of Dawn Treader fic for the movie that's in my head. There would be lots of Lucy being excellent. And Edmund/Caspian. And and and. ALL THE FIC. FEELINGS FEELINGS.

I have had a crazy week, full of accomplishment and CLEANING ALL THE THINGS. Details forthcoming; at the moment it is very important that I do the bullet-points version of reaction posts to the many and varied things I have seen between my bouts of doing things.

i. Inception! My non-spoilery thoughts are that it did basically everything that I expect a Christopher Nolan film to do (in both the positive ways, ie the effects, oh my heart the effects and also the Hans Zimmer score, and the negative ways, ie someone really needs to sit Mr. Nolan down and talk to him kindly about his women) -- so, because I knew what I was in for when I went in, I was free to just wildly enjoy myself. Apparently there is already a huge post of Inception resources for those of us who are fannishly inclined; I have not had time to take a look, but I am delighted with the sudden explosion of fanworks. And I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I already have a blank doc open entitled 'Ariadne in the Labyrinth,' which hopefully will soon be less blank and full of my Thoughts on Ariadne. (Spoilers: most of them are "dfkldsfjkfdfsd I LOVE HER.")

ii. Sherlock! SHERLOCK. ( Spoilers are a sociopath, not a psychopath. Get it right. )

Additionally, I've noticed that the vague suggestion that Benedict Cumberbatch (IS THAT NOT THE COOLEST NAME EVER BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH) should perhaps play the Twelfth Doctor. I ignored this suggestion because I am too busy loving Eleven to go around casting Twelve. However, someone on my flist -- I am sorry that I do not remember who you were! because your idea is fucking brilliant -- proposed that perhaps Cumberbatch should, instead, play Eleven's Master. And now I am completely weak in the knees, because I couldn't think of a single good candidate before, and I think he'd be perfect. He can do the weird young/old thing that Matt Smith does; he can do that calm, worrying sort of crazy; and he's just as odd-looking and of a comparable enough age to do a fantastic foil. If this doesn't happen now I will be a wee bit crushed.

iii. White Collar! This week's was charming without being memorable; it had a fun A-plot, but not even a fraction enough kinky subtext to get me jumping up and down and clapping like a seal, the way I often do. I'll be glad when show-time catches up with the end of Tiffani Thiessen's pregnancy, because I suspect that everything would be greatly improved by Moar Elizabeth.

Incidentally, USA filmed White Collar's panel at ComicCon. From it I have learned that Marsha Thomason (...and perhaps the whole cast, IDK) ships the OT3, that I am possibly a bit in love with Marsha Thomason and Tim DeKay, and that hopefully after episode six there should be Moar El. Also, the cast is adorable. <3

1. In the past forty-eight hours or so I have seen so many fireworks. Bless the USA's national excuse to make lots of pretty explosions.

2. Explaining Doctor Who: the Big Bang is awesome. It really does explain all the timey-wimey stuff in the finale! I went in mildly curious and came out impressed, because I was fairly sure I understood all the crazy, twisty stuff Moffat did, but that article brought up and then explained things I hadn't even noticed.

3. I spent the entire first half of this year wondering where the hell my ability to write like a fiend had gone. Part of the answer, of course, was that I was channeling my writing energy into hoarding college memories; the other part of the answer, apparently, was that I was waiting for Methos. He is my freaking kryptonite. I will drop everything to write him. He has five thousand years of potential untapped backstory! He's sarcastic! He is full of twisty complex motivations and lies to everyone, even himself! He is kinky about swords! My god, it's like every day is my birthday.

4. Because the internet has been exploding with talk about it (and also because nextian and anekdot explained at some length all the reasons I would love it) I have started, finally, watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. (Reason #4493 I hate James Cameron: fuck you, I just want to say 'Avatar' and have people know what I'm talking about. Fewer blue people, more flying bison! Or is it buffalo?) I am now exactly halfway through first season, and I love it. Good people doing good things! Positivity and laughter in the face of adversity! My strange fascination with earthbending! FLYING BISON!! And I am told that it only gets better.

5. I celebrated the 4th of July by going to see Toy Story 3. ( MY NOSTALGIC LOVE, LET ME SHOW YOU IT. Spoilers are strawberry-scented. )

i. I saw New Moon yesterday! I even paid money for it, sigh. And I enjoyed the hell out of it, not least because much like Twilight it could not decide whether it wanted to be a slow-moving indy movie full of strumming guitar soundtrack and mostly concerned about an awkward quiet girl's relationship with her quiet father and awkward friends, or if it wanted to be an action-packed fast-paced supernatural thriller with lots of CGI. Unfortunately somewhere in those things lurked Meyer's awful plot and creepy subtext about how if a boy is afraid that he's going to hurt a girl, the girl should forgive him out of love and because he'd never mean to hurt her. On the other hand, they also got in the fantastic (unintentional by Meyer, I am sure) subtext of "Are you sure you can't just ...?" "Not be a werewolf? It's not a lifestyle choice! I was born like this!" A++ would like Eclipse to laugh at now.

ii. Children In Need featured the first three minutes of the Doctor Who Christmas Special, although I imagine that most everyone who's interested has probably watched it repeatedly already. ( Spoiler cut is excited for Christmas! ) The desire to write Doctor/Master fic right now is overwhelming. But I have three gift-fic exchanges I really need to do first.

iii. This is probably interesting to ... me ... but I finally got my hands on Paul Gross's Call of the Wild commentary, and even though I have already heard most of these stories (like the one about TURNBULL & CHEESE) it was still vastly entertaining and, let's be honest, I'd listen to Paul Gross read the phonebook. ( Commentary on the commentary! )