Tales of the X-Men (and Women)
Oct. 3rd, 2011 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI blanch at the sheer number of reviews I'm currently intending to get written before the Frankfurt Book Fair starts next week, but I still have to make a post neither review nor pic spam as well. You may have noticed that last Friday, it was posting time for the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
xmmficathon. Which was, in a word young Charles Xavier has been fond of using, a very groovy ficathon, and brought shiny new stories. Three of my favourites (but by no means all):
The Time Between: Fabulous post-First Class ensemble tale (has Charles/Erik, but really takes care to portray everyone else and their interactions and dynamics as well, including Moira who is often forgotten) featuring my favourite X-Men trope: a tentative truce as everyone has to work together for a common goal, without ignoring what divided them to begin with.
Wednesday: in which post X3 Hank and Mystique meet. In light of their newly revealed First Class backstories and one of the main X3 storylines, this is a fascinating set-up, and the author delivers intensely well.
Iterations: uses First Class backstory for a trilogy setting as well, and weaves a fascinating web of what movieverse Jason Stryker, given his powers and his parents, might have been doing when walking through Xavier's mind.
My own story was an X-Men/Alias (that's Alias the comic series, not Alias the show) crossover which I hoped would work on people only familiar with X-Men movieverse canon as well. The prompt was to bring Jessica Jones from Alias into the X-Men movieverse. Now Jessica is such a marvelous, no pun intended, character that I couldn't resist: a female noir detective (i.e. drinks too much, has a cynical wit and the requisite tragedy in her past which noir detectives tend to have, as well as a temper and all quips aside very firm ideas about justice) in the Marvelverse. Her original comic series is also narrated in the first person, and she has a very distinct voice, so I was somewhat nervous whether I could capture it, but once I had hit about what she would actually do in the X-Men movieverse I had no problem "hearing" her.
At first I had some vague ideas about Mystique masquarading as Rogue's mother (in a nod to their comicverse relationship) and hiring Jessica to track her down, and that this would be how the Brotherhood found Marie at the start of X1, with Jessica then realising she'd been had, and it would also include Marie's real parents, whom we see at the start of X1 and never hear from again. But not only did this bear some suspicious resemblance to an actual Alias plot line but it became overly complicated. However, the person from the X-Men movieverse I wanted Jessica to interact with most was definitely Mystique. So I went back to square one, thought about Jessica's backstory (she used to be a superhero, after the obligatory radiation accident, and then quit for reasons spoilery to a crucial Alias revelation before turning into a private eye), and suddenly I knew how and why she and Mystique would first meet, and what their big confrontation later would be about. There was one more thing to figure out - how to avoid any mention of the Avengers, because I didn't want to be literally Jossed next year, but in the end it wasn't that hard. Also, one bit of Jessica's backstory was very useful: she really did have a brief but important encounter with Jean Grey. There was no reason why movieverse Jean shouldn't have done the same thing comicverse Jean had, and it proved to be handy as a plot element. I was set and ready to write my noir detective in the X-Men movieverse tale, and only fighting the temptation to call it Devil in the Blue Dress. :) (Since Mystique is masquerading first as Henry Gyrich and then as Senator Robert Kelly, it wouldn't really fit.) So it became Carry That Weight.
xmmficathon. Which was, in a word young Charles Xavier has been fond of using, a very groovy ficathon, and brought shiny new stories. Three of my favourites (but by no means all): The Time Between: Fabulous post-First Class ensemble tale (has Charles/Erik, but really takes care to portray everyone else and their interactions and dynamics as well, including Moira who is often forgotten) featuring my favourite X-Men trope: a tentative truce as everyone has to work together for a common goal, without ignoring what divided them to begin with.
Wednesday: in which post X3 Hank and Mystique meet. In light of their newly revealed First Class backstories and one of the main X3 storylines, this is a fascinating set-up, and the author delivers intensely well.
Iterations: uses First Class backstory for a trilogy setting as well, and weaves a fascinating web of what movieverse Jason Stryker, given his powers and his parents, might have been doing when walking through Xavier's mind.
My own story was an X-Men/Alias (that's Alias the comic series, not Alias the show) crossover which I hoped would work on people only familiar with X-Men movieverse canon as well. The prompt was to bring Jessica Jones from Alias into the X-Men movieverse. Now Jessica is such a marvelous, no pun intended, character that I couldn't resist: a female noir detective (i.e. drinks too much, has a cynical wit and the requisite tragedy in her past which noir detectives tend to have, as well as a temper and all quips aside very firm ideas about justice) in the Marvelverse. Her original comic series is also narrated in the first person, and she has a very distinct voice, so I was somewhat nervous whether I could capture it, but once I had hit about what she would actually do in the X-Men movieverse I had no problem "hearing" her.
At first I had some vague ideas about Mystique masquarading as Rogue's mother (in a nod to their comicverse relationship) and hiring Jessica to track her down, and that this would be how the Brotherhood found Marie at the start of X1, with Jessica then realising she'd been had, and it would also include Marie's real parents, whom we see at the start of X1 and never hear from again. But not only did this bear some suspicious resemblance to an actual Alias plot line but it became overly complicated. However, the person from the X-Men movieverse I wanted Jessica to interact with most was definitely Mystique. So I went back to square one, thought about Jessica's backstory (she used to be a superhero, after the obligatory radiation accident, and then quit for reasons spoilery to a crucial Alias revelation before turning into a private eye), and suddenly I knew how and why she and Mystique would first meet, and what their big confrontation later would be about. There was one more thing to figure out - how to avoid any mention of the Avengers, because I didn't want to be literally Jossed next year, but in the end it wasn't that hard. Also, one bit of Jessica's backstory was very useful: she really did have a brief but important encounter with Jean Grey. There was no reason why movieverse Jean shouldn't have done the same thing comicverse Jean had, and it proved to be handy as a plot element. I was set and ready to write my noir detective in the X-Men movieverse tale, and only fighting the temptation to call it Devil in the Blue Dress. :) (Since Mystique is masquerading first as Henry Gyrich and then as Senator Robert Kelly, it wouldn't really fit.) So it became Carry That Weight.
