Posts From The Desert - MOVIEVERSE

[dexfarkin]

A little subsection of a group of notions that have recently been noted on my earlier post about the CBFFAs. It's a minor little thought that has occured to me, and seeing as my little exile is all about exploring those thoughts, I am going to run with it.

I wonder why the idea exists that X-Men Movieverse is a ghetto of the comic book fanfiction community. Some of the major early work in that community was done by people who were big on the comicfic side of the fence. There is a fair amount of cross-over involved. Yet, it seems that a large number of exclusively movieverse writers feel as if they're advancing against a storm of hatred; modern martyrs of fanfiction.

It puzzles me because I didn't know that any of us comic book fanfiction writers were supposed to hate Movieverse fic until someone told me that I did.

When Movieverse first came out, the overall opinion of the community was that the movie was damn good. I took forty-five people to see it during DexCon. (Side note: Funniest movie comments ever provided in a packed theatre by Speedy Paul. "Ah just kissed him and he was in a coma for eight months." "Cause she's just that good!" and "Senator Kelly is dead." "On the plus side, if anyone's thirsty...") However, the opinion on reading fic about it was lukewarm at best. Some, like Dyce and Kielle looked forward to it. Others, like myself, really didn't care.

It was a good movie. It was about the best adaption of the X-Men to the big screen you could hope for, while still retaining their personalities. But they were still X-Men Lite. Two hours verses forty years? I'll take my comic canon.

That seemed to be the end of the issue. The Movieverse grew (exponentially) and drew in some comic writers. It also started with some people who crossed over later. However, in general, it seemed to be it's own community, with it's own stars and issues and ideas.

The Rogue/Logan debate was the first real spill-over that I noted. The idea of their's as a sexual relationship was treated by most comic writers with the same mindset that they approached Logan/Kitty and Logan/Jubilee relationships. Some were huge fans of it. That distaste seemed to rankle the L/R people (shippers, guild, community? I'm not sure the word) which touched off the first cross-community argument. Even that was considered by most comic writers, including myself, as an off-handed little argument in a corner. Obviously, it was not considered in the same light by the L/R writers.

Then came the CBFFAs. I'm not going to get into the logistics, suffice to say that I made the significant error in not barring them or throwing the doors wide open right off the bat. My vague 'gentlemen's agreement' idea led to a lot of ill feeling. This was compounded by a very unfortunate element of the Movieverse community who felt they had the right to demand their own categories, and threaten the integrity of the awards if not appeased. (The Best Serious-Logan/Rogue, Best Humourous-Logan/Rogue and my favourite, Best Erotic-Logan/Rogue were the main demands) Talk about tarring the entire community with the same brush. Completely devalued the opinions of the Movieverse in one stroke. The sheer volume and viciousness of the attacks left me raw to the far more reasonable voices of Naomi and Minisinoo.

Even after all that, I don't hate the Movieverse. However, it still doesn't interest me all that much. Again, X-Men Lite. I realise that there are many fine writers involved and producing likely some exceptional work. Still, I'm not very interested in it. Same reason I don't read much Batman fanfiction. Don't care. Characters don't interest me.

My sojourn into Movieverse is because the exploration of Doctor Jean Grey fascinates me, and I get to do horrible things to Mister Sinister. Even writing it, I'm still not all that interested in the characters. They feel less real to me than thier comic canon versions.

Which brings me to the question: Is this why Movieverse fanfic writers feel ghettozied? (Or if they don't, is this why Victoria P feels ghettozied?) Is it because they get disinterest about their work, while a new comic fanfiction story receives interest?

I'm rather curious on this, mostly because after reading the past posts on the X-Men Movieverse list, most of the struggles seem to be between seperate bodies of Movieverse writers arguing about interpretation, or the ever present 'Logan/Rogue' question. A wash of comic fanfic writer's posting negative protrayels of Movieverse wasn't amoungst that.

Perhaps there's an idea that Movieverse should be interchangable with comicverse, on an archival level, which has not happened to a large extent. Or perhaps that disinterest is taken as a personal rejection as a writer. Or is it that even though you're writing about a movie property of a comic book, you feel the characters and concepts should be interchangable?

Anyhow, feel free to elighten me. If you're a Movieverse writer and feel like you've been relegated to a second class citizen by comic book fanfiction, explain why that is. This is not a trial or a place for justifications. I'm honestly curious why the feeling exists, and in what ways you feel it's manifested on a regular basis. Enlighten me.

Comments

Re: Something I've been wondering...

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Superman stuff is so iconic... I imagine it's really hard to try and look at anything related, even Smallville, without being influenced on that.

*nods*

And don't forget ubiquitious.

I mean, I don't know about European or Oz/NZ kids, but no one in North America grows up without knowing who Superman is. You just don't. I mean, I told my dad I was writing CLex and he was like "Superman's not gay! And if he were, he wouldn't be with Lex Luthor!"

Whereas X-Men... not so much with the iconic as the niche superheroes. I mean, Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, the Hulk, the Flash, Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, Captain America (even Aquaman and the Wonder Twins *g*) - those are the superheroes most kids know. Possibly Wolverine would get mentioned, but I can't imagine any other X-Man getting in with that crowd of SuperFriends.

The images are pervasive and hard to shake.

On the other hand, X-canon - though it's definitely got its share of archetypes/icons - is so.. tangled, for lack of a better word, that maybe its archetypal impact is minimized? Huh... now I'm thinking that maybe movieverse would probably let you have easier access to those archetypes, without the accumulated baggage of thirty years or so... is that part of the attraction? :)

That's part of it for me.

Yes, Wolverine is the archetypical Dark Man, or anti-hero. Cyclops is the archetypical Fearless Leader (and not the Boris and Natasha kind), etc. etc. You can play with those archetypes (Wolverine is the epitome of badass loner who... takes young girls under his wing and loves being a big brother to them? Or who bakes cookies for orphans and knows Little House on the Prairie trivia?).

It's fun for me at least, to take some comics stuff I've learned and sprinkle it in (Logan's knowledge of Japanese, the fact that he's older than dirt and fought in WWI and WWII, and probably Korea and Vietnam; Scott's past as a runaway and Ororo's as a thief; Jean's early manifestation and having Xavier suppress her telepathy), since that stuff isn't in the movie and I don't take the novelization as canon.

But it's also nice not to be bound to the Summers family tree (unless it suits my nefarious purposes, and dammit, I don't care if there really is no missing Summers brother, I like my "Buffy Summers is the missing Summers sibling and nobody knows because they're all looking for a boy" theory), the Maddie Pryor-clone of Jean thing and all the other stuff that makes canon so confusing to people who weren't there at the time.

And honestly, I just had a visceral reaction to the relationship between Logan and ROgue in the movie. I thought they had excellent chemistry. I had no idea that other people thought that at the time. I just sat there in the movie theatre going, "They're checking each other out" in the bar scene, and then "He's gonna kiss her! Kiss her you fool!" in the train scene, etc.

Obviously, that's a function of everyone seeing a different movie, but that sparkage is what compels me to write fic about them. I don't choose fandoms, they choose me because something will ping and I get an idea and need to write. (I'll spare you the long story of how I ended up writing a Boromir fic *g*).

If someone doesn't see the sparkage I see, there's no way I'm going to convince them of it, unless I'm a good writer. And I've gotten enough feedback that begins "I don't usually read [Logan/Rogue][movieverse][het] but this story made me see it" to think I am good at it. Which is why I get testy at blanket dismissals of movieverse, to bring this somewhat back to the topic.

Heh. You had *no* idea what you all were in for when I showed up, did you? *eg*