Holiday Ficlet #18: "People" [X-Men: First Class]

[trovia]

Title: People
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Characters: Moira, Angel, Raven, Emma (Angel/Raven, canon pairings)
Wordcount: ~ 1000 words
Summary: It's just like feeling up a man except without the fear.
AN: For a pairing prompt by usakeh. It occurred to me that I can't wrap my mind around a femmeslash pairing in this fandom without addressing the movie's

Comments

[stormkpr]

Yes! This is just the kind of fic I was hoping someone would write. I love the focus on the women, the subtle hints of something not being right in terms of sexism. I also think your writing is top-notch and professional. This was great!

[trovia]

Oh wow, thank you so much. That was a lovely comment to get. :) I'm glad I wrote the story. It allowed me to deal with an uneasiness I'd had about the movie from the start.

[stormkpr]

I've been pretty uneasy about it for the same reasons. I fell in love with all the great m/m pairings in it, but the treatment of the female characters has always bothered me.

[trovia]

It's so strange, too. If it would turn out that there's a deleted scene that exposes the sexism of the movie as the crap that it is, I would not be surprised at all. It's all so deliberate. Certainly it was put there intentionally. The question is whether the writers thought that would be okay, and I almost can't believe they would have.

[monopoli]

oh my god i literally cant, i CAN'T. this is so perfect, please take all of my babies, oh man. um im being so incoherent, but all of this! is! so! good!!!! it's basically everything that i wanted from the movie, especially - moira - oh my god, yes yes yes. YES. and angel/raven (my otp!!) and emma! and yeah i mean this was very much excellent oh jeez i love this way too much to be normal about it, i'm sorry.

[trovia]

Oh wow, LOL. What a compliment. ALL YOUR BABIES, GIVE THEM TO ME! :D

Hee!

And it's your OTP, too!

Aw, happy now. Thanks for the comment. :)

[renata_kedavra]

Yes! Thank you! I do love XMFC but it is certainly problematic, and I love the way your fic pokes at that. And I loved Raven and Angel's dynamic so much!

[trovia]

Thank you! It's problematic, but I feel better now that I wrote the fic. I can now go and write my Charles/Erik prompts without feeling bad about myself. :D I'm glad that you liked it!

[lilacsigil]

Wonderful! I love the ways these women are moving forward with their lives and what they want entirely at cross-purposes with the events of the movie; Moira excepted. And I loved the way Moira can do something Charles wouldn't: look beyond mutant/non-mutant and decide to help.

[trovia]

I hated that moment at the end of the movie when Moira was reduced to a babbling love interest by Charles (but more so, by the writers). I really wanted to tackle that. So I'm really glad that it worked for you. Thank you so much. :)

[millari]

Wow. This is so *so* good. I was riveted to it, even though I had to read some scenes twice to get what was going on, since I don't know the movie or any of the female characters. They all really came alive for me though, every single one of them.

What I especially love about this fic is how reading it reminds me how rarely women are like this in Hollywood movies, how rarely they are POV characters, and how they *almost never* think like this.

Finally, something about this fic makes me think of some of the bits of your German HP fic that I've been able to read. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's something about the way female characters are written in them - something about the way they are absorbed fully in their own life stories - a step outside of the radial influence of men.

Have I made clear enough how impressed I am with this fic? :)

[trovia]

Aw, thank you. :)) (back home from work again after another round of nausea. Gah. Have another doctor's appointment tomorrow)

I get why this makes you remember that HP fic. It was about a one-note character called Dorcas, set in the 50s and 60s, and it was also very much about a woman coming into her own, figuring out that the path set out for her might not be the right thing. I remember you read that sex scene. It definitely was the same writing style, now that I think about it.

The terrible thing is that the women in that movie, through all the movie, behave like they do at the beginning of my fic. Like Moira with her dazed Charles reaction. It was really off-putting, despite how much I liked the rest of the movie.