Fandom

I Love My Framed Prints

I moved into a new place recently and one of the things I was most looking forward to was that in my bedroom there was one completely empty wall I could do anything with. So naturally I wanted to get my various fandom-related pictures, posters and prints framed and hung on the wall. I absolutely love how they all look so I just had to brag about them, but I will be nice and share where I got them from so if any get your fancy you know where to go.

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The two canvases, the Avengers one and the Rey one came from B&Q. I went there with my mum to get paint and wallpaper, you know actual DIY supplies, and then I saw the canvases they had on sale. There were a bunch of Marvel, DC and Star Wars canvases along with the usual nature and cityscape ones and I just couldn’t resist. (more…)

TOP TEN TUESDAY: My Top Ten OTPs

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature run by BrokeAndBookish each week – I’m thinking I might not take part every week but just see if a week takes my fancy. This week, as it’s the run up to Valentine’s Day it’s all about romance and couples in books. So I’ve decided to share my top ten favourite couples or OTPs (One True Pairings)!

Hermione and Ron – Harry Potter
I wanted these two to be together before I even knew what OTPs and shipping was. They are probably my oldest and possibly most influential OTP.

Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff – Marvel Comics
Though Clint is kinda my fandom bicycle, my first choice for him will always be Natasha. They just work so well together and give me so many emotions.

Sabriel and Touchstone – The Old Kingdom Trilogy
These two are a team! They were friends before they ended up becoming a couple and they balance each other out.

June and Day – The Legend Trilogy
I love how the series ended for them. It might not be to everyone’s taste but I just love the possibilities it leaves for them. (more…)

Thoughts on… Why Hogwarts Houses are so Important to People

So if you’ve been on social media/the internet this past week you’ll have seen that Pottermore has relaunched and you can get sorted into your House again. The questions are still the same as before, it’s just the pretty graphics that have changed. This has led to some people being a bit shocked/surprised/upset/confused as they have been sorted into a different House to the one they were in previously. That’s what happened to me anyway.

Let me go back to what Hogwarts House I always thought I was. I started reading the books age 9 and I always thought I’d be Ravenclaw. I admit, that a part of that might have come from the fact that Ravenclaw’s main colour was blue and that was my favourite colour, but it also was true because I liked to think I was smart, I loved reading and learning everything about a subject that I was passionate about. As the years went on and there were various “Which Hogwarts House Are You?” quizzes online, pretty much every single time I got Ravenclaw.

Pottermore first launched in 2009 and I never really used it, I just signed up to see what House I’d be in and what wand I got (I can’t even remember what wand I got though I think there was some dragon in it somewhere). I didn’t get a Pottermore account straight away so you could say it was about five years ago that I took the Sorting Quiz. When I took it for the first time I was sorted into Gryffindor and I have to say that did freak me out a bit. Gryffindor’s are “the brave at heart” and are “daring, nerve, and chivalrous” and while they are admirable qualities, they weren’t the ones that I thought really summed me up – for one thing I really didn’t see myself as brave.

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Thoughts on… FanFiction

Fanfiction (or fanfic) is defined on Wikipedia as “is fiction about characters or settings from an original work of fiction, created by fans of that work rather than by its creator.” It’s all over the internet, and just about every show, film and book out there will have some people who loved it or hated it enough to write fanfic about it.

Fans write fanfic for a number of reasons. To “fix” storylines that went a way they didn’t like, to give characters more in-depth backstories, to get those character who they love together romantically or just to have some fun in a fictional world they love.

I’ve read fanfiction, in fact I go through stages of reading nothing but it in various fandoms to not reading any of it for months. I’ve read it based on soap operas, films and even some TV shows that I only know the basics about. I’ve even written fanfiction in the past – no I’m not going to link to it! While I don’t think I’m ashamed of it, sometimes I feel like fanfiction is a bit like fight club and you’re not supposed to talk about it in the wider world. (more…)

The Hashtag Campaign for a Black Widow Movie

On Tuesday Marvel announced its future film slate up till 2019. Of the nine films there’s two that really excited me (and a large portion of the internet) Black Panther and Captain Marvel. I’ve been wanting a Black Panther movie since I first met the character in the Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes animated series – one of the best animated series ever and I miss it terribly. I’ve been all for a female led superhero movie for ages and Captain Carol Danvers is a pretty great character for connecting the real world of The Avengers and the space-elements of Guardians of the Galaxy.

I still can’t help but feel a bit disappointed that Marvel have no plans to make a Black Widow movie though. Yes there’s talk that she’s going to have a major role in The Avengers: Age of Ultron and in other future team-up movies, but she deserves to be so much more than the sidekick.

I loved Black Widow’s role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and I would love her to have her own movie so we could properly see her develop away from other characters like Cap and so we could find out about her backstory.

On Tumblr TheBeckyFord called for a Black Widow offensive before Marvel’s announcements were made. The plan is simple:

“On an agreed day (maybe a week from today, Sunday 2nd November to allow for awareness) everyone in support of a black widow movie tweets marvelentertainment using the hashtag #BlackWidowMovie demonstrating the wide fan base in favour of it. It’s a small gesture to be sure, but who knows. Encouragement doesn’t hurt. And mentioning that DC have female and people of colour led movies in the works can’t hurt either.”

The plan is still going ahead even though Marvel has now announced a female led movie and a person of colour led one. Just because Marvel is making one female-led movie it doesn’t mean ‘one’ suddenly means ‘equality’ what with all the other male (and more than likely white male) led films Marvel has announced are in production.

Just because Captain Marvel is having her own movie – why can’t Black Widow have her own film? It shouldn’t be a case of either/or. We should be able to get both movies.

both is good

So on Sunday I will be tweeting Marvel asking about a Black Widow movie and I hope you will be too – and don’t forget the hashtag #BlackWidowMovie

Here’s all the social media accounts you could possibly need:
@Marvel
@MarvelUK – there are also many other country specific Twitter accounts for Marvel but the Marvel Entertainment one is the most important
Marvel’s Facebook page
Marvel’s Tumblr page

10 Thoughts on London Film and Comic Con & Young Adult Literature Convention
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The queue to get into LFCC at 3pm.

Yesterday I went to London Film and Comic Con (LFCC) and it was my first time at any type of comic/book/film convention – though saying that, I did go to Empire Big Screen a few years ago in 2011 which was a film convention with panels, screenings and a few siginings but it was much different to what I experienced at LFCC yesterday. So I thought I’d do a list of things I learnt as a Comic Con newbie.

1. If you really want to meet someone/go to a talk – buy the tickets online. I’d thought about going to LFCC when tickets were available online but then forgot about it. When it got closer to the time and I thought about it again, they’d stop selling tickets online in order to make sure everyone receives their tickets in the post so I missed out on some photo shoots and people I’d like to have seen.

2. Queues. Everything about Comic Con is queues. My friend & I hadn’t bought tickets online so so we got to Earl’s court and joined the pay-on-the-day queue at about 8:15am and got into the convention just after 10am – which wasn’t so bad. Then there was queues to buy tickets for photo ops with the various stars – I wouldn’t have minded to meet Stan Lee but obviously those tickets were sold out, so (going back to my first point) if I’d bought them online I’d have been fine. There was queues for signings and sometimes the organisation of the queues weren’t that great and one queue could accidentally blend into another.

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X is for: X-Men

I tend to say that X-Men was my gateway drug to all things superhero and comic books. While I did watch Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980) when I was a child thanks to my mum really liking them, it wasn’t until I started watching the 90’s X-Men cartoon that I came to really like the idea of people with superpowers and what that could mean.

The animated series introduced me to loads of characters and story arcs that I ended up loving. Immediately my favourite characters were Wolverine and Gambit. Also the animated series had the best opening theme.

Then there came X-Men: Evolution which put the majority of the X-Men in high school so you got to see that dilemma of having crazy powers and still having to deal with everyday school drama. I think that series was my favourite as it really delved into some characters backstories that I’d never seen before, for instance Mystique and her relation to Rouge and Nightcrawler, and they did some of the major storylines like Apocalypse. All the characters were quite complex and I continued to love Wolverine – his friendship with the younger X-Men was great.

I know there was the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon but I’ve never watched that – the animation style didn’t really appeal to me to be honest.

And then there’s the movies. Now the continuity of the X-Men movies is a pain to figure out and sometimes it’s just easier not to. You can also find faults in all the movies if you really wanted to but I do like them all to some degree. I can’t even 100% hate The Last Stand since it had Colossus play a bigger role. X-Men, X-Men 2 and X-Men: First Class are my favourites out of all the films so far. I am intrigued, nervous and excited about how X-Men: Days of Future Past will play out on screen – while I haven’t read the comic it’s based on, I am a little gutted that they’ve given the pivotal role that was Kitty Pryde’s and have given it to Wolverine. I am looking forward to seeing both the older cast and the younger ones together in one film but it’s such a big task that so much could go wrong.

No matter what happens in the films, I will always like the X-Men characters. Like I said, it was through these superpowered characters that I then went on to watch and enjoy other superhero TV shows and films. So I will always love and thank X-Men for being my gateway drug to this crazy world.

To give you an idea of how awesome the 90’s cartoon was, check out this video:

H is for: Hawkeye

IMG-20140409-00940Hawkeye is probably my favourite superhero/assassin/complex character with issues. I should probably start by clarifying which Hawkeye I mean. I mean Clint Barton, though Kate Bishop is also very awesome and I love what I’ve read about her in Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye and in Kieron Gillen’s Young Avengers.

My love of Clint Barton started from the cartoon series Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (why did it get cancelled? WHY?!) and then I was super excited when Jeremy Renner was cast as Hawkeye in The Avengers (because I think Renner is awesome). I was a bit gutted by Hawkeye’s plot in The Avengers, you couldn’t see much of his sense of humour, or his relationship with Black Widow/Natasha Romanof and the rest of SHIELD. But I’m super looking forward to The Avengers: Age of Ultron because by the sounds of things he’s going to have a much bigger role.

I was really hoping that one of the end credit scenes of Captain America: The Winter Soldier would be Clint on the phone to Natasha saying “I was on a mission, I get back and everything’s in chaos! What the hell happened?!” Because it would be nice to have some mention as to where he’s been during the past three movies – at least we saw Bruce Banner at the end of Iron Man 3! I hope something’s said in The Avengers: Age of Ultron…

I love Fraction’s Hawkeye (and can’t wait for the third volume trade paper back to come out next month) because it shows what Clint Barton gets up to on his days off when he’s not being an Avenger or working for SHIELD. It shows how human he is. I like Clint Barton because he’s relatable, he can get hurt and even killed by things that Thor can just brush off. That’s probably why I like Natasha and Fury and any other “regular human” in a world of superheroes.

Clint Barton is just a guy with a bow with a terrible past, who tries to do the right thing but doesn’t always succeed – because he’s human. Hawkeye is awesome and I love him. If I could choose who could have their own movie it would be Hawkeye – although Black Panther comes a close second.

Characters Deaths – Sometimes Characters Should Just Stay Dead

(This blog is brought to you by the latest episode of BBC’s Sherlock so expect spoilers for that. There are also small spoilers for character deaths in Harry Potter and The Hunger Games)

sh_203-53aSo I’ve caught up with Sherlock and it appears that Moriarty may have returned. I don’t want him to though. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it’s Moran playing with old footage of Moriarty and that Jim Moriarty hasn’t somehow managed to survive blowing his own brains out.

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Re: Crazy About One Direction – How fans reacts to their idols

I watched the Crazy About One Direction documentary on Channel 4 last night and it simultaneously amazed me and left me a little speechless. (Obviously now I’m over the being speechless part.) It also made me think. While I do not believe that all One Direction fans are like the girls in the documentary I do believe that in any fan base there are extremes, so those girls do show a portion of One Directions fan base however big or small.

Listening to how some of the girls would react if they ever met the members of One Direction made me think about my attitude to “famous people.” I haven’t met many famous people at all but I’d like to think if I met Hugh Jackman, for instance, who was my first crush (besides Declan Donnelly) who plays one of my favourite characters I’d like to not come across as crazy and obsessive as those girls on Crazy About One Direction.

My only instance of meeting a famous person was when I met Dexter Fletcher at an advance screening of Welcome to the Punch. (Jason Flemyng also happened to be there but Dexter Fletcher was the focus of my attentions.) I was with my friend Amanda and she had to deal with me going on about how much I love Dexter Fletcher’s film and TV work (I think my love of secondary characters is down to Dexter Fletcher to be honest) when I saw him in the audience before the film started. Poor Amanda didn’t know who he was so she probably got bored very quickly. When it was time to leave the cinema screen we went to leave by the same exit as Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng. They were talking I’d never thought I was one to get star struck but I was. I admit that I was just staring at him like a creepy person until Amanda jumped in and said “Dexter Fletcher, my friend wants to say hi.” (She’s awesome!) And FYI Dexter Fletcher is really nice. He shook my hand and asked my name and talked about the film a bit (I said I thought it was great) and then asked if I was into films then so I said I was currently in my final year at University studying film and I wanted to be a Unit Publicist. Jason Flemyng had been listening too and he said they always need Unit Publicist’s and they both wished me luck and I was internally freaking out.

The key word in that above sentence is “internally.” I believe I came across quite well (at least Amanda said I didn’t seem too weird.) I do know that afterwards I had a huge smile on my face and a spring in my step.

As someone who one day hopes to be working in the film industry, I think in the back of my mind I’m thinking “maybe one day I might be working with/for this person so I really don’t want to give them a bad impression.”

In my mind a famous person is just the same as anyone else – they just might be a little more talented in sports or music or acting. They might even be considered luckier as for every famous actor there’s a struggling actor-cum-waiter. Famous people are still people and if someone came up to me and started screaming in my face I’m pretty sure I’d want to take a step back from then rather than talk to them. So to have that every day, everywhere you go – I can’t really imagine what that would be like.

So in conclusion to this rather long blog, I think we can be as crazy and obsessive and appreciative of a celebrity as we like in front of a computer screen but when we’re in the public in front of the celebrity of our dreams, we must remember that they are human and that you wouldn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of them. Like I said they are human and humans love laughing at others – and I for one would hate to be laughed at by Hugh Jackman.