But also the masculine urge to look like this
The autistic urge to not feel comfortable in either gender whilst also feeling comfortable as both genders
I wanna be a boy girl boy , but in like a girl way but also be boy but also be girl
Just like a quick cherik thought, but Charles frankly must have been DEVASTATED to learn that Erik could settle down and be happy with a family but not with him
Oh my…
You know, when it comes to the four Cherik actors, the old men walked so the young men could run.
We all give McAvoy and Fassbender the love they deserve, but honestly we wouldn’t have any onscreen Cherik at all if those two old Shakespeare vets hadn’t laid such a strong foundation a whole decade prior in the original trilogy.
Remember that Stewart and McKellen had no beach divorce to work off of. First Class wasn’t even a thought in any writer’s head yet when the OG trilogy was filmed. And yet they understood the assignment from day 1 - the “exes who never got over each other” vibes are just pouring off of both of them in every scene, especially from their eyes, starting from the very first moment Stewart’s jaw drops and his breathing stops as he sees McKellen in the shadows of the Congress crowd, and McKellen then manages to make a threatening line like “don’t get in my way” sound so … gentle. Be it outside Congress or in the plastic prison or outside Jean’s house, you can feel the weight of their shared history bearing down on them, a weight so palpable it’s on the verge of crushing them both every time they so much as lock eyes.
And you can see echoes of the young men Charles and Erik used to be in their performances … you can fill in the gaps with First Class details thanks to their level of nuance.
Every time they call each other “old friend,” you can hear the underlying emotions they haven’t figured out how to express aloud, and the hidden knowledge that those two words only scratch the surface of what they really are to each other.
Within Stewart’s heartbroken look in all of his closeups in their first scene on the Congress walkway in X1, you can see the yearning of a man remembering the first time this other man walked away from him and wishing he knew how to convince him to stay now, like he did then.
Within McKellen randomly name-dropping Charles throughout the trilogy (like when Sabretooth reports the X-Men knew about Rogue and when he’s headed to Alcatraz), you can hear the obsession of a guy embittered by years of opposition but with a secret piece of his heart still living in that moment when he first heard a beautiful voice in his head pulling him back from the darkness.
Within Stewart’s whispered “what’s happened to you?” at the sight of a bruised eye, you can see the grief of a man remembering the sense of a wave of horror and trauma pouring off someone down in the water, and now seeing that same someone has been abused again, and just like then, he wasn’t there to stop it, to protect Erik from getting hurt.
Within their suppressed smiles in the prison scenes and their repartee outside young Jean’s house, you can tell these two banged 40 years ago. You can feel faint echoes of the two guys who once sat on a bed showing off their powers and saying stuff like “more tea, vicar?” and “you’ve never looked more beautiful, darling.” (I even noticed that at the end of X1, in the “I will always be there” exchange, the camera placement leaves their hands out of frame, so they’re obviously touching each other’s arms in that moment but we can’t see exactly where - it makes me imagine that Charles briefly touched Erik’s hand before being wheeled away and that’s why Erik sits frozen for a moment before toppling his king. Again, it’s those actors’ nuances that give birth to these implications.)
Within McKellen’s facial expression of pure anguish and his scream of “CHARLES!” at Jean’s house, you can hear the soul being ripped from the body of a man whose life was, long ago, forever changed by the words “there’s so much more to you than you know, not just pain and anger … there’s good too, I felt it…”
You know two actors are at the top of their game when they’re able to convey the exact history of their two characters long before any actual prequels imprint that history in canon.
I do wonder if Stewart and McKellen watched First Class before they filmed Days of Future Past - it’s impossible to tell because regardless, they once again gave it their all, especially in the Rogue Cut. They took a little sentence “in other words, a door” and a little piece of direction to smirk and nod, and somehow made it one of the most flirtatious/erotic moments of the series. And then of course at the end, they gave us the most heartbreaking moment of the series and one of the top 10 most heartbreaking moments in any comic-book movie ever, period. You know the one.
I’m just so grateful to them for what they started. It all started with them. They knew what they were doing.
Okay I've watched Barbie (yes I'm late but shhh).
This movie had me in TEARS. I went to the cinema with my mother and my little brother, and when I tell you that I cried, it's not like was teary, I really cried like a baby. And I hugged my mom so tight after the movie.
Its just and fucking masterpiece and everything about it was beautiful. The speech of Sacha's mother was powerful, and I do not regret going to the movie with my mom.
The fact that Barbie felt uncomfortable while rollerskating when Ken felt admired was the most relatable thing ever.
I just loved it from the beginning to the end.
(And my brother just said it sucked, so we told him that he didn't understand the movie at all) (he is 13 btw)
found family? no, forced family
This is so Charles coded 💔
He deserves so much better. After everything he did for others, in the end, they all betrayed him.
But thanks to that obsession coming back, I met amazing people !
What's even funnier it's been half a year since I watched the movie
I don’t want your future.
You need to check this fic out !!
So… this is going to be a different kind of fic rec. Mainly because I wrote this one. Check it out if you get the chance.
insp
Cherik defender till death. @LarmeDeSang on Ao3 _LarmeDeSang_ on twitter They/Them
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