azurite | The post of random

Updated WikiFic - You can click on the "Special Pages" link in the bottom toolbox and then see Wanted Pages and images. You can also upload JPG, GIF, or PNG format images to help flesh out our gallery, so we can include pictures of all characters and places. We're in need of contributors for ALL sorts of subjects! (This is my second big summer project, after finishing WDKY)

I added Shizuka, Honda, and Sugoroku's page, uploaded images for all of them plus Dark Malik and Noa Kaiba, and scanned an image of Kessoku - Unity for use on that TCG card's page.

_novemberx also kindly provided judge commentary on the cards, since they also appear in the Nightmare Troubadour game. I need more manga scans and people willing to sit down and write about all the characters and events!

Also, does anyone know which OCG card it was where Sugoroku appeared kind of shadowed (a'la his old school gamer silhouette, back when we wore a tuxedo everywhere, and smoked)? I think it was a trap card, but I can't remember what it was. HELP!

zOMG FMA - As you may or may not already know,

ceruleansan got me into the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, and now I'm up to Chapter 31. I'm very much Ed x Winry and Roy x Riza (er, Royai), but I have yet to write the fic I owe her and

geniusgirl. Sorry guys, please be patient! I'm liking all the mystery and suspense though, and all the ASS KICKING! Go Izumi!

Take surveys. Get stuff. - I don't know why I've mentioned this before, but I'm part of this group called HarrisPoll, where you take surveys about once or twice a month about all sorts of stuff and get points-- and the points add up to some seriously sweet stuff, like stereos, waffle irons, tents, massagers... all sorts of cool goodies. The surveys are all pretty easy, and most range from 10-30 minutes in length. There are no advertisements, no bombardments of spam emails, and they won't sell or rent your info to anyone else-- they just use group survey results for market research. So if this sounds interesting to you, comment with your email and I'll sign you up.

X-Men: The Last Stand Generally speaking, I liked the movie. Any movie that doesn't butcher the characters to an unrecognizable point, still has me guessing and cheering, and is full of action and decent special effects is good in my book. I admit, the movie was pretty predictable, but there were a lot of things I didn't like:
* Hugh Jackman becomes the star. Yeah, I get that he's hot and all, but the whole point of the X-Men is that other characters are just as important- namely Jean Grey and her internal fight with the Phoenix. That got completely wiped. My memories all came from the animated series, where the Phoenix was an alien entity and not a presence born in Jean Grey from the beginning, but after a bit of research, I found out about the current Phoenix/Jean Grey incarnation, and it bums me out that they took Jean Grey out of that equation altogether-- there was this hot chick in read that essentially became all freaky looking and destructive.

* Speaking of butchered female characters, Rogue pissed me off the most. She not only lost what little southern accent she'd managed in the first two movies, but she really had no role whatsoever in this movie, other than to be jealous of a non-existent relationship between Bobby and Kitty. I admit, Bobby was a bit of a dipshit for acting as "more than a friend" to Kitty, but at least we never saw anything develop of that on screen. But what really peeved me was that even if they had to have young!Rogue and Rogue x Iceman rather than my favorite Rogue x Gambit, she didn't try and learn from her powers, or even absorb powers that could HELP her have relationships (which I think is vaguely possible, but I could be mistaken).

It's true that the mutant "cure" is really a suppressant, and the end of the movie revealed that Magneto may have started to get his powers back, so Rogue might as well, but the movie!Rogue really saw her powers as a curse. Yet why did she bother going to that extreme for Bobby, a mutant, when they would no longer have anything in common? She could go back to any number of places where she'd be welcomed or seen as a "normal" human, but at the mansion, she would just be an oddball, and stand a greater chance of losing Bobby to Kitty (assuming there was any reciprocal interest, which there shouldn't be, since Kitty was supposed to be interested in Colossus!)

* Cyclops didn't even get a death scene - Okay, he was emo!wangsty in this, but can you really blame the guy? He lost his freakin' fiancé! Personally, I like the idea of a tough-grieving Cyclops more than the idiot we got in the comics, the one who fell for Emma Frost and Madelyne Pryor's tricks. I understand fans don't like him because he seems like a perfect jock, handsome, powerful, etc., but in the movie, he actually had depth. He deserved a death scene, but he didn't get one, and that pissed me off.

* The special ending - I saw that coming from a mile away. Seriously, now. The FIRST SCENE set it up!

* The lack of other mutants, or bad alliances of mutants - Callisto never had super-speed, and Psylocke was an X-Man, (X-Woman?) and not a member of Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants (inserting the "Evil" in there a'la Mystique sounds STUPID). I'd never even heard of Arclight, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't supposed to look like PRINCE (or the Artist, or whatever name he goes by now). They also had mutants whose powers they showed, but they didn't stick around at the mansion to help fight, or they didn't end up in the final battle, despite being mutants. There was also very little focus on other mutants like Rogue that wanted a cure, or HELL -where the hell that "cure kid" came from, who he was, etc. I mean, is it really a mutant power to possess a mutant suppressing gene? That makes no sense to me. It was cool, but... o_o Makes no sense. I honestly thought that Magneto had found Phoenix at Lake Alkali and used HER somehow for the cure. I realize now that would have made no sense considering Magneto's opposition to any sort of "cure," but it WOULD make more sense considering a mutant having an anti-mutant gene in him is even more oxymoronic.

I also missed Jubilee, wanted to know who the remote channel-changing kid was, thought Spike was actually Quill (apparently called Kid Omega in the credits), and was somewhat pissed that Multiple Man was made evil in this. Juggernaut was cool, even if his "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" was ripped from a fan parody. But AFAIK, he *was* a mutant -even if he was more of a body builder in armor, his movie!power was that if he gained momentum NOTHING COULD STOP HIM. And nothing did, really.

So if I had to give it a rating: 3 stars out of 5.