San Diego Comic Con is literally just around the corner! I’ll be there on Thursday and Friday, and I’m getting super excited.

Last year was my first time at SDCC, and so I thought I’d share some tips, particularly about things to bring, with those of you who are going for the first time this year or who just want to plan ahead for future geekery. ;)

1. Food & Drinks
This would seem like the most obvious thing, but Thursday of last year, we didn’t think to pack a lunch and ended up having to shell out way too much money for a crappy slice of pizza. Pack sandwiches for lunch, snacks for whenever you’re taking a break, and drinks so you don’t have to pay $3 for a damn bottle of water.

2. A Backpack
This probably seems like another Duh entry, because you’re probably going to end up with fifteen enormous promo bags throughout the day. Well, if you’re like me (i.e. short), those bags literally hit the ground when they’re slung over your shoulder. I ended up folding them up and stuffing them, along with all of my other swag, into a handy dandy backpack. It’s also good for toting around the aforementioned food, heh.

3. Your Camera
Okay, the last Duh entry on this list is your camera. I mainly include this because I am absentminded and would probably forget mine if I didn’t put it on my own list o’ crap to pack. You will run into fifty kajillion awesome things at SDCC, and you will want to be able to prove to your friends that you saw Mark Hamill coming out of the men’s room. Oh, and keep your camera out at all times, because mine was in my bag and I didn’t get a damn picture of Mark Hamill coming out of the men’s room (well, that and it felt kind of rude to ambush the dude after he just took a pee).

4. Sunscreen & Seating
Most of the con is indoors, yes, but if you don’t pick up your pass Wednesday night, you might end up standing in the mile-long line outdoors. If you’re a pasty geek like me, you’re gonna need the sunscreen. Trust me.

I’m probably going to bring along my floppy hat, too, because I got enough sun for the year while I was in Hawaii. And even if it looks cloudy/foggy, you can still get a sunburn, so slather on the SFP 50, fellow geeks. That line is long! We were in it for about two and a half hours last year. Lucky for me, the Fanfiancé’s parents (who helpfully live in North County) have little portable Ikea stools. They fit right into the backpack, and it’s nice to not have to park your butt on the pavement or the floor inside the convention center.

5. Art Carrying Case
If you’re planning on buying stuff like this from the fantastic people in Artist’s Alley:

you’re going to need one of these:

It’s kind of awkward to carry around, but trust me, a little awkwardness is better than bending your precious purchases. Amazon’s got a decent price for one, but if you’re in a hurry, check your local hobby or art supply store. You can also get cardboard poster tubes if you aren’t planning on buying anything that’s already matted.

6. Your Smartphone
If you don’t have an iPhone, feel free to ignore this entry. SDCC has an iPhone app available; at the moment it’s kind of sucky, but it will theoretically have the schedule of panels so you can use to map out your plan of attack. Your phone can also be your go-to device for tweeting or facebooking every nerdy squee of joy you experience during the day. Remember your charging cable, though!

7. Entertainment
There’s a lot of stuff to see at SDCC, but if you want to get into the more popular panels, be prepared to wait in line. If you’re like me and have the attention span of a gnat, you’re going to need something to entertain yourself with whilst sitting in those lines. I’m planning on lugging my iPad along, as there should be free wifi at the convention center, but I’m also bringing a book (like I said, attention span of a gnat). Be sure to bring power cables and chargers for whatever devices you bring.

8. Your Geekiest Duds
Whether you’re cosplaying or going in your civvies, SDCC is a great place to people watch. Do your part and add to the geek ambience. Pick our your most awesome nerdy shirt and wear it with pride. An added bonus is that you look even more awesome in pictures like this:

Yours truly with Mark Sheppard

;)

9. Business Cards
You’re likely to meet a lot of awesome people at Comic Con. You can always exchange info on napkins, but it’s kinda nifty to be able to hand them a card with your pertinent info. If the gods of printing smile upon me, I’ll have some spiffy The Discriminating Fangirl cards in my pocket.

10. Mascots
Last year, I brought Lil’ Wolvie & Phoenix. This year… I’m going to have to go buy something, because all of my toys are packed up in Texas. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I suppose I had a brain fart while packing for my summer nomadic trek. But yeah, I need to find a new toy to take along, because it makes for some really fun photos:

Hope this was a helpful list! If you’re going to SDCC or the Geek Girls Tweetup, keep an eye out for me!

Related posts:

1. SDCC Recap!
2. Why hello there, blog.
3. TDF Pamela’s Top Ten of 2009

If you’re an X-Men fan, you’ve probably already heard the rumors that an X-Men: First Class movie is in the works. The XM:FC comics are great; they feature the original X-Men team and their often funny adventures when things were just starting to roll at Xavier’s place. The XM:FC movie, on the other hand, would still be set within the universe created by Bryan Singer.

The current rumor is that Matthew Vaughn, director of Kick-Ass, has been offered the director’s seat and has apparently turned it down.

I’ll admit that I haven’t been watching news about this movie very closely. I’m still pissed about X-Men: The Last Stand, and I don’t have a lot of faith in Fox to not completely screw up this movie.

So why this post? Because I’d like to take a moment and plead with the powers that be to reboot the X-Men series. I know, I know, I’m as sick as you are of reboots, especially of series that came out ten years ago. Does Spiderman need to be rebooted? Nah. But hear me out.

See, one of the things I absolutely adore about the XM:FC comic book is the camaraderie between the original five X-Men. Scott’s the solid one, Warren’s the flighty one (pun intended), Hank is the smart one, Bobby is the smartass, and Jean is… Jean (i.e. awesome). They work together very well, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch these five young people become close friends and a coherent team.

I want to see that on the big screen.

If Fox goes ahead and makes a First Class movie with the movieverse’s original team, we’d have Cyclops, Jean, Storm, Beast… As much as I like Storm in the comics (Halle Berry was terrible in the movies; sorry to her fans), there’s just not the same dynamic in that group as there would be in… well, any group with Iceman included.

So as much as I’m hesitant at the idea of rebooting every series that ever made money, I’d really like to see Marvel Studios start fresh with the X-Men.

Related posts:

1. X-Men 3 according to Michael Dougherty
2. Astonishing X-Men Motion Comic Trailer
3. Quickie Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

My favorite ass-kicking lady, Ellen Ripley.

See, I’m a strong female character kind of reader/viewer/fan. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I’m going to go for a book featuring a tough woman in the lead as opposed to one who faints and dithers and needs to be rescued. I’m not saying there’s anything particularly wrong with the passive characters, just that I don’t prefer them. When it comes down to it, I do think that we need a wide variety of female protagonist (as well as male protags), some weak, some strong, most falling somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. But my personal reading preferences tend toward the kick-ass heroines, and so I get frustrated, much like mlawski, when people start trumpeting characters like those in Bay’s Transformers movies as strong female characters.

It feels kind of disingenuous of me to start drawing a line in the sand and making Megan Fox stand on one side while Sigourney Weaver stands on the other, and this brings me to the crux of this issue. What do we do with strong female characters that are also sexy? Not saying that Ms. Weaver isn’t sexy (au contraire…), but Ripley, as an iconic tough movie woman, wasn’t created to capitalize on her attractiveness. What’s Her Face in Transformers was most certainly created to be masturbation material. Sure, she can work on cars, but she works on cars while bending over in very short shorts with her cleavage hanging out.

This is where I feel like I’m talking myself in circles. On one hand, I emphatically don’t like seeing women exploited for sex. On the other hand, I think that women should be able to express themselves sexually however they damn well please without being shamed for it. So… how do I reconcile my belief that women should be in control of their own sexuality with my complete and utter disgust at Megan Fox’s character (yes, I’m too lazy to look up the character’s name)? I think maybe it comes down to the feeling that the character actually is in control of her own sexuality. I know, I know, that’s incredibly subjective, and I suppose when it comes down to it, it’s up to each of us to make our own judgment call about what’s exploitative and what’s not. But how does that help send Hollywood the message that a sizeable chunk of their viewing audience is sick of wank-material sex kittens who can fix cars/hack computers/what have you being trumpeted as tough, role-model-worthy characters?

Last year at San Diego Comic Con, I attended the “Entertainment Weekly: Wonder Women: Female Power Icons in Pop Culture” panel, which was a round table discussion of strong female characters in Hollywood. Here’s SDCC’s description of the panel:

EW moderates a conversation with Sigourney Weaver (Avatar), Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost), and Zoe Saldana (Avatar) about the actresses who have redefined the rules, and the female characters that have shattered the glass ceiling for all women. Basically, a discussion with women who kick ass. (Addition: Eliza Dushku also sat on the panel)

While I agree that these women have all played characters who kick ass, I have to quibble with the idea that they’ve shattered the glass ceiling for all women. Having to be sexy sexy in order to be successful in Hollywood doesn’t exactly make it sound like that glass ceiling is coming down. Thankfully, Sigourney Weaver seemed to quibble with that, too, and she said something that really stuck with me. An audience member asked her if she feels like Hollywood is leading the way for strong women, and Ms. Weaver immediately shot down that idea. She basically said that we can’t expect Hollywood to blaze any trail, especially when it comes to feminism and the portrayal of women. Hollywood makes what they think will sell, and they tend to be way behind when it comes to social change. If we as audience members want to see change in Hollywood, we’ve got to make that change with our pocketbooks.

Hearing her say this made me want to stand up and cheer. We have to support movies that have strong female characters and not see the ones where we’re told that a strong woman is one who can save the world, but must do it while being supermodel-thin with big tits and a short skirt. The key there is the requirement that the woman must be traditionally sexy. Strong women most certainly can be sexy, but they can also go against the ideal of sexuality that our culture is so enamored with. They can be pretty or frumpy or nerdy, but they need to be realistic most of all. They need to have flaws to go along with their strengths.

This is different in books than in movies, mainly I think because books don’t have the same sort of visual representation of sexuality that movies do, but I do think that strong female protagonists in books need to have the same veneer of realism that I think movie heroines need. I don’t want to read about characters that are all tough or all weak; I want characters that find a balance between those two extremes, who can kick your ass, but who can also break down every once in a while.

One of my academic specialties is pop culture, particularly the portrayal of tough women in film and comic books. So, to make myself feel like less of a slacker for writing this instead of finishing up a midterm, I’m going to put my academic source hoarding to good use. Here is a list of my favorite books about the portrayal of strong female characters:

• Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture (Feminist Cultural Studies, the Media, and Political Culture) by Sherrie A. Inness (this one is my personal favorite)
• Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture, edited by Sherrie A. Inness (my second fav)
• Wonder Women: Feminisms and Superheroes by Lillian S. Robinson
• The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, And Violence In Contemporary American Cinema by Hilary Neroni
• Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, edited by Martha McCaughey & Neal King
• The Modern Amazons : Warrior Women on Screen (Book) by Dominique Mainon & James Ursini
• Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture, edited by Mary Flanagan & Austin Booth
• From Girls to Grrlz : A History of Women’s Comics from Teens to Zines by Trina Robbins

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject of strong female characters! This is something I’ve been chewing on for a while, and frankly, it’s a miracle that this post is somewhat coherent. Let me know what you think about the issue.

(As an aside, when I hit Google Images to find that pic of Ripley, the first two images to show up were of Ripley in her panties after waking up from hibernation. I think that makes my point for me.)

Related posts:

1. “Chick Flicks” that Secretly Hate Women
2. Wolverine Character Promo Vids
3. Newsflash: Girls DO read comics! Holy crap!

Yes, those are my ridiculously pale legs.

I started a few books (Child of Fire by Harry Connolly, which I am enjoying; and I’m also in the middle of a re-read of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, which I’m using for my not-a-thesis paper) but couldn’t keep up the reading. I read a few magazines, which is better than nothing, I suppose. I’ve been reading bits of Before the Fallout by Diana Preston, a history of the development of nuclear and atomic science from the discovery of radiation to the atomic bomb. Honestly, if I were better at math, I would seriously have gone into the sciences. I think they’re so fascinating. But I’ve mostly been reading that one before I fall asleep at night, and I haven’t been doing my usual sort of reading, where I zoom through a novel in a couple of days.

Thank goodness I managed to break that burnout cycle yesterday, when I plowed through Rachel Ward’s Numbers. Next Monday, The Discriminating Fangirl will be hosting a Numbers giveaway, and I wanted to be sure I had a review ready for you. I won’t say much about the book right now–look for the review on Monday, too!–but I can’t begin to tell you how good it felt to sit up in bed until midnight because I couldn’t stand to wait until morning to read the last few chapters.

I need to spend some time today working on my not-a-thesis paper, but I’m going to start Jennifer Estep’s Spider’s Bite this afternoon. Man, it feels good to read again.

Related posts:

1. The Fickle Reader, or What The Hell Should I Read Next?!
2. Paperless paper? Oh yeah!
3. 2008 Reading

Another year has flown by, and it’s nearly 2010. You know… when I was a kid, it seemed like it took forever for the year to pass, but now? I blink and it’s a new year. Sheesh. But since it is the end of the year, that means it’s time for top ten posts! Keep your eyes peeled for more lists from the TDF bloggers in the next few days!

And now, in no particular order…

Books

The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker by Leanna Renee Hieber

My reading preferences tend more toward urban fantasy instead of its close counterpart, paranormal romance, but I absolutely love it when I come across a fantastic PNR book. This book? Is definitely one of them. I was startled by my reaction to the heroine, Percy. You see, she’s rather meek and unassuming, and my preferred heroines tend to be tough ass-kickers. But Percy is so sweet and strong underneath her fragile exterior that I couldn’t help falling in love with her.

Speaking of which, I got completely swept up in the semi-unrequited love affair between Percy and the brooding hero, Alexi Rychman. Oh, Alexi. He pushes all of my tortured hero buttons; he’s dark, lonely, devoted to what he thinks is his life’s responsibility, and damn, do I love to see heroes like that crack in the face of love. [happy sigh] Add to that my mental casting of Richard Armitage as Alexi, and I spent most of this book in a swoon. The romance is delicious, the setting is creative and detailed, and it’s an incredibly fun read. I cannot wait for the sequel. Read my review here.

TDF Pamela’s Rating:

Soulless by Gail Carriger

This is another one of those books that treads the line between urban fantasy (urban… historical fantasy? historical paranormal steampunk urban fantasy? too… many… genres!) and paranormal romance, but however you categorize it, Soulless is a delightful read. Yes, I just said delightful. Carriger blends Austen-esque diction with supernatural and steampunk sensibilities, and the story is carried by the two wonderful protagonists, Alexia Tarabotti and Lord Maccon.

Alexia is a preternatural, someone who completely lacks a soul and can therefore negate the powers of a supernatural–someone with an excess of soul who has become a vampire or a werewolf. She is a spinster, partly because she has inherited her father’s Italian looks but mostly because she’s smart, quick-witted, and not afraid to show it. Lord Maccon, on the other hand, is a werewolf, the alpha of London’s pack, and he pushes my hero buttons, too. Let’s see… grumpy, intelligent, tempermental, passionate… And when these two butt heads, the sparks fly. Soulless is a funny, interesting, and smoldering read, and again, I can’t wait for the sequel. Read my review here.

TDF Pamela’s Rating:

Naamah’s Kiss by Jacqueline Carey

I had read the first two books in Carey’s Kushiel series years ago, but I lost track of the series after a while. I always meant to pick them back up, but just never did. Naamah’s Kiss takes place in the world of Terre d’Ange, but is set a few generations after the events of the Kushiel books, and in my opinion, it’s a fantastic place to start if you’d like to dip your feet into Carey’s richly imagined world. I love good worldbuilding, and Carey is definitely doing it right. Her world is based on a historical version of ours, but twists history and mythology just enough that the familiar is new and fascinating. I especially loved the part of the book set in Ch’in, and I hope Carey sets the next book there as well.

The book follows Moirin, a Maghuin Dhonn witch, as she grows and tries to follow her destiny as one blessed by Naamah. Her travels take her away from her homeland of Alba to her father’s land of Terre d’Ange, where she learns the pleasurable ways of Naamah, and to distant Ch’in. Moirin is a fascinating character who is torn between her two lines of heritage, trying to adhere to her familiar traditions but also drawn to the strange customs of Terre d’Ange and Ch’in. Naamah’s Kiss is a wonderful adventure story, and I’m looking forward to more books in this series. Read my review here.

TDF Pamela’s Rating:

Bitter Night by Diana Pharaoh Francis

Diana Pharaoh Francis’s first urban fantasy is a damn good one. Bitter Night is a tense, gripping story that kept me hanging until the last page. The protagonist, Max, is utterly believable, and she is also easy to sympathize with. She’s been bound to Giselle, a witch whom she thought was her best friend before Giselle used magic and pain to turn Max into her Shadowblade, a warrior who thrives in darkness and protects the coven. Max is comfortable in her hatred of Giselle and uses her anger as a shield to protect herself. Her anger has even blinded her to the fact that her Shadowblades and fellow Sunspears have become the family that she lost when she was bound.

When she runs afoul of another witch’s plot, Max finds herself saddled with another Shadowblade, Alexander, who is much older than her and comes from a very different background. It was fascinating to see these two try to break the other’s armor, and the characters bounced off of each other very well. The story itself is obviously the beginning of a series, and as such the end of this book doesn’t feel so much like an end as a “To Be Continued…” It’s a strong debut into the genre, and I’m betting this will be a great series as well. Read my review here.

TDF Pamela’s Rating:

Storm Born by Richelle Mead

Holy cow. I can’t believe I let this sit on my bookshelf for a couple of months. This is absolutely amazing! I absolutely adore the characters, and this book definitely tweaks my love of faery stories. Eugenie is a very well-developed, likable protagonist, and the supporting characters are not flat at all, but all have distinct personalities of their own. I freaking love that. The plot is fantastic. While deceptively simple on the surface (rescue a kidnapped teenage girl from the Otherworld), underneath it’s an intricately woven story threaded through with Mead’s signature humor. Much like with her Georgina Kincaid series, I found myself laughing throughout this book.

The sequel, Thorn Queen, isn’t quite as good as Storm Born, but this is definitely a series that I’ll be following. I love the romantic competition between Kiyo, Eugenie’s kitsune boyfriend, and Dorian, the Oak King, even though for me, it’s not much of a competition. Dorian all the way! He may have ulterior motives and be a sneaky bastard, but god, do I love him. And while I do have a problem with the use of rape in the series (no spoilers here!), the books are well-written enough that it doesn’t feel gratuitous in terms of the rape-as-impetus-for-character-development issue. Scroll down to my review here.

TDF Pamela’s Rating:

The Felix Castor series by Mike Carey

Carey writes a damn good book. The Felix Castor novels are modern hard-boiled detective stories with a supernatural twist and a healthy dose of black humor. The mysteries are twisty and complex without being overly convoluted; each time, I got to the climax and gasped aloud because I didn’t expect the truth, but damn, did it make sense! I loved being along for the ride as Felix struggles against time and the bad guys to figure out the mystery before whatever Very Bad Thing that might happen happens. I also loved Felix’s sense of dry, foul-mouthed, and self-deprecating humor, along with his amazing mental backlog of obscure pop culture references. My kind of guy.

The books are written in first person, as is traditional in detective novels, and Carey writes it very well. First person is always iffy with me; it usually takes a very talented author to write from a character’s head without sounding awkward. Carey also never lets any omniscient narration slip into Felix’s stream of consciousness, so the reader only knows what Felix has figured out after Felix decides to share it in his internal narration. Carey is very descriptive, and I really appreciate it. Sometimes too much description becomes boring in its exhaustiveness, but Carey’s vivid descriptions are always fascinating and paint a strong visual for the reader. The world itself is fascinating. It’s our world, set in our time, but sometime within the last twenty or thirty years, the dead began to wake up. Some come back as ghosts while others possess their own dead bodies ( as a zombie) or take over animal bodies (as aloup-garou). There are also nastier things surfacing: demons like Asmodeus, who possessed Felix’s friend Rafi a few years before the beginning of the series. I’m very much looking forward to what Carey has planned for the next books in the series, because the underlying issue of the dead rising is a driving factor in what Felix does. His own private version of exorcism is music; he plays tunes that “describe” the ghosts on his tin whistle. That is so unusual and so utterly cool. And his dealings with the dead in these books bring about some excellently written character development. Felix is slowly growing a conscience after spending years playing ghosts into the great whatever-comes-next. His cynical atheism provides a nice counterpoint to the traditional religious reasoning behind the dead rising, and it adds a nice level of uncertainty. Read my reviews of the three books in the series here.

Movies

Star Trek

I have a confession. I’ve been a Trek fan pretty much since birth. My parents both watched The Original Series all through my childhood, and I discovered The Next Generation when I was in junior high. I… I even had a Commander Riker t-shirt. Yes, I’m blushing right now. I watched Deep Space 9 and Voyager quite often–Voyager more so because when I lived in Germany for three years, we had thirteen channels and it was on a lot. My interest kind of waned after I moved back to the States, and I never could get into Enterprise, but I still loved the series in a nostalgic sort of way.

So when I heard that J.J. Abrams was planning on rebooting the original series, I was interested but trepidacious. Could it compare to the old series? Would it be hammy or cheesy? Would it run off in a completely wrong direction?

I am very pleased to report that I freaking loved Star Trek. The casting was brilliant, particularly in Zachary Quinto as Spock. Hell, I can’t narrow it down like that. Everyone was fantastic in their roles, and (I’ll probably get flamed for saying this) I even liked Chris Pine better than the Shat as Kirk. Shatner makes my skin crawl, what can I say?

The story is creative in the way it creates a divergence from the established timeline, and is a rousing adventure, even if it didn’t make much sense in some places. It was fun enough to watch, though, that I really didn’t care if the science was hilariously bad. I know, I know. Star Trek isn’t really about science, but red matter? Destroying a supernova with a black hole? My nitpicker got a bit edgy, but again, it was so much fun that I got over that really fast.

Also, you should definitely pick this one up on Blu-ray. It looks gorgeous in hi-def, and I’m not just talking about Quinto’s Sexy Spock. ;)

Avatar

I was skeptical of the Avatar hype, I have to admit. The trailer didn’t do a lot for me, other than provoke a couple of “ooooh” moments at the CG graphics. But I thought that’s all the movie would be: good CGI. The Fanboyfriend kept reassuring me that pretty much everything James Cameron has done has been gold, but I thought that all of Cameron’s hype that this movie would change moviemaking forever was hot air that would set him up for a fall.

I was so wrong.

The CGI is amazing and it does carry the movie. It is, without a doubt, the best I have EVER seen, and Avatar has definitely set the bar for future films. The Na’vi are completely realistic, and the environments… oh, the environments. I want to live on Pandora, it’s so beautiful. The bioluminescence was gorgeous, and I loved how Cameron incorporated it into the designs for the Na’vi as yet another way to show their connection to their planet. I wasn’t thrown out by CGI blunders once during the movie; nothing looked fake. It was amazing.

I saw the movie in IMAX 3D, and before this movie, I wasn’t a fan of 3D. Aside from Captain EO back when I was a kid, the only other movie I had seen in 3D before Avatar was the re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It… wasn’t great. It felt gimmicky, as if it was in 3D only so they could lob pumpkins at the audience and make you duck. That 3D also made me kind of sick to my stomach, and I had to close my eyes every ten minutes or so to make the vertigo go away.

I was kind of afraid of Avatar in 3D, to be honest, but my fears were unwarranted. While it’s not completely immersive (unless it is completely redesigned, there will always be a problem with turning your head and having the 3D go all wonky), it’s as close to it as I could imagine. A friend of mine said that he kept feeling like he was going to inhale the little floaty embers, and that is so right. As long as I stared straight at the screen, I did feel like I was much more involved in the environment than I would have in 2D.

The plot is fairly standard: man goes into strange, alien culture, discovers that he sympathizes with them more than his own people, and fights to save alien culture. But this plot is standard because in the right hands, it works really well. Not only did I cry a few times, but I also came out of the theatre with the same feeling I got back when I was a kid and watched Medicine Man. I wanted to donate money to nature preservation charities, haha. The actors were good, particularly those playing the Na’vi characters, and damn, do I adore Sigorney Weaver. She’s just… amazing. The bad guys were over-the-top evil, the good guys were heroic and proud, and the whole thing was a fantastically good movie. I enjoyed every second of it, and I can’t wait to see it again.

TV

Farscape DVD Set

So this isn’t exactly something that’s new to 2009. In fact, the series started up ten years ago, but 2009 was the lucky year that A&E bought the DVD rights, and so we fans finally got our hands on an affordable full series set.

I was in Germany when Farscape first aired, and it didn’t show on any of the channels we got on our crappy military cable package, so I first saw it in reruns a few years ago. The first ep I saw was “Meltdown” from season 3, and that had to have been the best ep to suck me in. It was sexy. SEXY. So I started hunting down the out of print DVDs and amassed a small collection, but I had never been able to see the whole series. Imagine my joy when I found out that the entire series was being released on DVD. WOO! The Farscape panel at SDCC 09 got me even more excited, and I preordered that baby.

The series is fantastic. The CG is a bit crappy (but then this was ten years ago), but the makeup and puppetry make up for it, and the acting is great. It’s awesome to see the whole series and watch the ragtag crew of Moya slowly grow into a surrogate family. My favorite thing, though, has to be the relationship between John Crichton, the astronaut who got warped very far away from Earth in an experimental space flight, and Aeryn Sun, the Peacekeeper who discovers that there is so much more outside of the life she used to know. Not only are they both ridiculously sexy, their relationship is also wonderfully believable in its fits and starts.

So if you’re a Farscape fan and have some holiday money to blow, you should totally buy the complete series ASAP.

Video Games

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Click to drool in hi-res

So maybe this wasn’t the best game of 2009 by a long shot, but I didn’t play many new games this year, so nyah. ;) Those of you who’ve been reading TDF for a while know that I’m a serious Wolverine fangirl. I can’t help myself. I love the guy. But I always felt like he got declawed in the other video games. I mean, he’s Wolverine, for god’s sake. He routinely rips guys in half in the comics. But in games, we’re stuck with a Wolvie who just pokes and prods at the bad guys.

And then I played the demo for this game.

Holy crap. I had to run out and buy it immediately. See, this is Wolverine the way he’s supposed to be played. You get to slice bad guys’ arms off. If you hit them with the right combo move, you can even rip some of them in half.

OH YEAH.

Ahem. Every time I talk about this game, I feel kind of weird for feeling such glee about the violence. I mean, I just cheered about ripping a guy in half. That’s not usually my thing in games. But there’s something about X-Men Origins: Wolverine that turns me and my friends (who would sometimes sit around and watch while I played) into raving lunatics. It’s just plain fun. The storyline is ostensibly based on the movie, but in my opinion, the game’s storyline is much more interesting than what went into the movie. There’s a lot more background covered here, and while a lot of the story is running around, climbing walls, and eviscerating bad guys, it comes off as much more developed and thought out than the movie.

And if I might be shallow for a moment, the developers got videogame!Wolvie to look just like Hugh Jackman, and I have to say, I love it that Wolvie’s wifebeater gets ripped off as he fights. Of course, the shirt magically reappears when you level up, which cracked us up to no end, but until those level-ups, I get to drool over computer generated Hugh Jackman’s body. Heh.

And finally….

Shallow Honorable Mention
X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Click for full size lusting opportunity

I know, I know. This was not that good of a movie. But… but… I’m shallow. I admit it. And there was enough man candy in X-Men Origins: Wolverine to sate even the lustiest fangirl. This movie isn’t on my list because of its filmmaking merits. It’s here because the men are hot.

We got angsty, naked Wolverine. We got drawling, sexy Gambit. We got wisecracking, ripped Deadpool. We got dangerous, brooding Sabretooth. Hell, we even got Will.I.Am in a freaking cowboy hat. It was ALL sexy.

Well, except maybe for that kid who played teenage!Cyclops.

Related posts:

1. Top 5 NerdyGirl Books of 2009
2. Quickie Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
3. Because I Should Be Doing Other Things…

Cracked posted a fantastic list that looks at chick flicks that secretly hate women. Can I get an amen?

Let’s do a quick rundown of the listed movies that I have seen and why I hate them.

#7: What Women Want

What do women want? It’s obvious! They want Mel Gibson because he’s a cigar-sucking, misogynistic asshole! The whole movie rubbed me the wrong way, but the ending in particular chapped my ass. Helen Hunt finds out that Mel was stealing her ideas and reading her mind, and she’s okay with it? She hooks up with him anyway? What the flaming fuck?

#6: Twilight

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Bella moves in with her controlling dad and immediately starts playing mommy to him, then meets sparkly Edward, who immediately starts controlling her. Jacob isn’t too bad in the first book/movie, but later HE starts controlling her, too. And does Bella shove them all off and tell them to go to hell? Nope. She swoons. Gag. (Apologies to Binary Betty. ;)

#2: How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days

I must first confess my deep and abiding hatred of Matthew McConaghey. The man has the acting range of a toaster strudel. He grosses me out. So… after sitting through an hour and a half of Kate Hudson acting out every disgusting stereotype about women and Matthew McConaghey drawling through an attempt to be Mr. Sexy, I wanted to puke. Unfortunately, my mother loves this movie. Ugh.

#1: Pretty Woman

It’s a retelling of My Fair Lady/Pygmalion. I get it. My film studies prof thinks this is one of the best movies ever and loves to bring it up to watch me grind my teeth. But I HATE this movie with the power of a thousand burning suns. Richard Gere falls in love with a hooker, awwww. How sweet. But only after she stops acting like Whorey McWhoreface and gets all gentrified. The lesson here? Ladies, you should mold yourself into Richard Gere’s idea of a perfect woman if you ever want to be loved and stop being a prostitute.

Ahhhh. I have to admit, it felt kind of good to vent my feminist rage at Hollywood’s bullshit. But now I really should get back to writing if I’m going to make it to 3400 words by tonight.

Tell me, which movies irritate you in the way they portray women?

Related posts:

1. Deconstructing Hollywood’s Strong Female Character
2. More Wolverine movie thoughts
3. X-Men: First Class… coming to the big screen?

(Who the heck is Dougherty, you ask? He was the screenwriter for X2: X-Men United.)

Geek Tyrant reports a bit about what Dougherty and Bryan Singer were planning for their version of the third X-Men movie here. (Holy character name typos in that blog post, Batman!)

An excerpt:
…Phoenix was going round the world taking things into her own hands and that she had basically returned as a god, which they did in X3. She had viewed herself as above the conflict, that she was here to end things on her terms, she was sick of the fighting and she was going to take things into her own hands and she did not give a s**t what the X-Men or the Brotherhood had to say about it.

And ultimately the way it was going to end, at least the version I was pushing for, would be that Phoenix was kind of like the Starchild at the end of 2001, she didn’t just get stabbed and die again, but she kind of chose to leave.

Hm. Now, I think that the third X-Men movie that we got sucked balls. If you’ve been reading TDF for a while, you may have already read me rant about this. And while I think nearly anything would be better than the piece of cinematic crap that was made, Dougherty’s description of their version just isn’t doing it for me. Maybe he just gave a really cursory rundown of their idea, but it feels like there’s very little conflict, other than PHOENIX DOES BADASS STUFF. Which is cool. I’m a huge Phoenix fangirl. I like the idea that she doesn’t have to be killed to keep herself from going crazy (slap the hysterical woman, right?), but I wish Doughtery had described a bit more of what would happen. Would the X-Men and/or the Brotherhood fight Phoenix? Give me more!!

Or it’s possible that I’m just brain fried right now, and I’m whining because a writer didn’t tell me enough about a movie that didn’t get made, heh. I’ve got a post about how Phoenix got the shaft in the X-Men movies percolating in my head, but I’ve got three proposals to write. I’ll have to save it for another day.

Related posts:

1. X-Men: First Class… coming to the big screen?
2. Astonishing X-Men Motion Comic Trailer
3. Quickie Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

There has recently been a spate of articles in the geekverse about a supposed invasion of fangirls. Basically, 40% of this year’s San Diego Comic Con attendees were female, and many of them were young and fans of Twilight. There was a lot of bitching at SDCC about the Twilight fans; I was there and overheard plenty… and even did some myself. [cough] But it seems that the Twilight invasion has brought to the fore the concept that women can and do like geeky things, and a lot of the commentary seems to express shock, as if women are just now starting to like comic books and science fiction and all that deliciously nerdy stuff. Girls invading the treehouse! That sort of reaction. There has also been a lot of speculation as to why girls get into geeky stuff as well as the differences between fangirls and fanboys.

The writers of The Discriminating Fangirl weigh in with their own experiences as female geeks.

The Bibliomaniac

I’ve been a fangirl almost from the get-go.

My mom taught me how to read when I was three, and I’ve never quit. I was reading the Oz books by the time I was six. The Narnia books, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan series, and Madeleine L’Engle’s novels accompanied me to the age of nine, when I simultaneously discovered comic books and the novels of Stephen King. From there, I branched out into H. P. Lovecraft, the pulp series of Destroyer novels, and the Wild Card shared-world anthologies.

It wasn’t just reading, either. Movies like the Star Wars and Star Trek films, the Indiana Jones series, Ghostbusters, and the three fantasy ‘L’s of the mid-80s—Ladyhawke (1985), Legend (1985), and Labyrinth (1986) further fed my fannish bliss.

By 1985, I had graduated from high school, but family members and friends who expected me to “put away my childish things” now that I was an adult were doomed to disappointment. They didn’t understand what I got out of—in their words—such shallow and stupid pursuits.

Part of that’s perfectly understandable when you realize that being a geek back then was pretty much accepting that you were consigning yourself to the bottom rung of the social ladder. This was especially true for female geeks. In comparison to the last few years, when geekdom has come into its own, being a girl geek in the 80s and early 90s was to constantly struggle with the ugly stereotype that was in vogue then: socially maladjusted, physically unattractive, uninterested in the things that occupied “normal” girls. My stepmother, for example, couldn’t understand why I preferred to watch The X-Files rather than the soap operas she loved.

But geekdom has always offered me two things that made all the social bias worth it. The first of these is social acceptance. One of the things about any hobby is finding other people who share your interests to talk to, and this is as true of collecting action figures or manga as it is about setting up model trains or birdwatching. We seek peers to share and compare our stories with, to discuss highlights and lowlights, and to expand what we know about our interests.

Perhaps even deeper than that, however, was the overwhelming sense of magic and wonder that I found in these books and movies that has stayed with me to this day. Watching a sorceress fly away in a magic bubble, reading about talking lions and superheroes made me believe that anything was really possible—not just around me, but within me, as well.

It was enjoying the fantastic experiences created by others that led me to want to create my own. These days, I’m a writer; I write fantasy and horror, and have done freelancing for RPGs. Geeky fangirl stuff all the way. With any luck, the stuff I write will inspire people as I was inspired. If so, then all the bias and societal disapproval in the world will have been worth it.

Emily

Quote: Guys, says Krasniewicz, tend to focus on stats, quotes and other details: “I’ve discovered at different comic book conventions that it’s more about ‘can you top this?’

I have definitely experienced this. When I tell some guys I’m a comic book fan, they quiz me about names of characters and other details. I’ve never had to prove my geek cred to another female fan. But the generalizations of the articles kind of scare me. I don’t think that is what all male fans are like. Even if it were all fanboys, it might be a guy thing or it could be something else. Maybe fanboys are used to being picked on so they want you to prove your geekiness before they trust you. I’m not sure. Nor do I think all female fans “… want to talk about how the stories make them feel.” Ugh. That makes us sound like an episode of Dr. Phil or something.

I’ve had plenty of conversations with guy fans about storylines and emotional moments of comics or movies. It’s not so much talking about our “feelings” as saying, “Dude, that was awesome!” or “I was trying not to cry!” So I suppose I tend to side more with Joss Whedon and think that fans are fans for the most part but with the caveat that men and women often come at things with different perspectives. I think the Twilight brouhaha was more about the age of the girls who attended that panel. Hundreds of twelve year olds can be a lot to handle, I know because I went to sleepovers when I was a kid. But they won’t always be twelve. Kevin Smith followed up his quote about the Spock and Chewy costumes by saying, “They need to be encouraged because in six years they’ll be eighteen-year-old girls who like vampires. [...] Don’t boo it. There’s a plan and it’s working.”

I may not want to have sex with these girls when they are of age (as is implied) but the point is, these are young fans and if they’re kicked out of fandom (or not allowed to Comic Con) we’re gonna lose the next generation. That means fewer friends for me and fewer chicks for the fanboys.

Finn

Since I hit my mid-thirties next year, I’ve probably been a fangirl longer than the word “fangirl” has even been in existence. It also means that my formative fangirl years were during the 80’s. Transformers, X-Men, G I Joe and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (“By the power of Grayskull!”) were all parts of my daily life well before the movies were ever made, so the references I’ve been hearing lately about the “sudden surge of female fans” is crap. We’ve been here the whole time.

No one bothered to take notice of us fangirls because we weren’t seen as the ones snapping up the products, watching the shows, or buying the comic books. We were supposed to get caught up in what our Barbie was going to wear to one of her many jobs, or wonder which My Little Pony to play with that day instead of wanting to watch fighting ninja turtles or people from the planet Arus (bonus points if can name that one before you read the rest of the sentence) who rode around in robotic lions.

Maybe that’s it.

Maybe it’s not the fan world suddenly noticing our presence, maybe it’s the business world stirring the figurative pot. Maybe the starched shirt corporate America types with their overinflated salaries are creating this buzz by saying it’s some sort of phenomenon because they see dollar signs when they see us coming. After all, females are the same ones that don’t even bat an eyelash at dropping $400.00 on a pair of designer shoes they’ll wear once. What says that they wouldn’t drop the same amount on some piece of comic book art they consider a collectible?

Then again, maybe that’s not it either.

Maybe we’ve always known who we were and everyone else finally caught up to us fans who just happen to be girls.

Strangeness Abounds

Photo courtesy of “korukunuki” on http://www.cosplay.com

As a completely packaged “fangirl” and rabid nerd from the day I could punch buttons on my father’s NES (I want to say…two years old?), I must say that I’m rather insulted by these “discoveries.” The fact of the matter is, women like me have existed for a long, long time, but this Twilight phenomenon is forcing people to more or less officially recognize us. Frankly, I’m disgusted that women cosplayers haven’t been recognized before the Twilight frenzy – surely they are a version of the nerd at their zenith? At the very least, these women should have been recognized before any of these so-called Twilight “fangirls.”

I am a rabid nerd, but I have not always been unapologetic, to my shame. I played video games all throughout childhood, waited in line to buy the first N64 I could lay my hands on in 1998, watched Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and The Lord of the Rings as a young teenager, but unfortunately, my desire to be accepted by peer groups I believed were the best forced me to mash my nerdy nature into a corner where I did not talk about it and never even mentioned it in passing.

It was not until my late high school years when the much-repressed nerd inside me broke out with a voracious appetite. I pulled out all my old gaming systems, repaired them if needed, and worked on playing them all over again. eBay was especially helpful during this time of release— I ordered old cartridges and controllers like a true junkie.

And movie preferences? I’d rather sit down and watch Watchmen over a sweet, tender, teary chick flick any day of the week. Raiders of the Lost Ark beats The Notebook in romance and I will not take that back.

So about the sudden discovery of these fangirls – I say they’ve been here all along. They just learned to hide their tendencies because they wanted to fit in for so long and then realized later in their lives that there is nothing like being themselves, as absolutely cheesy and over-rehashed that sounds. I hope that this current trend towards open welcomes to female nerds in all forms continues – it would be a shame to see another generation of daughters hide their love for all things nerdy.

TDF Pamela

Like most of my esteemed fangirl colleagues, I’ve been a fangirl for a looooong time. I was a fangirl before I even knew there was such a thing, having been raised on Star Wars and Star Trek: TOS reruns and SF/F books. I remember being teased in junior high for wearing a Star Trek: TNG t-shirt (of course, it did have Commander Riker on it…), and I remember the vaguely amused confusion of my high school classmates when they found out that I was obsessed with The X-Files. But at that point, most of the confusion and teasing had nothing to do with the fact that I was a girl. It was just because I liked geeky things.

I haven’t run into too much hostility because I’m a fangirl. There’ve been the creepers who followed me around the comic book store, panting. There have also been a few jerks who’ve disdainfully asked me if I’m buying comics for my boyfriend. Most of the nastiness I’ve experienced has been online, where the cloak of semi-anonymity seems to give some people permission to act like assholes. Overall, though, I’ve been having a great time as a fangirl, and I’ve met lots of fanboys who seem to have no problem with fangirls, and who aren’t surprised by any sudden “invasions.”

See, I don’t think there has been an invasion of fangirls. The fangirls have been here all along. Maybe we’ve had to learn to blend a bit, especially if we’re not the kind of fangirl who wears Slave Leia costumes. But we’ve been reading comics and science fiction and doing geeky things for a very long time, and in large numbers. Admittedly most of the cons I go to around Dallas are small, but there’s always a sizeable percentage of women there.

Perhaps the idea of the invasion has more to do with Hollywood suddenly realizing that women are a lucrative part of their audience. Twelve year old girls, such as the ones screaming over Twilight, can generate a lot of cash flow. When I was twelve and super into ST:TNG, I know I bought a lot of stuff, thanks to parents who sympathized with my geekiness. Hollywood has been increasingly using SDCC in particular as a vehicle for promotion of upcoming films, so the con itself is becoming less geek specialized and more mainstream. So… it stands to reason that it would attract a wider audience that would include people who wouldn’t normally go to a con.

I do have to say that I have a problem with the generalizations about fangirl/fanboy motivations. It falls back on outdated gender stereotyping: girls are emotional, boys are logical. I call bullshit. People are much more complex than that, and trying to narrow down exactly what fangirls like and what fanboys like does a disservice to everyone. Sure, some guys are really into statistics. So are some girls. And while lots of female fans dig relationships in comics, so do lots of male fans. I personally love relationships and romances in my geeky fandoms, but then I also adore some good, hard science fiction. So, which box do I fit into?

Fangirls have been around for a long time, and we’ll continue to hang around as long as there’s stuff to get geeky about. To all of the people who are completely cool with this concept, I thank you. To the people who continue to freak out and moan about how fangirls are invading “their” conventions and comic book stores… Come on. Get over it. After you do, I’m sure you’ll find lots of awesome fangirls to talk shop with.

WereGeek

“A Sudden Influx of Women? Hardly!”

I’ve been a comic book fan since I was four or five. I’ve been a superhero comics fan since about age twelve. In the nearly twenty years I’ve been going to comic specialty stores, I’ve never felt uncomfortable, unwelcome or unwanted…except around the time when the owner of my local was tired of the business and started acting like a jackass. But he drove everyone away, not just us female-types.

I was always disappointed growing up that no other girls shared my passion for comics. This was the pre-Internet age so the only people I could compare myself with were the kids in the one middle school in town and, later, the one high school. I didn’t know of any other girls who read comics, but I didn’t know any guys who read them, either. Which is why I was so surprised when I found out that bigger towns actually had whole stores devoted to comics!

Now, of course, everything is different. It’s very easy to find male and female fans from all over the world. Every show, niche or OTP has its own followers and finding one that takes your fancy is merely a Google search away.

I went to ComicCon in 2002. My female friend and I went in for the Wednesday night preview and we met some great industry professionals. I especially remember Joe Quesada taking the time to tell us con virgins how to deal with the unique stresses of SDCC. His advice wasn’t targeted to us as women; it was just general, all around good advice. There were plenty of women at the con and my friend and I didn’t feel out of place at all. If you want proof of how many women were there in 2002, just look at the floor scenes in Comic Book: The Movie.

What it boils down to is this: women have been interested in comics for a long time. We’ve blended in and gotten along and everyone seems to have forgotten we were there. The uproar taking place now is a response to the sudden influx of fans of new, female-oriented properties like the always-mentioned “Twilight”. What this shows me, more than anything, is that even in the supposedly individualistic, let-your-geek-flag-fly culture of fandom, the majority expects conformity. If women behave similarly to fanboys, they’re welcomed. Especially if they’re hot and rocking a Slave Leia costume.

If women behave consistently with fandoms other than the excepted norm (yes, there are a lot of similarities between early-60s Beatlemania and the “Twilight” phenomenon), they are seen as aberrant and abhorrent to “geek culture” at large. The detractors had better clue up though because, with entertainment outlets increasingly targeting young women and teen girls, this is only the tip of the iceberg and the fanboys had better learn to share.

We want to hear what you think!

Related posts:

1. Newsflash: Girls DO read comics! Holy crap!
2. Deconstructing Hollywood’s Strong Female Character
3. Brett Ratner is a douche. News at 11.

It’s the tail end of Banned Book Week, and unfortunately I’ve been so busy that I didn’t get a chance to go to my university’s library and check out any of their events. Heck, I completely forgot to blog about it until just now. But the attempted censorship of books is something that’s very important to me not only because I’m studying a genre whose books are often challenged, but because… well, the idea that someone thinks they can wield enough power to prevent other people from reading a book really raises my hackles.

According to the American Library Association, out of 513 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2008, the 10 most challenged titles were:

• And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
  • Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
• His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
  • Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence
• TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series) by Lauren Myracle
  • Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
• Scary Stories (series) by Alvin Schwartz
  • Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence
• Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
  • Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  • Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group
• Gossip Girl (series) by Cecily von Ziegesar
  • Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
• Uncle Bobby’s Wedding by Sarah S. Brannen
  • Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  • Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
• Flashcards of My Life by Charise Mericle Harper
  • Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

According to the ALA, the list of the most challenged books in the 90s include Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, The Giver by Lois Lowry, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and many more books that frankly startle me. You can view lists of the top ten most challenged books per year here. Unsurprisingly, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series tops the list for a few years running.

I think that a few major problems that lead to many books being challenged are sheep mentality, anti-intellectualism, and… well, just not reading the book before going off half-cocked. Take the Potter books, for example. They are often challenged because they contain witchcraft. There is magic in the books, but some of the people trying to ban the series seem to believe that it actually indoctrinates children into the occult. You’d also find a lot of claims that Rowling is trying to initiate children into Wicca, an earth-based religion which, last I checked, has nothing to do with Satan or Harry Potter. Another thing you might run across is that many of the people who want to ban Harry Potter have never actually read the books. Here comes the sheep mentality. Someone else told them that Harry Potter is evil. A friend or a pastor, perhaps. But instead of actually reading the books for themselves and coming to their own conclusion, they take up the banner and perpetuate the ignorance.

I have no problem with parents who want to control what their children read. Well… intellectually I do have a problem with it, because I think that everyone should have the right and the opportunity to read whatever they want to read, analyze it, and make their own decision as to its personal value. But I am not arrogant enough to think that I have any right to tell anyone else what they or their children should or should not read.

[steps off of soapbox]

I hope that was coherent, because it felt pretty ranty for a while, heh. Looking up articles on people having histrionics over Harry Potter kind of gets my blood pressure up.

And now for the audience participation part of this post! What is your favorite banned book? Did you go to (or host) any events during Banned Books Week this year?

Related posts:

1. Amazon (is) Rank
2. Literary Woobies
3. Book Review: Flesh and Fire: Book One of the Vineart War

Marvel has released the trailer for the first episode of its Astonishing X-Men Motion Comic. Check it out:

iFanboy Exclusive: Astonishing X-Men Motion Comic Trailer from Ron Richards on Vimeo.

I’m not sure if I’m on board with the motion comic thing. It’s definitely an interesting step, and with the continuous leaps ahead in technology, this kind of thing probably will be the future of comics. But at the same time… am I the only one who found it a bit creepy? Maybe it’s because I’m familiar with Cassaday’s art in the original comics, but seeing them move, almost as if it was animated, is a bit eerie.

Related posts:

1. X-Men Origins: Wolverine Trailer!
2. X-Men: First Class… coming to the big screen?
3. Wolverine Anime Trailer