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mswyrr has a post about the movie Thor as toxic ______ narrative. I say _______ rather than the real word because the real word involves spoilers. But if you are already spoiled, or if you don't care and would just like to read a really interesting post about parent/child dynamics, go read hers. She also links to "Is Thor a feminist movie? (Yes)", which is also very interesting.

Personally, I found Thor to be only moderately entertaining (saved from total paint-by-numbers status by a great performance by Tom Hiddleston as Loki), but I agree it's a feminist movie. At least in comparison with most superhero movies, or indeed most action movies. And mswyrr is entirely right about the toxic narrative family stuff. ide_cyan tells me that Patty Jenkins (who directed Monster, with Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci) is signed up to direct the sequel, so I have high hopes.

Limited Release by rageprufrock is an excellent X-men: First Class AU (Erik/Charles, natch). It starts out as a take-off on White Collar, and I'll be frank, the beginning didn't work for me. I felt like the story was shoehorning Alex Summers into the charming white collar criminal role and Erik Lehnsherr into the straightlaced FBI agent role when neither of them really belonged in those roles. The story really started to work for me when Prufrock went past the White Collar set-up (which was in this case kind of limiting, I think) and got really into the AU and its emotional ramifications. She also has incredibly textured language. Warning: looooong. But very worth it if you're into the fandom.

Gakked from meret, The vast Asian realm of the lost humans is about the Denisovians. They were contemporaries of the Neanderthals but lived mostly in Asia, everywhere from chilly Siberia to tropical Indonesia. And like hte Neanderthals, died out after Anatomically Modern Humans moved in on their territory. The modern-day inhabitants of Papua New Guinea have some Denisovian DNA, though, so there was some interbreeding between them and us. It's a really neat article, and points out that the Denisovians must have been very adaptable to survive in such disparate geography and climate. Previously it was thought that only Anatomically Modern Humans were adaptable enough to survive such harsh climates.