small details in X-Men '97 that rip my heart and serve it on a plate:

this gesture here - Magneto being the one in the party to acknowledge Morph's trauma and what a big ask it is to revisit their past. He knows. He's been there before. And wants Morph to know he's not alone.

THE AUTUMN TABLE

This is the table where the traditional and historical heads of mutant society sat, demonstrated by the seating of Xavier, Magneto and Apocalypse.

I decided to stick with that theme and keep this table stocked with Leaders, even though I've booted both Xavier and Mags for their lackluster leadership skills and their attempts to manipulate, mansplain, and manslaughter the rest of Krakoa.

I'm trying to keep one of the current seats at each table the same, and as such I let Destiny keep her seat. Not only just to spite Moira (who, if I'd been asked the question of who I'd pock for the QC a year ago, would have had Apocalypse's seat), but because I think it just makes sense to have one of the strongest precogs around sitting on the ruling body of Krakoa, to see any potential threats before they come, or to see ways out of a sticky situation if they find themselves in one.

Note: I don't have any cool names for the individual seats like The Great Ring of Arakko, so bear with me here...

The October Seat: Irene Adler - DESTINY

Next up, given that I fully support the idea of the actual citizens of Krakoa getting a say in who helps lead their country, we have the ultimate leader, Cyclops.

Not only is Scott the protégé of Xavier, but he's been the leader of the X-Men pretty much since their inception. He's been the headmaster of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters and post-decimation (M-Day), he was the leader of what few mutants remained on the planet. He was well on his way to being the next Magneto (as evident by everyone's attempt to turn him into a villain), and actively fought to defend and literate his mutant brethren from those who would constantly oppress them. He's also one hell of a tactician, and I feel that there should be someone on the Council who can either cooperate or give orders to the War Captains in a time of crisis.

Also, given his rather public death at the hands of Dr. Nemesis and the fact that Krakoa wants to keep the resurrection protocols under wraps, it would make sense to have Scott in a leadership position once again.

The November Seat: Scott Summers - CYCLOPS

PS: this was a much better design for Scott to wear at the Hellfire Gala. It's giving me very much 'Anakin marching on the Jedi Temple during Order 66' vibes.

And the final seat will go to a long time frenemy of the X-Men, the king of the oceans himself, Namor!

Aside from being the long-time holder of the title "the world's first mutant" (debatable), he has been a member of the X-Men before, back during the Utopia days, where Utopia itself (formerly Asteroid M) wad supported by Atlantis. He joined Jean Grey's X-Men before Krakoa during the original X-Men: Red title, and he was a part of the Phoenix Force Five during the AvX story.

He has a long history with the X-Men and I could see him filling that seat perfectly, the same way Scott easily filled Magneto's. Unlike Xavier, at least Namor's a dick to your face.

Now, I can hear some of you already crying, "but he's King of Atlantis! How could he be both a King and member of the Quiet Council?!" To which, I respond, Look! If Storm can pull quadruple duty (QC member, Great Ring member, Regent of Sol/Representative on the Galactic Council, and that weird High Priestess for the resurrected thing) than Namor can do both.

The December Seat: Namor - THE SUB-MARINER

Additionally, I will have Charles Xavier attached to this table, though he doesn't hold a seat himself. Given his intrinsic role in the foundation of Krakoa, and that he's been out, front and center since the country was formed, I thought it would be a good idea to have him be the Face of Krakoa, the Head of State, as it were, rather like the Queen of England. He handles all the ceremonial stuff, while the Quiet Council does the actual governing.

Links to other tables

X X X X X

Hey what are your favourite + least fav x men characters and why im curious i love seeing ur thoughts (also, to make it easier hopefully???, i mean specifically X-Men you do not need to include like the 100+ teams connected to them like new mutants or Excalibur etc)

tbh these are just from. everywhere. a lot of my favs are xforce and sub teams. just mutants in general really

least favs

xavier. hes just a dick like. objectively. hes got no business mentoring young kids with the way he went about treating young scott and young jean. also mr i would never invade someone's thoughts without there permission. and then he DID

beast. just kinda boring like. we get it youre smart and patronizing and blue and furry, what else is there. kurt is the only blue man

havok. i dont like. hate him. i just think he should be made fun of more. mr all lives matter avengers stan. bully him more

deadpool because i hate that some people think he’s a mutant n it irritates me idk

brian braddock sorry betsy ur brother is dull as all fuck. he barely has anything to do w mutants as a whole and it’s like why do we even claim him as one when he ran around calling himself captain britain for so long like. cringe, sir braddock

favs:

storm. like objectively i think if anyone doesnt favour ororo in some kind of way then theyre insane. she has a lot of wonder woman isms in that a lot of people see her as this. ethereal above reproach goddess but shes ironically a very human character. like just the little facts that shes into botany and is claustrophobic etc. and the fact that everyone loves her is because shes a good person, not because she’s beautiful or powerful or perfect in anyway. like she’s loved because she’s earned it and she deserves it. she’s a good friend and a GREAT leader without needing to physically be in charge. shes very open and loving and loyal but is also someone u really only get one chance with?? she has a much smaller circle of incredibly close friends than people would think. idk i love that shes allowed to be both kind and flawed AND hugely powerful

domino. ive gone on about how i love neena a lot before so i wont bore u but she is. genuinely one of my favourite characters of all time from anywhere. she has a persona that she puts up but there's so much in her backstory that no one would expect if theyd only read recent domino stuff. like she really shines in her solos more than anywhere else i cant stress that enough

magneto. if i had to like. objectively pick a best character ever i think it would be magneto. i think superhero comics are best when they SAY something. like not to be all We Live In a Society but if youre not making some kind of commentary on the real world with your good vs evil media concept then what are you doing. and we all know the mutant metaphor doesnt hold up like. ever. but its as close as it gets with magneto because his fictional mutanthood is linked w his real jewishness and its never like. a replacement or one or the other. and one fuels his activism in the other? idk im not sure how to phrase it but i think he embodies what being a MUTANT is about, in universe, not what being an xmen is about. hes so REGAL and smart and so powerful just in the way he carries himself, even when he was depowered. they simply do not make characters like magneto other than magneto. and YES the dilfery of it all

kwannon. i love where her story is going and how much attention theyre giving her since the body divorce. just that shes being allowed to be bitter and resentful of betsy about having years of her life stolen. her learning how to be her own self again and what's her own. also i like betsy just fine but my first intro to ~~~psylocke was the betsy/kwannon mash up and like. for ME. with what i like in characters??? pretty much all of what i liked was kwannon's. the assassin stuff, the sword stuff, her brutality and harder attitude. like u all know my taste in female characters and shes IT. and theres a lot of potential in exploring her backstory

wolverine. unfortunately. i love a little weasel man. He Is My Dad. i think he has such a rich variation of relationships with other people whether it be as a rivalry, romance, friendship, parent etc etc. this bitch contains multitudes!!! i think he as a character has so much bought to him by the other characters around him. likes YES he is a grmupy old man who probably hasnt showered today but hes a very loving person despite everything

angel. this might seem like a wild pick for me but. the concept of a rich pretty boy with seemingly everything going for him being turned into this monstrous apocalyptic razor bird with varying self control is SO GOOD TO ME IDK IDK. like hes very gentle and atypical for a male character in a lot of ways and i enjoy that a lot??? just the contrast of it all. i think there should be more horrific pretty boys

monet. forever obsessed wither attitude and her confidence even when so much of her story is wrapped up in people stealing her identity and the betrayal in that and being controlled by others physically w the penance stuff like. shes been through all of that and is STILL probably one of the most sure of themselves characters out there. her yes i AM the shit actually, better than you attitude, not afraid to be a bitch superiority. ladies i think we should all be more like monet as a rule. her powers just being that shes pretty much better than everyone at everything. also shes just funny as fuck

im allowed to say this because shes in x books on the regular now but selene. i think shes so fuckin cool and maybe this is the wannabe goth death witch from my teenage years possessing my body right now but i LOVE an insanely powerful woman. shes like 20000 years old, shes physically incapable of dying, shes the FIRST mutant and has a very rich backstory. shes a great villain but i think now shes more vaguely xmen aligned with the krakoa situation theres huge amounts of potential with her to be on heroic teams as the untrustworthy but begrudgingly helps out kind of addition. with everyone being like. remember that time you resurrected half of us as zombies and traumatised us all for life and she’s just like. god don’t you people ever move on

Ruin and Rising Chapter 10

Hey y’all. How’s everyone doing after that trailer? Personally, I am deceased and writing to you as a ghost. But I must complete my liveblogs so, here we go.

There are a few highlights from this chapter: Baghra backstory and Nikolai x Alina stuff. I’ll start with the Nikolai x Alina stuff even though it comes later cause I’ve got one bone to pick with the Baghra backstory (or at least Alina’s reaction to it).

Nikolai and Alina is cute. I love him immediately hearing about the Darkling connection and strategizing. That was great. But then also his conversation with Alina watching the meteor shower (romantic). I know she doesn’t feel the same flash of feelings for him as she does for the Darkling or for Mal. But there is a genuine friendship and affection between them. They talk very easily. They could be happy together. Maybe I’m just a sucker for the political marriage grows into something more trope.

Then the almost kiss with the “when you’re ready” attached to it. CONSENT! Sexiest thing a man can do. And what character growth. I love Nikolai very much.

Loved getting backstory about Baghra and her being the daughter of Morozova. Brutal that she just...murdered her sister with shadows and then her father brought her back to life and they were drowned (but maybe not).

And then there’s the bits of young Aleksander we get.

“I’ll tell you a story--one I used to tell a little boy with dark hair, a silent boy who rarely laughed, who listened more closely than I realized. A boy who had a name and not a title.”

Bby Darkling!!! A child!!

Seriously, the explanation of Baghra teaching him to embrace his powers and that he had no equal makes a lot of sense given her background. She wanted him to have what she didn’t and then it all very much went to his head. That and all the years he’s been alive. She had good intentions wanting him to harden his heart because of experience but that had its own pit falls.

Now, can we talk about the CONCLUSIONS that Alina jumps to? She leaves the story with Baghra...and this is her thought process--what if her sister didn’t die and DID have powers and THOSE powers were LIGHT powers instead of SHADOW powers but she hadn’t SHOWN them yet but she did show them LATER and then SHE had children and that eventually led to ME, several generations beyond???

First of all. That’s a slippery slope if I’ve ever seen one, and nothing in Baghra’s story really hints at that. And Second of all, the conclusion she takes away from it? Like ‘could the Darkling and I be COUSINS????’

And the answer is no. You couldn’t be. Because like...ten generations have passed. Ten generations of more genetic material getting mixed in. You’re like...seventh cousins five times removed at worst. That’s really not a problem. 

It feels like Leigh is just trying to add onto the ‘reasons not to date the Darkling’ pile and I’m like......You don’t need to do that. he’s done plenty of other things to make Alina hesitate to date him. Like the murder and torture. Hell, even the age gap. We don’t need to add in an incest scare. Especially when its not even a real incest scare (we know this is a red herring for a later reveal). Besides, I just came off the Game of Thrones fandom so if you thought this was going to squick me out, you are sorely mistaken.

I also have more of a...genre bone to pick with this book. And I say genre bone because Leigh is not the only one in a fantasy series who has done this so I’m not just calling her out here. But it’s the ‘villain is a leader of an oppressed group who was trying to make a space for said oppressed group trope’.

Baghra confirms (as does the short story from the Darkling’s POV) that his goal was to make a space for Grisha who were deeply persecuted at the time--murdered for gifts they were born with and could not control. And then eventually his power hunger took over and he ‘wanted too much’ and his ‘methods are bad’.

That’s the theme with a lot of novels like this. Like, yes, the oppressed group is trying to get rights. But like...too many rights. Look at their methods. Their methods are bad. Their leader is eeeevil.

This creates a sort of mixed message in the narrative. One) it lends credence to the people who are oppressing them. Like yeah, the other countries murder them/perform horrible experiments on them/drink their blood, but the Grisha are kinda scary too you guys. Look at their leader!!

It’s not that one can’t investigate the moral grey areas of this trope. I think there are a lot of X men stories for instance that do a really good job with Magneto and not just casting him off as an irredeemable villain (some do not but it depends on the writer). But this book seems to mostly lean on the Darkling being irredeemable, so I can’t say the same for him.

I think there was a lot more potential to dive into this. To the Darkling’s motives and goals. To the importance of his cause even if his methods sometimes cross the line. But I don’t think that’s dissected enough (nor is the plight of the Grisha dissected enough) so it kind of leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

It’s not made any better by the insistence that too much power makes Grisha baaaad. The idea that if Alina has all the amplifiers, she will turn power hungry and evil, not because of a choice but because that’s just what power does to Grisha I guess. What if her non-grisha companions have REASON to fear her???

Anyway, I don’t want to go two deep on this YA book. But it’s just a genre problem I see in which they want to make an oppressed group but then make the leader of the oppressed group just straight up evil. I think that trope can do with a lot of reworking.

See you guys in the next chapter!

Tuesday July 13th 13.7.2021 7.13.2021 7.13.21 194th day/171 days remain Gibbous Waxing Moon 12% illumination/ 88% Shadow

This is the time of month for growing into the fulfillment of things. Like a new born baby having the prospects of life before it. Great potential. So too for the plans of the planners of Liberty. Shrinking your liberty is growing.

Nice.🤐

Little Liberty, gift from France, just made it to DC from spending the 4th of July on Ellis Island facing her Big Sister and will be at the French Embassy a today for July 14th Bastille day, "French Independence Day."

DC, the Capital of The United States of America. DC also is a hint for something else. In case you didn't guess DC Comics that's good because the connection should be made to Marvel Comics. I'm talking about the 2000 X-Men. Now why am I picking on the mutants? I grew up a fan of reading the comics, cartoons and saw the movie at the theater, yeah that's how old I am.

Guess when X-Men was released... it was released...That's right. Bastille Day. 7.14 or 14.7 the 196th Day of the Leap Election Year. The date is most famously associated with the Storming of the Bastille in Paris, the event which escalated widespread unrest into the French Revolution. Bastille Day remains a day of national celebration in France.

Strangely enough, the political stress in this movie is about passing a law that all mutants have to register with the government. This is reminiscent in the 2016 Captain America Civil War movie where the United Nations asks the Super heroes to register like the political issues with Supers in the Incredibles 1 and 2 being banned.

My focus on XMEN is relating that the setting of the movie being on Ellis Island where the UN and world leaders are congregated aside the Liberty Island, where Magneto has a device in the torch of enlightenment and freedom, he wants to expose the leaders to mutating energies to, so they can become mutants.

He wants the leaders to sympathize with mutant plight by making them brothers. The problem is, he doesn't know his machine will kill them eventually. He tested his device on Senator Kelly who turned to primordial slime and then was liquidated to water. Wicked witch of the West melted in water. Basically died.

Interesting that the new Little Statue of Liberty was just on Ellis Island for 7.4.2021 after leaving France on The Havre ship on Juneteenth (Slave Freedom 6.19 or 19.6) and will spend 10 years in US capital at French Embassy.

Little Liberty is 16 xs smaller. This is nearly golden ratio of phi 1.618 divided by 10. There is a divine connection to this proportion as well as the 10 xs factor. 10 years in DC, USA and 10 times smaller. Bastille day is 10 days after US Independence day/ 4th of July.

Also note that the date of Juneteenth written as 19.6 is the same number as the 169th day of the year for July 14th, Storming of Bastille.

FREEDOMS

Franc is currency for freedom, liberty. These words as discussed in other posts really is for nobility, royal bloodlines. So is the little lib statue represent shrinking freedoms for them. The Goy will regain powers, money, land, property, privilege's.

Who is your favorite superhero?

Storm- Wakandan female powerhouse who manipulates weather.

Wolverine-the animal/man with Adamantium metal grafted on his bones who can restore himself.

Professor Xavier (X)-Mind Controller and tracker and handler of mutant youth.

Magneto-Brotherhood of Mutants leader who is a powerful magnet of metal and survivor of WWII concentration camp. former comrade of Professor X.

Cyclops-Laser radiating eyes.

Gene Gray- Omega level mutant with the power of telepathy and telekinesis. Moves stuff and reads peoples minds with her mind. Doctor.

Rogue-Teenage runaway who absorbs mutant energy and life force from everyone else. She is like a vampire of chi. Like the witches or Dark Crystal sucking children and innocents vitality.

Mystique-Is a shapeshifting missing link fish woman. Mimic/copy.

Beast/Dr. Henry Hank Philip McCoy-strong and agile like an ape.

Who am I to judge who the villain and hero is? What if they are all really 2 sides of one coin. Truth be known, These heroes' abilities are abilities of modern tech, social engineering. This is just a hypersigil for manipulating not only man but nature as well.

The mark of the Beast in Revelations and the mark of Caine on his forehead was a crossed letter. Like a t or plus sign. spin it 90 degrees it's an x. + x.

Time we live in is the fear of this disease mutation people, since the vaccine is a genetic RNA that is hoped to go into our DNA. Called genetic splicing, creating genetically modified humans like they do to our plants, crops, animals. There is talk of cellular signals, which are microwaves that cook our food. Imagine what it does to your head with earbuds and phones on our ears pointing to our brains. Magneto wore a special helmet to protect him form Professor X's mind altering powers.

Ranking Brotherhood of Evil Mutant members (including all interations) from your, most to least favorite and please expound why. I do like asking for opinions.

Hmmm....there have been several iterations of the Brotherhood, and I’m not very familiar with some of the later versions, so I’m just gonna go with the earlier versions that I know.  Bear in mind, this is entirely subjective, and I like most of these characters, so a character being lower down doesn’t mean I hate them.  Going from favorite to least favorite:  

Pyro:

Anyone following this blog has probably noticed I love this dude.  I’m not exactly subtle about it.  I think he’s interesting and fun, as villains go.  He’s snarky and cocky, and actually rather friendly when he’s not trying to kill you - very Affable Evil.  He’s not necessarily a very good person - he’s self-interested, and can be rather vicious, but he’s a character that I thought could potentially come over to the good side.  He seemed, at times, to get into the whole “Freedom Force” thing, and clearly enjoyed saving people alongside Longshot.  He seems to bond a great deal with his team-mates - Mystique, Avalanche, even Stonewall (although he was a dick to him and Commando when they first joined).  He even pals around with Blob, even though he also snarks at him sometimes.  In AOA, Pyro was the only one helping and being protective of Phantazia.  And now in Marauders he refers to them as his “friends,” and is perfectly happy traveling around with people that used to kick his ass, even appearing impressed with them (especially Storm), and being a surprisingly good team player.  I don’t think Pyro would necessarily become a good guy for altruistic purposes, but I think he enjoys having “adventures” and getting attention and hanging out with his team-mates.  I think if Pyro was on an X-Team, and was made to feel welcome, he’d probably be content to fight alongside them and follow the rules (which is basically what he’s doing right now with the Marauders), and maybe some of his team-mates’ virtues would rub off on him a bit.  (There was apparently a version of X-Factor pitched to Marvel years ago that included Pyro on the team, and I’m disappointed that never happened, although I loved the X-Factor that we got.)  And of course, there was also Pyro’s somewhat redemptive death, where he came to regret his past actions with the Brotherhood and wound up sacrificing his life to save Senator Kelly (fat lot of good it did, since Kelly got assassinated shortly after, but hey, he tried!) 

Along with all of that, I am also really intrigued by Pyro’s back story of being a romance author and journalist.  There’s the whole dichotomy of a guy who callously burns people to death and also writes gothic romance novels in his spare time.  And honestly, it sounds like he’s lived a really interesting life before the Brotherhood - traveling all around South East Asia, working as a journalist covering Indonesia and Vietnam (I’d assume he speaks at least a little bit of Indonesian and Vietnamese to be able to live there and cover news).  His motives for joining the Brotherhood have never been established, and I’m dying to know more about how he met Mystique, and why he decided to leave what was apparently a successful career and probably fairly comfortable life to go be an international terrorist.  Was it money?  A promise of adventure?  Did he really believe in Magneto’s cause?  Was he already getting into criminal activity before he joined the Brotherhood?  There’s a lot of potential for development there, but unfortunately most writers (except Claremont) tend to completely ignore all of Pyro’s backstory.  I’m still hoping that Duggan at least makes some reference to it, even just a throwaway comment about how Pyro used to write novels.

TL,DR: I like Pyro because he’s fun and clever, he makes friends with his team-mates, and he’s a writer. 

Toad:

Toad is a really intriguing character, but mostly I like him because he’s actually got a lot of potential, but he’s had a shit life and can never seem to catch a break.  In the earliest issues, he was just Magneto’s abused lackey, and appeared quite sniveling and pathetic, but later on it was revealed that he’s actually quite intelligent (and good with machines), he just appeared “stupid” due to all the abuse he suffered during childhood.  Toad also has a lot of interesting powers - writers seem to give him a new one every other appearance.  His stamina, agility, and super-strong legs could actually make him a pretty good fighter if he got proper training.  Plus he’s got the prehensile tongue, pheromone secretion, acidic saliva, secretion of a paralytic resin, mind control over frogs - his Marvel bio is a long, long list of secondary powers.  Toad could be quite formidable if he actually got his shit together, and there are AU’s (like House of M and Age of Apocalypse) where we see a much more stable, competent, intelligent Toad who is living up to his potential.  But 616 Toad remains a joke,  He’s either a low-level bad guy (they tried to level him up in the 90′s by making him the leader of the Brotherhood, but it didn’t last) or a pathetic sad-sack used for humor, or both.  His attempt to “join” the X-Men led to him being the janitor and basically getting treated like shit (he literally had no bed?) then getting kicked out when he follow Husk to the Hellfire Academy, even though he did that largely out of concern for Husk, and actually helped her and Quentin escape.

Basically, Toad has been subjected to horrible abuse pretty much his entire life, he has a mutation that makes him appear “ugly”, and everyone treats him with, at best, pity, and at worst, hatred and disgust.  I’ll admit, he’s had a few chances to better his life that have fallen through because of his own bad choices (and he’s done some horrible things, especially when he was leading the Brotherhood in the 90′s), but most of the time he’s just getting continuously kicked while he’s down.  To a certain extent, it’s really a matter of comic writers not being willing to take Toad seriously - he’s considered a joke villain, and therefore gets written that way, because he’s there as an accessory in someone else’s story.  At least the Toad/Husk storyline seemed to focus some on Toad himself as a character, even if it ended badly for him.  Sometimes, I kinda think Toad is written as evil or pathetic so that writers can justify other characters being shitty towards him.  Like, Magneto’s early treatment of Toad was absolutely, inexcusably horrible.  Magneto treated everyone in the Brotherhood badly, including his own children, but it seemed like Toad caught the worst of it.  Pietro and Wanda were also disgusted by Toad, although they had good reason, since his affection towards Wanda was pretty creepy.  Later on, Magneto was revamped into more of a noble, morally grey character, and his past abuse of Toad was mostly forgotten.  I don’t think the writers are necessarily doing this on purpose, but it kind feels like Toad remaining a pathetic bad guy was partially a way to excuse Magneto’s poor treatment of him, since Magneto was being reinvented as a more likable character.  And not just Magneto, but just about everyone who finds Toad disgusting or cracks jokes about how gross he is – it’s okay, Toad is awful so it’s totally fine to have the physically attractive good guys mock him and treat him like garbage.  (Hell, the artists can’t even decide what Toad’s physical appearance should be.  Is he skinny?  Fat?  Does he have green skin?  Is his nose ridiculously long or closer to normal?  Who knows what we’ll get in each issue.  And God forbid he be drawn without his tongue lolling out of his mouth.)

Also, I think that a lot of Toad’s worst personality flaws are at least partially due to the abuse he suffered.  To be clear, I’m not justifying the things that Toad has done. He set up death traps for people who wronged him, murdered Sauron’s girlfriend, and stalked and attacked Wanda multiple times.  That’s pretty shitty of him!  But I also think the abuse had a huge effect on Toad and how he interacts with people. Like, his tendency to obsessively latch onto people, and act like a sniveling lackey – the dude has had pretty much no love his entire life, and he’s always been treated like garbage.  Of course he has no self-esteem, of course he’ll fawn over anyone that shows him affection.  He’s been raised to believe that he is garbage.  Even his tendency to gloat over others being punished, and his whole “I’ll tell Magneto, and you’ll get in trouble!” thing is an understandable survival mechanism – other people getting in trouble means that he’s not the target, for once.  Obviously I can’t condone Toad trying to murder people that wronged him, but his anger and resentment is also understandable after the poor treatment he’s suffered.  In fact, I think it’s actually healthier for him to be angry than to think that he deserves it.  And a lot of the shitty things he did as Brotherhood leader also felt like him desperately wanting to be taken seriously, to be respected – also not a bad thing to want, even if his actions were terrible.  Basically, Toad has a lot of personality flaws, and he’s also had a lot of experiences that created or exacerbated those personality flaws.  The guy needs serious, long-term therapy, and I think he could become a better (or at least more competent) person if he got the help that he so obviously needs.

TL, DR: Basically, Toad deserves better.

Avalanche:

I have to admit, a lot of my love for Avalanche is all about his relationship with Pyro, be it friendship or something more.  (It’s something more in my headcanons, I will forever ship them.)  But he’s also a character that we don’t know much about, in part because he tends to talk a lot less than a certain chatty Australian.  He seems, more than anything, to be a practical-minded punch-clock villain, who is mostly in it for the money.  He doesn’t seem to enjoy putting on a show and reveling in his powers like Pyro, and he doesn’t seem to have the same mean streak that can be seen in Blob (and Pyro, to be fair).  I’m sure there are probably instances of Avalanche being dickish and cruel, but in a lot of his appearances that I’ve read, he seems very practical.  Do the job, get paid.  He also seems fairly content to be a follower or a lackey – happy to take orders from Mystique, or even follow Pyro’s lead when Mystique isn’t around.  That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own ideas or opinions, but he doesn’t particularly feel the need to be a leader.  Like Pyro, we also don’t know much about his past before the Brotherhood, except that he was married at some point.  Where’s his wife now?  Why didn’t it work out?  Was it because of him being a mutant, or was it his activities with the Brotherhood that drove them apart?  Does he still love her?  Why did he join the Brotherhood in the first place?  

Avalanche also seems to care somewhat about his team-mates, although he’s not as openly friendly as Pyro.  During Freedom Force’s disastrous last mission, he made the difficult call to abandon Pyro and Blob to save Commando, something that he was clearly broken up about.  And of course, he was willing to go on a mission in the Savage Land with Pyro to get a Legacy Virus cure (that unfortunately didn’t actual exist).  Avalanche is selective about who he cares about, but he still shows that he cares through his actions.  I don’t want to make this all about Pyro, but I really love their relationship.  The stoic, quiet guy/chatty energetic guy dynamic is great.  They just love being bros and committing crimes together, and they are quick to work together and back each other up, even in their earliest appearances.  I would totally read a min-series focusing on the early days of Mystique’s brotherhood, especially if it gave us some good Avalanche, Pyro and Blob development, and didn’t just center around Rogue and Mystique (both fantastic characters, but they’ve both got a lot of attention directed at them already.)

Also, Avalanche likes to garden, which is nice. And at one point he just got fed-up with everything and tried to retire and become a bartender, which is very relatable.  Unfortunately Red Skull murdered him after that.  Sorry, Avalanche.  I hope you are resurrected on Krakoa, living your best life.

Blob:

Another character who is often not taken seriously. Blob is mean-spirited, crass, and often self-interested, much like the rest of the Brotherhood members.  He also was extremely close to Unus, and clearly devastated when Unus’s powers went out of control and killed him.  Blob is one of those characters where I think his physical appearance has led to him being designated as a bad guy by the writers – he’s big and gross, so, just like Toad, he’ll be portrayed as a bad person in order to justify the good guys being terrible to him.  (Yes, I know there are “ugly” good guys, but let’s face it, they are rare.  Most of the good guys look like models.)  Blob also, like Toad, gets a lot of crap for his physical appearance, something that is literally part of his mutation.  I think some of Blob’s nastiness is definitely a defense mechanism, lashing out at others because he is used to being attacked.  It also seems like Blob is really lacking in close friendships, like what Mystique and Destiny or Pyro and Avalanche have (“friendship”).  He was really the odd man out in Mystique’s brotherhood.  He’s willing to pal around with various Brotherhood members, including Avalanche and Pyro when they’re not picking fights with each other, but he doesn’t seem to have a best buddy after Unus’s death.  I kind of admire Blob’s toughness.  It would be easy for him to completely lose his self-esteem, like Toad, but he stands up for himself and never grovels to others.  He is frequently insulted for his mutation, but he also seems comfortable in his own skin, which is good.  He shouldn’t have to feel bad about his own body.    

There was an AU story that showed a softer, more thoughtful Blob who wound up in a relationship with Psylocke, so we know he’s capable of showing a better side of himself.  To some extent, I like Blob’s crass, take-no-shit personatliy, but I’d also like to see writers give him more depth.  I’d especially like to see him reunite with Unus on Krakoa, and the two of them hanging out enjoying each other’s company.  I’m also enjoying the cameos we get of bartender Blob on Krakoa, I hope he is also living his best life.  

Phantazia:

Honestly, I mostly just want to know more about her. All we really know is that she has a PhD (in some kind of scientific field, I think….she is reading a book on astrophysics in one comic), and she was willing to join Toad’s Brotherhood (and she was also the only Brotherhood member that received an invitation from Exodus to Asteroid M). Why?  What was her life before that?  Who knows? Most of the time, she seems rather cold, and a bit distant from her team-mates (but I can’t entirely blame her, the Brotherhood is a rough crowd.  It’s hard to be the new team-mate, and probably especially hard to be the only woman.)  She did seem concerned about Pyro when he was suffering from the Legacy Virus, but she kind of dropped out of sight when the Brotherhood disbanded.   She seems like she was mostly in it for personal gain, especially since Toad’s Brotherhood was more about petty crime than mutant rights.  Apparently she was deeply affected by Wanda’s reality alterations, which took a toll on her mental health, and was last seen in a SHIELD holding cell.  I hope she pops up again on Krakoa.  

Rogue:

The only reason Rogue is so low on the list is that I sometimes forget she was ever a Brotherhood member, and because I like to focus more on lesser known characters.  But I really like Rogue!  She’s tough but sweet, and an incredible badass.  Leaving the Brotherhood for the X-Men meant walking away from her team and foster-mother(s), but she still did it, and became one of the X-Men’s most dependable and valued members.  I love Rogue’s past, her relationship with Mystique, her relationship with Gambit.  I love how she doesn’t take shit, but she also doesn’t go around acting like a jerk, like some of the “tough” characters.  (Wolverine, basically.)  I like the complexity of her struggles with her powers, and her knowing that her strongest abilities, like strength and flight, were basically “stolen” from someone else. I feel like I should say more, but Rogue is very popular and has had loads written about her already.  Rogue is cool, and she deserves the best!  

Mystique:

A truly fascinating character.  She’s also lower on the list because she is fairly well-known and popular, and also because she can absolutely be a manipulative piece of shit, willing to throw everyone except Destiny under the bus.  Yet, at the same time, we see her appear to genuinely care about people, like Rogue, Nightcrawler (after the unfortunate “toss baby off a cliff” incident), Destiny, even Pyro occasionally (she has a nice moment with him on Muir Island, and also calls him “friend” in X-Factor).  She’s a character who can never be entirely trusted, which is a large part of what makes her interesting.  I think she truly does care about a few, select people.  Hell, there’s an early issue in which Mystique fights a bunch of robots programmed to look and act like the X-Men (courtesy of Arcade), and she completely breaks down after having to “kill” the Rogue robot, then hesitates to attack the Nightcrawler bot.  I think Mystique can also be extremely callous, cold and manipulative, but I don’t think she is completely evil, just very self-interested, like a lot of villains. Also, she’s probably seen and experienced a lot of shit over her long life that contributed to that callousness (I figure if I’m gonna cut Toad and Blob some slack, I should do the same for Mystique.)  I do wish she would stop committing rape by deception in stories (meaning sleeping with someone while disguised as someone else).  It’s something that gets glossed over, even though fandom generally despises rapist male villains (and rightfully so), but Mystique pretending to be Blink and sleeping with Mimic is barely a story blip.  

Mystique is also interesting just because she’s such a badass.  She’s cunning, a good leader, a good strategist, excellent spy, good at hand-to-hand combat (she only loses to Arcade’s X-Men robots because she hesitates). She is damn formidable!  She’s also lived a varied and interesting life. There’s a reason she’s gotten so much exposure in comics.  I can also understand her being short-tempered while leading the Brotherhood, as she has to deal with the three stooges of Pyro, Avalanche and Blob.  Then things get even more complicated during the Freedom Force days.  Mystique has a lot of shit to deal with keeping those idiots in line.  Her relationship with Destiny is probably my favorite thing about Mystique, they are beautiful wives, and I hope she gets Destiny resurrected so the two of them can live happily together on Krakoa.  (Unlikely.)  

Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch:

I don’t have much to say about these two, even though I like them. I’m starting to run out of steam in terms of character analysis, and I tend to think of them more as Avengers than Brotherhood members.  They both deserve better.  Also, they are mutants and Magneto is their dad. Retcon?  What retcon?

Destiny:

I don’t have much to say about Destiny because she is very mysterious – always working according to some plan that only she knows. So it’s hard to really know her as a character.  She seems like a very intelligent and calm woman.  She’s always chilling while the Brotherhood guys are freaking out or picking fights with each other.  She also faced her own death bravely and willingly.  She seems to have a good sense of humor.  One of my favorite stories is Mystique disposing of Destiny’s ashes after her death.  She is throwing them off a boat at a specific time and place, according to Destiny’s instructions – and the wind blows them back into her face.  Obviously Destiny planned it as a last prank, and I have to like a character who sets that up.  Also, one time she let a rock wall collapse on Avalanche and Spiral because she knew they wouldn’t be seriously hurt, and she hated Spiral and wanted to enjoy her humiliation.  That’s some impressive pettiness.  Destiny is cool, and I hope she comes back.

Sauron:

I don’t really care about him at all.  

Mastermind:

Seems like a real creep, especially with his manipulation of Jean Grey/Phoenix in the Dark Phoenix saga.  At least he apologized to her at his death.  Also, he’s got three daughters, the dude gets around. Regan, Martinique, and Pixie (WTF?! I just read that in his bio.)  I am really confused by there being two Mastermind daughters with the same powers, but apparently it was actually a mix-up between two writers.  Oops!  

That’s all.  I know there have been later Brotherhood iterations with other members, including one or both Lady Masterminds, but that was during a time when I wasn’t reading much X-Men, so I’m not familiar with most of those characters. I might have more to say if I eventually read some of the later Brotherhood stories.  

Emma Frost

Part 2 of my take on Emma x Scott vs Jean x Scott.

Part 1: Jean Grey

Before we begin, let’s make something clear: I don’t hate Scott/Jean, as we don’t hate any ship here (canon or non canon). In fact, I very much like this couple in their best stories. But for now, I like Scott and Emma a little better. If you disagree, it’s cool, we don’t have to change each other’s mind, but I would enjoy your take on my thoughts.

Who is Emma Grace Frost?

It’s always easy to come up with words to describe Emma Frost, and said words are not always nice. But the most appealing quality about Emma is that no matter what you say about her, she will be flattered.

Her strength is not meaningless, it’s in knowing who she is, who she was, and who she can be depending on a situation. Emma can be equally sensitive and distant, which is reflected in her powers. Her telepathy is the ultimate form of empathy, it’s all about her that’s X-men, while her diamond form is everything White Queen.

That’s how I see her as a character. She has an inner contradiction that’s projected into every aspect of her history.

Emma’s story

Emma makes the journey from a serious conniving villain to a hero, and I wouldn’t say unlikely, because she’s always had those qualities in her, even though we don’t get to fully sympathize with her until her own Origins run. Her backstory provides you with necessary understanding of how exactly she turned out the way she did. In a way she gets to be the opposite of Jean or even Xavier: discovering a similar power, but ultimately ending up on the outside of the mutant-human war.

In every fictional group you have one character, who is misguided, and out of all given paths would pick the one that would allow for maximum mayhem in the process. Emma is that character, or rather was that character when she used her intellect and resources against the X-men.

She was truly one of the best villains, on the same level as Mystique, and Magneto. You see where I’m going with that? None of them are actually evil, but they are quite open about stalking their personal goals or idealistic fixations.

Emotions are a big part of Emma’s character development. To me one of her defining features is her care for Hellions. Sure, there are a few ways of looking at it, especially when you remember her tendency to constantly brainwash some of her students. But her fear for them and own style of care, they build up on her “evil” persona to create something more humane.

Emma in the X-men

With the X-men her character potential just exploded. She brought a lot to the team, and managed to become essential and not just another telepath or a Jean replacement. Needless to say, her own encounters with Jean Grey were phenomenal. You can say what you want, but the actual cheating scandal which jumpstarted her relationship with Scott was a brilliant story and a necessary shake up.

Emma and Scott

When I think about them as a couple, it’s always imperfect. They started off as an imperfection, their beginning was ugly, and messy. They were interesting right off the bat. You never fully knew how much disclosure there was between them. It seems like they knew each other through and through. And unlike with Jean and Scott, where their child personas got forever merged with their impression of each other, Emma and Scott knew one another at their worst, which brought them to their best (and eventually, worst again).

Emma allowed herself to feel and to let him in. Imagine the level of closeness that you can get, gaining trust of the most distant person possible. This is a great place to remind you that her diamond form doesn’t feel. That’s why we always see her switching when she’s in pain. And that’s one of the most beautiful things that some writers get to use. She has the power to escape pain.

Scott’s history with Jean always had him kind of in the backseat, with Jean in the passenger seat and Phoenix driving. His personality was pretty much bland: do the right thing, and beyond that, try to stay relevant. He was heavily connected to Jean, which is kind of like character equivalent of codependence.

With Emma, and her strong personality, he managed to develop his own. Main thing I remember now from their time together is her being supportive. They were leading together, and they somehow were in sync. Regardless of them being an unlikely couple with different personalities. They still made it work. She was the mind behind his leadership, but she also knew him better than he knew himself. Eventually, he learned to doubt. And this may be my personal take here, but he always seemed like Xavier’s soldier, but with Emma he grew to actually become a leader.

That didn’t work well for him, and he’s made mistakes, but those were his mistakes. She, in the meantime, made her own set, but the love was still there.

On her part it never really disappeared, and you can imagine how. It must be near impossible to let go for people like her. In fact, latest Uncanny run showed us just that.

On Scott’s side there was resentment. And I truly don’t know what kind of a writer do you have to be to pull off bringing them together and undoing his final break up speech to Emma. A brilliant one, obviously.

Anything, however, seems better than throwing Scott back into familiar pattern. Maybe he needs time alone, he’s got a million and one things to work through. But if he did get that time, what would be the chances of him coming back to Emma?

In my book, pretty high.

Thoughts on Powers of X #2

We’re working on a deadline here, so let’s get to it!

Once Again, We Return...to Octopusheim (X^0):

In this section, Charles and Moira go to Octopusheim to share what they’ve learned with Magneto in order to gain his support for their whole mutant unity masterplan. 

Thanks to the timeline infographic from last issue, we know exactly when this particular meeting at Octopusheim is happening - it’s Year 43, four years before the “Moira/Xavier/Magneto schism,” six years before the Genoshan genocide, and nine years before the present day. This timing is quite interesting, because it suggests a high degree of patience on their part. After all, it’s been twenty six years since Moira first introduced herself(herselves?) to Charles, which is a lot of time to not make moves. On the other hand, having a head start didn’t help in earlier lives, so there may be some other rationale. 

There’s a really interesting echoing of Giant-Sized X-Men #1, with Xavier explicitly in the role of recruiter once again (we’ll see other pitches of his throughout the rest of HoX/PoX). The difference is that rather than relying on his normal posture of benevolent, almost wizardly, superior knowledge, Charles is using an admission of mutual fault to put them on an even level, which is necessary to gain Magneto’s trust for the psychic link to Moira. 

Incidentally, when it comes to character voice, Hickman does an impressive job of nailing not just Magneto but the specific era of Magneto when Chris Claremont re-invented him as the Miltonian anti-villain holding the world to ransom in the name of enlightened despotism and mutant self-protection. “Who determines waht is truly good and truly evil?...I do. I decide.” is particularly well-observed, right down to his ironically Nietzschean self-conception. 

At the same time, Moira’s query is clearly meant to shift the terms of discussion from the scientific (”you’re a specialist, specializing in the behavior of mutants”) to the religious. As her warning that “my truth is profound and life changing. It’s primal...” suggests, Moira is testifying in the Protestant sense of the word. 

What follows is a series of psychic images of failure that bring the Satanically-proud Magneto to his knees, but remain really ambiguous: his death by Sentinel could be from pretty much any life other than 9, although 4 or 5 seem most likely;  given his costume, the image of him in chains seems to be from the Trial of Magneto, which could be in Life 4 or 10; the central image of him with furious glowing eyes could be generic or perhaps a reference to the couple times he’s used artifical power-boosters; the image of him in a SHIELD tank being observed by Nick Fury is unclear; and him fighting the Shadow King is particularly singular, since the Shadow King has yet to show up in the narrative. Interestingly, we don’t see Moira showing him his death at Apocalypse’s hands in Life 9. 

For his own part, Xavier is preaching a much more secular argument: mutant unity in order to not merely survive but thrive, which is very Adam Smithian. I’m not the expert that Nir Revel is when it comes to drawing parallels between Israeli history and HoX/PoX, but even with the one course I’ve taken in Israeli history, I could see the parallel between the bargain that Magneto strikes with Xavier (”I won’t acquiesce to sympathy or doubt...I won’t give an inch, I will check you at every moment of weakness”) reads a lot like the compromises made at the founding of the State of Israel between the leaders of the various political parties.

Then again, I think the allegory works for political leaders at the time of the founding of any number of nation-states, which is one of the things that makes the business of nation-building so very difficult. At every step, there are innumerable obstacles of the moment, yet the decisions made on how to overcome them will always have unforeseeable long-term consequences. Something to keep one’s eye on for the future.

Does It Need Doing? (X^1):

In a direct follow-up from Powers of X #1 and House of X #1, Cyclops gets briefed on the Mother Mold/Nimrod mission. Incidentally, I think this segment is a great counter-example to the somewhat overblown statements from some in the fandom that all of these characters are mindless pod-people who are acting out of character; throughout this briefing, Scott is consistently snarky in a very dry way that feels very in character to me.

Magneto’s pointed reference to Operation Paperclip with regards to Orchis I think further emphasizes an ongoing theme that Hickman’s working on with regards to nation-states, nation-building, and nationalism: no nation is free from sin. Even after fighting “the good war” against fascism, the U.S recruited Nazi scientists to give it a technological edge in the Cold War for the same stated reasons of necessity that drive both Krakoan and Orchis policy.

Following on from House of X #2, not only are humans a mere road-bump compared to Sentinels, but even Mother Mold itself is viewed as a secondary problem compared to the hostile AI singularity that is Nimrod. 

And further showing how everything links to everything, this mission happens because of the information that Moira brought back from Life 9/X^2. More on this in a bit.

Machines Are Pure Information (X^2):

Speaking of which, we shift to another briefing on Krakoa, one life and a hundred years distant, in which Rasputin and Cardinal brief Apocalypse about the fruits of their own partially-successful clandestine mission.

While Apocalypse is very Apocalypsy in this segment, what with the idea that civilization is the fruit of war and that he’d happily sacrifice Rasputin and Cardinal both for the information he’s received, it is really interesting to see him talk about the powers and perils of information and the dangers of analysis paralysis; this last topic is particularly important as the series continues to explore the nature of these vast, universe-spanning consciousnesses. More on this in a bit.

Speaking of which, we see Nimrod the Lesser getting really distracted by trying to figure out what the mutants were up to, something that will arguably be his downfall. Incidentally, Nimrod’s casual execution of two humans for mouthing off to him not only suggests the lie at the heart of the Man-Machine Supremacy, but also that whatever kind of A.I he might be, he absolutely did not pass the “Heller-Faust line,” because he’s clearly a sociopath who lashes out violently due to emotional impulse. 

 Going back to Asteroid K, we go back to a discussion of how the machines’ problem is that they “archive every moment of everything,” which makes it impossible for them or anyone else to actually make use of the data. If we apply the same problem to the Phalanx and the other universe-spanning consciousnesses, which for all their vaunted intelligences seem to restrict themselves to consumption of resources and calculation of data without any higher purpose, I’m left wondering whether these singularities are actually idiot gods capering at the heart of the universe.

By contrast, the mutant resistance find their purpose in transcending the bare necessities of survival in the name of transcendant meaning. 

Nimbus Infographic:

This infographic, read together with the one that ends the issue, is where we really start to see what X^3 is about, namely Hickman’s thinking on technological/mechanical transhumanism.

To begin with, we learn that the people I’ve been referring to as blutants describe themselves as “post-human,” which suggests that the “human-machine-mutant war” ultimately ended in some sort of synthesis between mutant and machine. Not only do the post-humans have “seer-selves,” but we see that Nimbus started as the “copying - and integration - of their minds into a single thinking machine.”

Moving on, it’s interesting to note that the language of X^3 is entirely focused on terms of assimilation between cultures - will it take place as a consensual “suitor-alliance” or forceful consumption of the lesser by the greater? Is there a difference, when we’re talking about the “ascension” of copied minds?

It’s not a good sign that Nimbus’ interaction with Niburu is all about using “force...to inject” a planet with consciousness, or that the Worldmind decides to take a detour to “consume multiple Saturinian and Jovian moons ino order to increase its...intellect.” Over and over again, intellect and consumption go hand in hand, but we never see intellect actually getting used for anything meaningful (transcendant or otherwise).

Universal Predators (X^3):

Speaking of which, we see in the next section that the whole project of the post-human Outreach project is to negotiate the terms of ascension so that their culture is “preserved” rather than “mined,” in a context in which civilizations interact seemingly only in terms of predator and prey.

It’s particularly ominous that the Phalanx’s opening words are that they “ate your worldmind,” in a process that involves a lost struggle for “sovereignty” - a term that should ring particularly ominously given Krakoa’s struggle to be recognized as a sovereign nation-state.

That the post-humans’ goal is ascension is likewise troubling, because of how closely it tracks the self-abnegating human religion of X^2 (which we’ll see in the next issue) and suggests that the post-humans have abandoned the biological transhumanism of the X^2 mutant resistance.

Types of Societies Infographic:

This infographic reads very differently in the wake of Powers of X #5, suggesting a trans-universe taxonomy of intelligences, with each rung on the ladder thinking it’s the biggest and baddest out there, only to become fodder for the next higher up.

As people have noted, Xavier’s backup of mutant minds through Cerebro potentially puts Krakoa on the ladder, since they’re potentially far above the SI:1 (Machine) level if they ever combine the backups.

At the same time, we’ll see in future issues a number of biomachines - the eight-person long-distance communications system we see in Powers of X , the Five-person (or six-person, given the integral role that Xavier/Cerebro plays) resurrection system, the six-person Krakoan systems (Interface, Transit/Monitoring, Defense/Observation, Secondary/External, Overwatch/Data Analysis), and possibly the five-part Cerebro system - that would seem to be a parallel to the SI:10 (HIve) level of machine consciousness.

Similarly, Cerebro’s database of mutant minds (or the population of Krakoa) could potentially go straight up the chain from Intelligence (SI:100-10,000) to Phalanx (SI:1,000,000)...if the database was turned into a consciousness of its own following the uncommon Kree model, although that would seem to run counter to Krakoan taboos.

Speaking of my skepticism about the intellect of these machine consciousnesses, the deception at the heart of the Technarch (SI:10,000) and Phalanx relationship suggests that, on a universe-wide scale, the Technarchs seem to be rather mindless drones whose only purpose is providing resources to their masters.

One thing that’s slightly odd about Hickman’s description of the Worldmind (SI:100,000) is that, based on its descriptions here, it really should be a Type I Kardashev civilization rather than a Type II, since the line between I and II is planetary vs. solar system-wide energy usage/control.

A final note on the ambiguity of the suitor-alliance vs. consumption relationship - while the post-humans view Ascension as an alternative, this infographic describes Ascension as “consuming” for the purpose of “adding to its intelligence needs.” Either way, you’re just food for thought.

Xavier against Magneto

interview for GQ México, May 2019

link to the source below =>

In an interview, the actors James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender tell us about their participation in Dark Phoenix and their history behind the X-Men saga. James McAvoy has it clear, he is jealous of Michael Fassbender and the rest of the cast in the x-men saga. The reason is simple: he would have liked for Professor Xavier to have a suit too. One very showy, a superhero one, and yes, he is a little bit jealous. "Yes, a little, the truth is I would have liked to wear an attractive superhero costume, even so, I have the look of an action man with a turtleneck, which I like" says Professor X and his reflection comes after a decade to be in the skin of the mutant leader and when many point out that the mutant path has come to an end. Sometimes, memory fails and more with superheroes movies, because the first thing that comes to mind is the marvel cinematographic universe, the MCU monopolized our attention the recent 10 years, however, if we analyze it carefully, those who marked the pattern for the action genre of the 21st century was the mutants and they got it through the first X-Men (2000) by Bryan Singer. Dark Phoenix is the twelfth feature film of the franchise and the fourth installment of a series that continues to explore the origin of its characters. And also it would seem that it wants to play with our heads, what is known as a deja vu, why? Everything points out that the film is closing the circle of its era with 20th century fox before Disney takes control of the rights of the franchise and will do so adopting one of the most complex storylines among its fans, the dark phoenix created by Chris Claremont and John Byrne in 1980. Some years ago, the franchise of x-men first class (2011) managed to renew the popularity of the series thanks to the exploration of the origin of the enmity between Professor Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr aka Magneto, generating more than satisfied viewers and with the expectation of seeing more thanks to the work of two actors who are not only the pillars of this story, but in recent years emerged as icons of Hollywood and world cinematography, and what better to chat with them about what it holds for this movie (and what the future may leave) A FAMILY MORE THAN MUTANT. If something they have in common the trajectories of McAvoy and Fassbender is that their natural histrionic talent has allowed them to diversify and not fall into an interpretation stereotype, from one film to another we see them in very different characters, disparate, for example: Michael looked futuristic and chaotic as David in Prometheus, while James showed off his talent in Split and Glass playing Kevin and his multiple personalities. But x-men has something special for them, something that motivates them to come back and repeat "I think it's a combination of several factors" says McAvoy "We all enjoy playing these characters as I do, I love this company of actors, here there's a true family that goes back 10 years ago and for which you feel a lot of loyalty and affection " In that sense, Michael agrees with that idea and delves into what it's like to be a fundamental member of this family. "I love the journey that has led to Dark Phoenix and I specifically wanted to return, because Simon Kinberg would direct, I wanted to do everything I could to make things turn out well, he is a fantastic collaborator and seeing him in the director's chair made me very emotional" says Michael, highlighting the fraternity that has been formed within the production crew, although it's not the only reason that motivates them. The depth of their characters, as they have evolved throughout the movies, in addition to the political and social settings where they are developed are also excellent pretexts. The mutant phenomenon within x-men brings to the table racial issues, class, social inequality, prejudice and the reasoning of these issues, through their characters is, in essence, the pillar of the franchise. Magento seeks to locate his race above the pyramid and Xavier appeals for equality with humans, but how do they develop in this new delivery? What evolution we will see from Magneto and Xavier? Michael answers enthusiastically "Finally he has become the leader of Cuba that has always lived inside him! (Laughs) He has formed Genosha, his own community: an independent state/nation where the mutants live in harmony, without being attacked and in where anyone who agrees to help can be incorporated, is a self-sufficient community, not locatable and that was the struggle of Erik during the franchise " For his part, McAvoy makes it clear that the professor also presumes a profound transformation "Charles may be the leader of a social movement, but now he is the leader of a political movement, I think that's what he looks like now. which justifies by saying that he is loyal to his principles, although it seems to me that he has forgotten that those principles only exist to protect his family and his species, Charles somehow has forgotten that" says James, almost in love with his character. It's true, Dark Phoenix's argument is one of the most popular and puts one of his allies Jean Grey in direct confrontation with them, a situation that drives the characters to join forces, rethink their current situation and evolve. "What I find most interesting about Charles is that he is not selfish and he is not very vain, he is very wise and his empathy is what drives him and his detachment and almost sacerdotal nature are what defines him. somehow that disappeared in the two previous films and returns in this one. It was something that I liked, I really enjoy exploring that notion of fallibility" James finishes. REVENGE TIME. In Latin America, Simon Kinberg's name may not be as popular, but he is a select member of the mutant family, he has written and produced previous installments of the franchise, such as Apocalypse, Days of Future Past and he also wrote The Last Stand. Now his revenge has arrived. On this occasion, Kinberg debuted as a director and his place in that chair was something natural for Fassbender who knows and appreciates him. "Kinberg was very relaxed, very confident, he seemed to be doing this for years, he is also a very intelligent man, he is the kind of person who doesn't speak unless he knows about the subject, he observes, he listens. That makes a great director" Says Michael. While James, in turn, points to the particular style that the director printed on his debut. "The interesting thing was his instinct to make the film something more subtle, based on the performance, we're still going to have a show, but that was his way of doing it, going down to make it look more real. of the emotional drama "says McAvoy. Added to the cast is the consecrated Jessica Chastain (Zero Gravity, The Help) and her participation, although she is not the star, is key in Phoenix's journey to this dark stage. She is one of the reasons for her unbalance, to keep her out of control. Although her skills in front of the camera were that this duo almost completely missed. "It was great that she joined," emphasizes Fassbender. "But we didn't have many scenes together, just a few moments in the final scene, she is present with Jean, so it was mainly through acting patterns that I interacted with her character" James is not left behind the anecdote. "I think we only have one scene together ... unfortunately! In fact, I have a couple of scenes with her character, but she was not there, sometimes, it was just a special effect, one of the reasons she says that she took the job was because she expected to meet and act with me, but barely and we crossed paths! " RISE OF THE PHOENIX. When Sophie accepted the role of Jean Grey, surely she knew that in her hands she had a vital character for this cinematographic stage who, incidentally, is considered by experts as the most powerful female figure in the Marvel universe. In Apocalypse, Phoenix only had a few flashes of its potential, although it made it clear that in this movie it would have greater strength. Fassbender, from the beginning of his participation, was more interested in the weight of the different female characters but clarifies that the conjuncture we saw today did not influence for this to happen. In fact, that was the original idea almost 10 years ago. "I think the seeds of female roles were present, Simon had some unfinished issues after The Last Stand, he wrote the script! So that was already there, and at the moment this happens, it seems to be in sync with what happens in the real world, but Simon has always thought this way, equality in everything, both for female characters, as for male ones ", he concludes. With the premiere getting close, the fate of Jean Gray along with Professor Xavier, Magneto and the rest of the X-Men will be solved, and Dark Phoenix will unveil us if it represents the end of this cinematographic universe that infected of emotion the audience, it also had inconsistencies and errors. In this last letter, we will see until the final credits. For now, neither Fassbender nor McAvoy knows what the future holds for what they consider as one of their most endearing characters. "As far as the X-Men are concerned, I've always said: If this is the last one, it's been great, we have new owners of the franchise and who knows what they're going to do? But if this is the last one narratively, it feels like a good ending " James concludes. goodbye mutants?

By NST Entertainment - May 24, 2019 @ 10:15am

IT’S been a long ride, 11 movies on, in the X-Men film franchise since the first one hit cinemas back in 2000. But the conflict between humans and mutants continues to grow and the thrilling adventures and dramatic stories endure.

The 12th and latest instalment, titled X-Men: Dark Phoenix, marks the directorial debut of writer and producer Simon Kinberg, who is no stranger to the X-Men screen universe.

A writer for The Last Stand (2006), Days Of Future Past (2014) and Apocalypse (2016), he produced First Class (2011), Deadpool 1 & 2 (2016 & 2018) and Logan (2017) as well.

Kinberg was also executive producer for the TV series The Gifted and Legion, both of which are part of the X-Men film franchise.

In his capable hands and through his astounding vision, the new movie sees the X-Men facing one of their gravest and most personal challenges to date.

Dark Phoenix is set in the 1990s and the team attempts to embrace a newfound heroic status and acceptance within society.

But their close bond is slowly shattered when the extremely powerful mutant with telepathic and telekinetic powers, Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner of Game Of Thrones fame) merges with a strange, extraterrestrial force, one that boosts her already strong abilities to previously unknown levels.

Years of repression are torn asunder as Jean begins to find herself and master her new powers, even as those around her start to wonder if she’ll be a threat to the world.

It doesn’t help that a mysterious alien with an agenda (Jessica Chastain) is exerting an influence on the already unstable persona of the powerful mutant.

The ensemble cast sees many actors and actresses returning to their previous roles for this movie, including Michael Fassbender, who plays the charismatic mutant Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto.

Fassbender has been playing the troubled, driven mutant, who can control magnetic fields and manipulate metal, since First Class.

In that time, he’s seen the character develop as a leader in his own right, and struggle with the treatment of mutants by society in general.

Fassbender, nominated for two Oscars in his career to date, has appeared in films such as Macbeth, 12 Years A Slave and the more recent Alien entries.

Below, he talks about the character-based focus of the film, Erik’s development through the years and the comfort level between the actors on set.

WHAT BROUGHT YOU BACK TO THE FILM SERIES?

I loved the journey up to Dark Phoenix and specifically wanted to come back because Simon was directing.

I wanted to lend whatever I could bring to the table for him. He was such a fantastic collaborator and engineer of First Class, Days of Future Past and Apocalypse and to see him get in the director’s chair, I was really excited for him.

THIS IS SIMON’S DIRECTORIAL DEBUT. HOW WAS HE AS A DIRECTOR?

He was very relaxed and very confident. It seemed like he’d been doing it for years. He’s been on so many massive films and been an integral part in so many of them.

He’s also a very smart man, he’s the kind of guy that doesn’t speak unless he’s educated on something or has knowledge on it.

He observes, he listens — all the ingredients to make a great director. I think he bided his time and felt like he was ready to have a go at it.

WHERE DO WE FIND ERIK IN THE NEW MOVIE?

He’s finally become the cult leader that was always alive in him! (laughs) He’s formed Genosha, so he’s managed to create this community, independent state/nation where mutants can live in harmony and without attack. Anyone who agrees to pitch in and do their part are welcome there.

It’s self-sufficient, it’s off the grid, and it’s his struggles through the series, certainly when I was playing it, culminating in this physical place.

Since his family has been ripped away from him, from what happened to him as a child and then, of course, with his wife and child later, well, that sense of death is always with him.

But this is a mature Erik. He’s more at peace and he only leaves this haven out of loyalty. It’s like an old Western. He’s got to go on his mission.

THIS FEELS LIKE SIMON DRIVING IT TO BE MORE CHARACTER-BASED. WAS THAT YOUR FEELING?

I think he wanted to strip everything down, boil it down to the bones… even visually, the way he shot it, a lot of it is handheld, and I’m not wearing any Magneto costumes.

The helmet is there but everything is pared down to be a character exploration.

DID THE OTHERS LOOK ENVIOUSLY AT YOU IN YOUR TURTLENECK AND JEANS?

I don’t know. I certainly was very thankful that it was an easy in and out for me, especially if you look at what Nicholas (Hoult) goes through each day as Beast!

Compared to him, I definitely got an easier route.

THERE’S A LINE IN THE FILM ABOUT THERE ALWAYS BEING A SPEECH FROM XAVIER. DID IT FEEL LIKE SIMON PLAYING WITH THE TROPES OF THE GENRE?

Exactly. We’ve all heard the ideology, whether they’re playing chess together or Charles is talking to him telepathically. There’s this back and forth.

It was a nice little tongue-in-cheek moment in the script, which is kind of like the Indiana Jones moment where he just pulls the pistol and shoots a guy instead of getting into hand-to-hand combat. That was fun!

JESSICA JOINED THE CAST THIS TIME. DID YOU GET TO ACT WITH HER ALL?

It was great to have her join us. We didn’t really have a lot of scenes together, just a few moments together in the final act of the movie.

She’s present with Jean, and so it mainly was acting beats that I had any interaction with her character.

It’s a very technical aspect to it. You’ve got to make sure that the timings are right and knowing that a lot of things are going to be added in later. It’s making sure those rhythms are correct. More than anything else, it’s a very technical exercise.

IS IT SOMETHING THAT YOU’RE USED TO THESE DAYS?

Absolutely. When I started doing effects movies, you had to imagine what they were going to put in later. There was some storyboarding stuff but now they’ve got pre-visualisation stuff that they show you on a laptop, to see what it’s going to look like and the geographical elements.

Of course, you know it’s going to be a lot more fantastical when the team has spent some time on it. I enjoy the technical challenges. It’s another thing that needs to be learned, and it’s something that is fun to explore.

It’s not only being in time with the actors. It’s also being in time with the stunt team, if you’re on wires it’s the riggers… everybody is communicating in the same rhythm. It’s like a dance and I enjoy that.

HOW IS THE FEELING ON SET?

At the beginning, you’re really trying to bond with everyone. You’re getting to know each other and those sorts of silly games, I know they can be a little annoying if people are trying to gather order on set but they’re also very important for the actors to get to a personal level with one another, to be comfortable with one another, and to have that camaraderie.

We trust each other. We depend on each other and we all like each other. So it’s just the maturation of that relationship.

ARE YOU EVER TEMPTED TO SEPARATE YOURSELF, TO GO METHOD WITH MAGNETO’S FEELING OF ISOLATION?

It depends what my mood is on the day. There are times where I’ll just go away and find a corner where I can just be by myself if I need to be in more of a meditative state.

We’re all at ease with one another. We all know each other very well and it’s whatever each of us needs to do.

There’s always a respect there about whatever the other person’s process is and if anyone is ever struggling on camera, or in a moment, we’re all there for each other 100 per cent and we want everyone to be the best on these sets.

WHAT IS THE OVERRIDING THEME OF THE MOVIE THIS TIME?

I think the seed of talking about female characters and power was there from the beginning. Simon had unfinished business after The Last Stand, and you could tell from Apocalypse that he was putting this story in place, setting it up.

So, the germ of that was there and the timing, as it happens at the moment just seems to be in sync with what’s going on in the real world.

But Simon’s always been of that mindset, the equality across the board for both the female and male characters.

WERE YOU GLAD NOT TO BE THE THREAT THIS TIME?

I was a little bit jealous, to be honest. “What? Somebody else is causing trouble?” Apocalypse already stole that from me in the movie before so I was getting used to it!

DO YOU SEE YOU THIS AS A POTENTIAL SWAN SONG FOR THE CURRENT TEAM? WOULD YOU COME BACK AGAIN IF ASKED?

I have no idea! It’s not my issue to deal with, I’ll leave it in the hands of people who’ve got it. I’m not spending much time thinking about it, I’ve had a great journey on these four films, I’m happy.

If something comes up that looks interesting, I’m always willing to read and take a look but I’m perfectly happy.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix opens in cinemas on June 6.

I finally saw Dark Phoenix! Basically I didn’t like it. It met expectations, but my expectations were quite low, so that’s why. I’m sure I’ll rent it someday, but no way is it what I want from an X-men movie. It’s so depressing. How it out-depressed Last Stand, I don’t even know. Also Idk how there was praise for it in the Nightcrawler tag, I swear y’all watched a different movie than me.

spoilers i guess

And that’s sad because actually, up until Mystique died, I was enjoying the story more than I thought I would. The space scene was quite fun. Quicksilver and Nightcrawler’s tag team rescue was cool. The “Who needs phasers when you’ve got Cyclops?” bit was fun too. That scene felt really X-men-like except that Mystique was there of course.

Then they got back and there were accolades, and Xavier was doing something Shifty. That was all good. The party scene. Dazzler. I liked all that. Jean discovering the truth about her family, her emotional reunion with her father, her feelings of betrayal... Then Mystique died, and that’s when I knew there was going to be no more fun. The scene between Beast and Xavier in the kitchen was really well done, I thought, and I loved loved loved Sophie Turner’s Jean. She was a far cry from Apocalypse!Jean. A much more developed, believable character. Sophie Turner did a way better job acting that role than that movie deserves. Once they involved Magneto everything went to hell (not specifically Magneto’s fault, just that’s when the movie stopped being enjoyable for me).

But even if the movie had just been bad, all I really need to be happy is a few good Nightcrawler moments. Apocalypse isn’t a great movie, but it has a few fun Kurt things, so I do rewatch it from time to time. In DP, he had barely any lines. I started counting them at one point. His total number of individual words is probably under 20 in the whole movie. And he doesn’t seem to have grown or changed at all since Apocalypse, even though apparently years have passed. Imagine being that actor and going through all that make-up over and over just to stand around.

People were praising the scene where he goes berserk and kills a bunch of aliens. In reality, he killed like four. And his rage was sparked when... a random soldier dies? Not that that’s not sad but... kind of an extreme reaction. The tail-of-doom thing was stupid.

I did like him attacking Vuk, short-lived as it was. And yeah, he was great in the space rescue early on, even if he didn’t get any more thank yous than he did in Apocalypse, where he was also totally MVP. And the bit where Selene and Xavier fight for control of Kurt’s mind and keep him teleporting back and forth for what ends up being a ridiculously long scene was funny as hell for me, except that it amounted to nothing (”are you ok?” “no” “great now get me inside”). Chauffeur!Kurt was back in business this movie.

Kurt’s my fav, so his lack of quality use bugs me the most, but I can’t forget about Storm, who was underused in spite of having so many reasons to shine. First of all, that actress seems great. I already liked her in Apocalypse and her scenes in DP with Cyclops, the one where she argues with him and the one where she sides with him, both really screamed “Storm!” to me. But that’s it. That and some lightning is all she gets to do. Why couldn’t she have been Jean’s best friend? Why couldn’t she have shown more of her own leader potential? Gah. Wasted opportunity.

Cyclops was less boring than in Last Stand, given that he dies really early on in that one. But that’s all I can say about him. Why they bothered trying to convince us he’s this rebel-type in Apocalypse is beyond me. He’s just Scott in this one. A whiter white boy never existed.

And midway through the movie I COMPLETELY FORGOT QUICKSILVER WAS EVER THERE. Like he got injured and then just vanished. And I forgot he’d even been there at all. That’s how interested I was guys. I forgot about a whole character. One of the fun ones, no less.

Mystique’s death was dumb but I was glad she was gone for the rest of the movie. It’s the little things.

Beast and Magneto’s motivations sucked.

Xavier’s morally grayness was cool and canon stuff. It was good to see him called out. I was so pissed in Apocalypse when he’d mind-wiped Moira and there seemed to be no consequences for it, just because “oh he meant well.” I liked him a lot in this. It was really the Jean and Xavier Show though, which left the rest of the cast to be set dressing. Kind of annoying. The last scene with Xavier and Magneto was nice.

Can definitely see why there were issues with this movie and Captain Marvel, lol. At one point I said, “This movie is like depressing Captain Marvel.”

The aliens were sooo unrelatable. Like get with the program. No one wants evil aliens who want to destroy the world anymore. They murder people and torture them for their knowledge, and though their numbers are few thanks to the Phoenix Force, even that doesn’t make me sympathetic because they just act like bastards and use everyone and have no relatable moments.

The final battle scene was So. Long. I can handle in with MCU movies because they throw quips around and stuff, plus the rest of the movie has earned the final battle. None of that here, just punching and explosions.

This is just such a sad way for the X-men movies to go out. Can only hope that when they reboot, whenever that will be, however many years out, that they’ll finally get it right. Such a shame, because I really did like this team - at last it felt like a real X-team, and I totally could have gotten behind movies that actually developed the cast. Instead it was like Apocalypse was their birth and DP was their finale, and everything in between is just a mystery. OH WELL.

'Dark Phoenix' Is the End of an 'X-Men' Era

Vanity Fair: “In the final days before it’s absorbed by Disney and potentially folded into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the X-Men film franchise will take one more stand with Dark Phoenix”

CBR: “Disney previously signaled its intention to release every Fox film completed or in production by the time the acquisition is finalized. However, the entertainment conglomerate is expected to scale back production on pricier projects and those that don’t fit into the company’s family- and franchise-friendly formula.”

Forbes: “Dark Phoenix may be a kind of series finale to the 18.5-year old X-Men franchise prior to the Disney deal which would bring those characters under the umbrella of Kevin Feige’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.”

TheMarySue: “The trailer for Dark Phoenix came out this week. It is the last installment in the 20th Century Fox X-Men universe before Disney/Marvel eventually relaunches the franchise.

It’s hard to believe that the X-Men universe we know today is as old as a senior in high school right now, but the 18-year-old series has been mostly a failure with one of the biggest failures being the 2006 film X-Men: The Last Stand. Looking at the trailer for this upcoming film, it seems like a lot of the same.”

“what they're actually saying here is that Fox want to really fuck the Xmen franchise over properly before Marvel Studios gets it...”

Those are just a few. if you want more, search it yourself.

That said, in 2020 or so, the X-Men will finally be in the MCU timeline. Therefore, everything is going to be entirely rebooted and starting from scratch. A new fresh era of the X-Men will begin from this point forward. I’m talking about where we can see the O5 as the core members and suddenly becoming a story for the Krakoa event. Here is where we get to see how the X-Men first gathered and became the X-Men we forever (knew) know today. Just saying since Marvel usually wants to make the comics more like the movies. Perhaps the Krakoa story line can be a fresh start? If Marvel’s going to introduce the X-Franchise as a fresh start it will has to begin with the Krakoa event because it can be offered up in the memory of Len Wein who passed away not too long ago and Dave Cockrum who were the reason for the X-Men we know today. 

Maybe we get to see Havok, Polaris, Banshee, Warpath, Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler and Sunfire in this new era for the Krakoa event. Bold characters are the characters that FOX hasn’t used and will give Marvel a chance to explore them in the MCU before meeting Magneto. Yes, I know, Polaris is in The Gifted where FOX/Marvel are doing a really good job with her character but that’s a different timeline, taking place after the DOFP events. Speaking of Polaris, there are many things FOX failed to introduce that Marvel can now look into and introduce them in the MCU after X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which might be the last "X-Men" film before they join the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Marvel can now carry out properly the introduction of the O5 and furthermore, the introduction of Magneto and his daughter, Polaris who became the sixth member to join the X-Men.

As I mentioned, we have Krakoa, where Polaris took the big stand and saved the day. Not only that, but this is where all the interesting XM started.

FOX never took the X-Men into space and Marvel now can take the stand to do so. This will lead us to the Shi’ar Empire, where Eric The Red made Havok and Polaris as his crew members of the Shi’ar. Maybe even introducing the Starjammers? It’ll be a fun ride, trust me.

Another thing FOX was unsuccessful in achieving, one of the most iconic stories from Chris Claremont, was the INFERNO. The introduction of Mr Sinister. FOX had failed yat again in their attempt to secure this one. This is something I’m sure Marvel is planing to dig up. We might get to see Polaris leading the Marauders as Malice. Because in this story, Claremont has Polaris as the central character after Mr Sinister.

Then we have another epic team called The X-Factor, where Havok and Polaris took over as the team leaders. This is another great opportunity for Marvel to introduce Havok, Polaris (as leaders), Guido, Wolfsbane, and Mutiple Man. Though last year there were a reports that James Franco would be producing and starring in his own superhero movie in Fox’s XM universe. I don’t know how that’d play since Marvel is taking over but I do know Marvel wants FOX to release all their films they have in development before Marvel takes over. I agree, since there can’t be 2 Marvels.

The only think that I don’t know how will work in the MCU is the House of M. I don’t know how that’d work knowing the twins aren’t Magneto’s kids, let alone are no longer mutants. In my perspective, maybe Marvel can add a few random kids besides Polaris to be his kids for that timeline specifically. Or maybe have Scarlet Witch going crazy into wanting to bring her brother back and created the House of M so she can be with her brother. I don’t know. It’s just doesn’t make sense, but I would like to see a House of M movie.

All I know is that I can’t wait for Marvel to reboot everything and make a fresh start by using stories that FOX never got the chance to use. Inferno, X-Factor, Shi’ar, Starjammers, and Krakoa come to mind where Havok and Polaris are mostly in all of them.

PS: If you don’t like the idea of Havok and Polaris together well that’s your problem and your opinion. Let us preface with this that yes, I'm aware that you have every right to your opinion. However, your opinion probably doesn't matter, even when you think it does. Most of the time, my opinion doesn’t matter. And neither does yours. Opinions are great. We all have them. Your opinions have no basis in defining what you’re all about. They aren’t the truth. They have no purpose other than to hurt or harm the characters you pretend to like. There is no rhyme or reason beyond making the other characters feel superior to them in some way or another. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Scans I promised with the Q&A Part 3 (Liu’s X-23 solo).

So as I stated in Part 2; Mike Carey largely dropped Julian’s storyline after #244. We don’t actually SEE Julian get to a better place where he learns to accept his prosthetics. He just gets new ones in “Age of X” and apparently because the alternate version had them for years, he effectively absorbs the knowledge.

This is a HUGE cop out in my opinion; the problem with a lot of disability narratives is it effectively represents the person as “lesser” or “broken”, and that’s what gets the focus. I’d compare it to Hiromu Arakawa’s Full Metal Alchemist; Arakawa shows a snippet of Ed’s depression after losing an arm and a leg, and a small moment of him going through physical therapy; but that’s really it. For the major chunk of the story, we see Ed accepting his automail. Ed is represented through the series as a gifted and highly competent Alchemist, not as a “broken” individual. While there ARE issues with this series (at the end, every main character essentially is “cured” of their disability other than Lan Fan…) , for the most part FMA is an example of how to write disability correctly.

While it’s perfectly okay to examine trauma and stories around disabled veterans; it is a little problematic that western stories tend to put more focus on trauma than recovery, to the point where it almost bleeds into shock value…

Another issue with Disabled or storylines around Metal Illness- usually the character is vilified…

Which brings us to Marjorie Liu’s X-23 Solo.

I’m not going to touch on issues 1-3 since not a lot happens with Julian and Laura, other than they admit they care deeply for one another, Laura leaves the school and Julian is still showing signs of insecurity around being disabled.

In issue 17, we see that Julian has been sent to the school after the KARIMA incident with Logan. Julian isn’t happy to be there, because he’s effectively being treated as a criminal. Logan version of concern is to essentially berate Julian, calling him both a threat and a jerk.

Once again, there is zero sub textual evidence Julian is receiving therapy or any kind of group support, despite showcasing signs of depression and/or PTSD. While Logan is REALIZING there’s a problem here, he isn’t taking much action to remedy this situation: DESPITE the risk of a potential suicide attempt, and DESPITE being the adult authority figure at the school.

Logan also asks him WHY he’s choosing to stay- which my question is where else CAN he go? His parents have abandoned him (what’s even sadder is, Julian chose his mutant identity and supporting his friends over the protection wealth PROVIDED; so it’s not even like Warren, Emma, or Betsy who can hide behind their family name/wealth). He’s been kicked out of Utopia. Emma has abandoned him. He tried Magneto, and Erik wouldn’t take him. It doesn’t seem like he’s even getting support from any of the Academy X kids. As he stated to Logan, leaving the school means he’ll be branded as a mutant terrorist by Cyclops. Or alternatively be killed, since we all know mutants survival rate on the outside is pretty damn low (just look at the Morlocks…). Julian has been effectively abandoned by everyone.

So he turns to the one person who he believes with have his back-Laura… …And that goes horribly wrong.

Going back to Part 1 and why I think Julian has issues with Co-dependency; Julian relies heavily on the people around him.

This can be both a weakness and a strength.

It’s a strength, because it does really help his leadership. In DeFilippis and Weir, Julian is shown to be actually a GREAT leader for his team! He’s great at rooting out other teams weaknesses- Sophia’s stubbornness, David being the brains and the reliance on him, how to get a rise out of Josh, the New Mutants being too individualistic and struggling to work as a team, etc…. and in finding unique ways to manipulate that. He’s also able to find a perfect balance between the Hellions powers and how best to utilize them.

But Julian’s biggest strength is supporting his team members. Just as he’s able to somewhat manipulate people to bring out the worst in them, he’s also able to manipulate it to bring out the best in people. The reason the Hellion’s were honestly a more functioning team, was largely because of Julian. As much as Julian states 'I don’t normally do control, I do sledgehammer’- Julian DOES actually think things out when he’s not being emotionally compromised. Out of all the X-Kids leaders, I actually think Julian might have been the best leader; because while Nori DID learn it LATER, in the beginning of Kyle/Yost she didn’t know how to bring her team together.

While Julian tends to only care about a small number of people, if you’re one of those people he will be FIERCELY loyal to you.

It’s a weakness, because Julian has a tendency to give his all to the people he cares about and it slowly becomes unhealthy. When people inevitably DON’T return the same level of effort and care- Julian ends up getting hurt.

Julian relies heavily on others; it’s shown with his friendship with Brian, his relationship with Sophia, and his relationship with Laura. I’d argue that it’s used as a way of instead of coping with his own emotions he attaches himself to relationships and takes on other people’s hardship to effectively avoid dealing with his own.

This effectively becomes an issue, in his relationship with Laura.

Julian feels like Laura abandoned him- and in his defense, she kind of did. While on the trip with Gambit, Laura never bothers to call Julian despite knowing he’s still struggling with recently losing his limbs. Julian has repeatedly been shown to think about Laura; in New X-Men he talks about Laura to Surge and his realization that Laura has undergone trauma in her childhood (this happens in 'Quest for Magik) ’. He pushes her to move past her experiences as a weapon ('Mercury Falling’) . He constantly supports her, like defending her when Surge fought with her over X-Force (X-23 #1 ) . Laura is rarely showcased to consider Julian’s feelings and problems- and while that’s more than likely BECAUSE of her upbringing (it’s hard to consider other people if you’re not coping well yourself) ; Julian DOES have a bit of a point.

Laura while visiting him in his room, remarks that it smells- which, if Julian IS going through depression/PTSD: calling out his inability to engage in self care (bathing, doing laundry, cleaning his room, etc.) , isn’t the best way to handle it. While this can once again be argued that Laura doesn’t have the social skills to realize this could be hurtful; for Julian it probably is invalidating and making him feel even worse about himself.

I want to make this CLEAR- I am not defending Julian’s behavior when he breaks the window; that is NOT okay. But symptoms of PTSD can be: Explosive anger.

Julian then sits down and while brushing off Laura leaving, there are hints that he was actually hurt by it. We also see Julian avoiding his own feelings, by focusing on Laura’s 'rough time’.

While Julian defends his actions with KARIMA; between the lines is hints that he is actually feeling guilt, stigma, and shame for what happened. He is essentially wanting reassurance from Laura that he did the right thing/is not a bad person.

Instead Laura gets up and barely talking to him, walks away.

AGAIN, I’m NOT defending Julian grabbing her wrist to get her to stay; that is NOT okay.

Gambit shows up and sees what’s going on; he tells Laura she got a call from Sue Storm to babysit. He then threatens Julian to blow off his arms and legs.

I’m REALLY ANGRY with Liu for feeling like this was appropriate; because this dialogue is ablest and just kind of gross. You have a recently disabled traumatized youth, being threatened by an adult who SHOULD KNOW better and effectively watching a teenager be re-traumatized. Remy works in a school with children- he should be able to de-escalate situations without resorting to threats, or he probably SHOULDN’T be teaching!

Besides the fact that Laura really doesn’t need Remy to come to her rescue; this scene is coded in a way to prop up Remy and vilify Julian and/or code him as abusive. Liu REPEATEDLY does that in this series and I’ll get to why it’s a huge problem later.

Laura goes to babysit, and while Julian calls her to apologize for his behavior- wacky hijinks happen that leads to a dragon showing up at Baxter building. Julian shows up and honestly REALLY tries to help but ends up making mistakes and causes Laura to get irritated; then they get sucked into this worm hole that takes them to an outer space junkyard.

Julian tries to connect with her by bringing up old times, and Laura scoffs it off as she’s essentially moved on from all that. Julian tried to subtly find out if she’s returning to the school and gets upset finding out she’s been getting close to Gambit (In Julian’s defense- Gambit and the whole Foxx/Mystique thing kind of justifies his reaction a bit…).

Julian is also jealous, because it once again reaffirms his fears that Laura DOESN’T CARE about him; she can spend all this time with Remy, but cannot be there for him when he needs help.

Julian once again realizes his reaction was unfair and states that he didn’t mean that. Through this story arc, Julian REGULARLY does apologize; acknowledging that he knows he’s behaving poorly but doesn’t currently have the skills to voice what’s wrong.

He once again states that he can’t stop thinking about her, essentially saying he CARES. Laura reacts to this by saying, “Stop talking.”

This causes Julian’s insecurities to come up, with him asking, “Is it my hands?”

Going back to Part 2; Julian is insecure about his appearance, his desirability, and struggling with feelings of helplessness. As I stated previously in Part 2; age of limb loss can affect sexual development, especially in preadolescent or adolescent age group.

Laura than comments on Julian’s feelings of abandonment; stating she was there after the accident and waited for him to wake up. Which, OK GREAT , but you weren’t THERE to really support Julian with the psychological effects AFTERWARDS. While Laura states she was dealing with her own struggles afterwards and needed to focus on herself, which is TOTALLY okay- she’s still EFFECTIVELY invalidating his feelings of abandonment.

This is essentially GASLIGHTING ; it’s saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but that’s not true/you’re imagining it.”

The truth is, is Laura chose to take this time to focus on her own issues, which is a valid choice- but in doing so she did leave Julian to process things on his own. Again, she COULD have at the very least called to check if he was ok; SHE chose not to.

It is revealed they are at the Collectors spaceship, they find the Richards kids and get back home. At the house, Julian helps clean so the children don’t get in trouble with their parents.

Afterwards Julian tries to salvage their damaged relationship again, with Laura AGAIN walking away from him and avoiding talking much to him.

Laura in these scenes never bothers to really TELL him she no longer wants friendship/ a relationship; leaving Julian to essentially fill in the blanks- and with his current mindset those blanks are going to be “she doesn’t want me because I’m disabled” or “I’m worthless/weak/unlovable”, etc. It’s perfectly OKAY to tell someone you do not want a relationship with them, but Laura in these scenes never bothers to give any answer on what her feelings are.

From Julian’s perspective- she went out of her way to visit him; after just up and leaving one night without saying goodbye, and after seemingly being very close/admitting she cared for him. Now she’s unexplainably acting cold to him, commenting on his inability to manage basic needs which he more than likely is already beating himself up for. He keeps apologizing, but it’s not really fixing anything. He can’t get himself to say or do anything right, even with the dragon he inexplicably messed up despite it really not being his fault. Laura is seemingly getting more and more irritated with him, and he doesn’t know why; because of his PTSD and or depression, his mind is going to the worst scenarios possible. He feels like she doesn’t care, and when he finally voices this feeling-Laura immediately shuts it down without really listening to him. She keeps implying to him she cares deeply about him, but her actions do not match up with the words. After saving her and helping get the kids home, she is again treating him coldly and barely talking to him.

Julian kissing her without her permission IS NOT OKAY. It was wrong.

Laura than tells him goodbye, and Julian blows up.

What Julian said was hurtful and cruel. He lashed out and that wasn’t okay.

Laura then states she does have feelings, just not for him; effectively being cruel back. Julian then is left to simply walk home alone.

Laura meets up with Gambit and tells him she does actually care for Julian; something she seemed incapable of verbalizing TO Julian.

Another symptom of PTSD is often searching for a rescuer. I do believe Julian did do this with Laura; and while that’s an unfair responsibility to put on others, but at the same time Julian WAS right. Laura showed very little concern for Julian. She could have pushed Gambit to get Julian some kind of help or check up on him, since he is an adult and responsible for the X-students- she didn’t. She could have at the very least called him while traveling- she didn’t. She could have listened to him while he talked about what happened with KARIMA-she didn’t. She could have done a lot of things, but she chose NOT to.

I’ve seen people argue Laura’s '”not his therapist, it’s not her responsibility” -and that’s true. But it wasn’t Julian’s responsibility to help her all the times he did. It wasn’t Jubilee’s responsibility to provide support for Laura. Gambit and Storm DO have a responsibility to get involved at signs of concern with their students as teachers, but they also got involved in Laura’s situation because they cared.

It’s not my intention to rake Laura over the coals, or ignore her own issues with mental illness but it does bother me that this series has an uneven representation towards mental illness.

I do think there’s an issue of Julian being vilified/set up as abusive. This is especially apparent in issue 20, where he’s watching Laura from the trees and represented as “stalking her”. While it started in Mike Carey’s Legacy, with Julian’s breakdown being framed as him possibly going evil, instead of it being looked at as someone honestly struggling with PTSD; Liu perpetrates this narrative by showing Julian breaking things, grabbing/kissing Laura, and the scene with Gambit.

This is EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC , because it feeds into several problematic narratives; the narrative that mentally ill are violent (statistically mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators- Google it!) , representing disabled characters as villains or violent to continue isolating and othering them, and a gender biased representation of mental illness (men can’t be mentally ill or don’t need the same kind of support in dealing with mental illness).

So I have mixed feelings on Julian’s representation on disability; a lot of it WAS problematic, the storyline hasn’t been touched on in years, the focus was more on Julian being broken or violent than about accepting himself.

But I do think it at least PROVIDES some kind of representation, it makes up a huge chunk of his character, and it would feel like erasure to get rid of him being an amputee.

I also think, while it was never outright STATED IN THE TEXT, Julian’s actions can all be examined and explained in the context of untreated PTSD and Depression.

I ALSO hate how the KARIMA incident and Liu’s solo left a black mark on his character- because I essentially think it’s a story about a teenager under a lot of stress and acting within the best of his coping abilities, with little help from the adults around him. Julian is essentially a story about how children are left to fall through the cracks, because they are stigmatized as “problem children” or have little support from the people around him.

Sorry for the length and for this slowly turning into a post about diagnosing Julian. Thanks for staying with me through all of this and my ranting! 😁😊

Sources-

Amputee: *https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5248418/ * http://www.oandplibrary.org/alp/chap28-01.asp

PTSD: *http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/ptsd-overview/complex-ptsd.asp

Mental Illness: *https://news.ncsu.edu/2014/02/wms-desmarais-violence2014/

(There are TONS of articles on this if you google 'mental illness’ and 'victims of violence’)

Addiction: *https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/painkiller-addiction/side-effects/#gref . *https://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content/SMA11-4648/SMA11-4648.pdf *https://sunrisehouse.com/addiction-demographics/physically-disabled/

Representation: *http://www.wbur.org/npr/178255429/one-amputees-message-of-hope-for-bostons-bombing-victims *https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4ykXguKWqy4 *https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w7VEMQEsy4s

(these are just some of my sources; I also used TV Tropes and other sites to look at common tropes with mental illness and disability.)

(Eventually I would like if I ever end up going back to school, or just for the fun of it; I'd like to do a paper examining gender, disability, and class with Julian’s character! ☺️)

MCU X-MEN SPECULATION & PREDICTIONS

This is what I’m thinking and hoping the future of the X-Men franchise within the Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to be like and I’m going to try and delve into different predictions I have.

We know for sure that Wolverine is the character that Marvel will cast immediately which I don’t know for sure if it was from producer Lauren Shuler Donner, I don’t know for sure I’m definitely no expert and not a credible source I’m just speculating and going off of rumors. I don’t know if that means he will be confirmed to be in the first X-Men film.

One of the most different ways Marvel could do it is make it a film about the core original five X-Men. Which I find to be the obvious way that Marvel could do something different. Since those characters in particular were so shafted and a lot of others were across the franchise. Here if you choose this direction you can start smaller and if there has to be Wolverine you could be set up in the background of the film, maybe.

Wolverine is over done but is still such a great character. Wolverine is such an inherently cool and interesting character and I think Wolverine is overdone but I do still think he is a great character. Even though there are some X-Men movies without him he’s still so synonymous with X-Men. I also think with whoever they cast it’s going to be awhile before people will dissociate him from Hugh Jackman. Marvel Studios has always for the most part been smart with casting but I have a strange pick for Wolverine even though they will most likely stick with an unknown. With a new actor Wolverine, I would like a much more comics accurate tale where he’s shorter and scrappier.

I think that X-Men now more than ever is the franchise for this culture nowadays. They are the persecuted minorities stand-in metaphor I think Marvel can do a really relevant and I understand you can’t do the first five X-Men because reportedly Marvel wants a very diverse cast for their rebooted X-Men. So I think they should go for something like the straight-up classic ‘Giant Size’ X-Men team where you all of these different people all around the world. Also it’d be great since we never really had all those characters together like Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus.

With both Deadpool and X-Men being under Disney they may do a Deadpool and X-Men that may speak to each other more. While he is still kind of doing his own thing in a separate universe. Deadpool would be carried on from where he is regardless and they would poke fun and make references that Deadpool knows about the Disney buyout of Fox and things of that nature. Since Deadpool is such a breaking the fourth wall character. So his integration into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is fairly simple.

With the X-Men’s integration into The MCU I find the most likely scenario as to how they will be integrated is that mutants will have always existed. They also may retroactively say that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were actually mutants where they will go back and say mutants have existed this whole time. Which would be pretty much a straight up retcon since you know how they got their powers but it really wouldn’t be the first out of the many continuity discrepancies and retcons from across the MCU. Where you could say Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver has the mutant gene in them and they were sort of predisposed to it. The MCU will say there have always been mutants and they’ve been in hiding. Maybe all the mutants they’ve been in the Savage Land (which would be awesome!!!!)

In terms of casting this is MY DISNEY-FIED MCU X-MEN! With a mix of Giant-Size lineup, Pryde of The X-Men and the 90’s Animated Series.

Millie Bobby Brown as Kitty Pryde

I’d like to see Kitty Pryde especially because I love Kitty Pryde and I would make her our eyes-in focus character into the X-Men universe. I’d do something like Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men meets a more serious take on The Pryde of The X-Men cartoon. Also Kitty Pryde hasn’t been well represented on screen and I like her in Days of Future Past (2014) but she still doesn’t get to do enough. Also Millie Bobby Brown is such a talented young actress if you've ever seen her performance in both seasons of Stranger Things as Eleven you know what I’m talking about. I think she’d be a great Kitty Pryde.

KiKi Layne as Ororo Munroe/Storm

I think Storm has been severely shafted in the X-Men films. She’s underrated and underutilized and it is of course important to have her in here because she is a minority character but not only that she is tremendously underrated and deserves the right to have her fair due. Also she will be older and one of Xavier’s first students because of her romantic relationship with T’challa/The Black Panther. Also Kiki Lane’s performance in If Beale Street Could Talk was great so I think she’d be a great Storm.

Logan/Wolverine

My casting for Wolverine is Zac Efron. In comic book casting traditions if this were real life people would’ve protested and demanded for Zac Efron to not be Wolverine. However this isn’t first time people have overreacted about casting look at the reactions to Michael Keaton, Heath Ledger, Ben Affleck etc. You don’t know until you see him in action. He may not be the most comics accurate Wolverine but Zac Efron isn’t 5’2 he’s 5’8 but he’s shorter than Hugh Jackman who is 6’2. Since it is Marvel Studios I’m sure they will go out with the classic yellow costume and the mask and maybe even the orange and brown suit. I understand why people despise this choice but you never know until you see Zac Efron grow mutton chops in that classic costume smoking a cigar calling someone “Bub.” That may have the potential to win people over.

Scott Summers/Cyclops

Cyclops will be the leader of this team of X-Men, I’d like to see his costume look very 90’s or very much like the 80’s or even modern look. I think Logan Lerman would be a good choice he’d be one of Xavier’s first students which is why he’d be a bit older, he will already be established on the team just like all the other X-Men outside of Kitty Pryde. He’d be very much classic Scott Summers there’s threads and hints of him growing into where he is in things like Morrison’s New X-Men or Whedon’s Astonishing. Setting up a true comic book accurate Scott Summers.

Jean Grey (Maybe???)

I don’t know if Marvel should right out the gate do Jean Grey and I don’t know if they do the Phoenix the third round this time. But I’m very much at a Marvel can’t do no wrong stage in the MCU so maybe third time's the charm. Also since it’s in MCU they can touch upon the cosmic stuff with the Shi'ar empire and Lilandra which will be cool. I think Emma Stone would be a great Jean Grey, it will seem a bit meta to have her in the role since she was Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man franchise but she’d be a great Jean Grey. Maybe a more reserved, anxious but still witty Emma Stone sort of Jean Grey. I think she’d be one of Xavier’s first students which is why I cast her older.

Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler

Timothee Chalamet I think is a great pick for Nightcrawler. Personally he is one of if not my favorite X-Men character and with his Oscar nomination for Lady Bird I’m hoping he can manage to pull of my favorite often misunderstood mutant.

Professor X

Daniel Day Lewis is an actor that makes for a perfect Professor X and with his role in Lincoln as former U.S. Abraham Lincoln he is such a dedicated actor that his performance as Professor X could wind up there next to Patrick Stewart himself and many other greats.

Magneto

Daniel Craig’s time as James Bond May soon be over but that won’t stop him from joining the MCU as the villain Magneto. Daniel Craig would make for a damn good villain in the MCU and what villain is more perfect than Magneto!

FUTURE X-MEN PROJECTS I WANT TO SEE…

As far as spin-offs outside of Deadpool. Since there was that Kitty Pryde movie Brian Michael Bendis was Writing or that Jamie Madrox movie I guess those aren’t happening with the Disney buyout. There’s still potential for that Deadpool X-Force spin-off and other X-characters can still get there time to shine in their own spotlight solo films.

I think a Gambit/Rogue solo film would work and I’d like to see a connection with Rogue and Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers since they have a tremendous history in the comics. I would love an X-Factor TV series on the Disney+ streaming service based on the Peter David run that’d be great!

-LittleBitWriter (3/5/18)

Inhuman of The Day

June 16th - Karnak

A member of the Inhuman Royal Family.  Karnak is the son of Mander and Azur, dignitaries of high status in old Attilan.  Mander’s sister, Rynda, had been the queen and was the mother to the crown prince, Black Bolt.  It was believed that both Mander and his wife, Azur, possessed excellent bloodlines and that Terrigenesis would endow both their sons with tremendous Inhuman gifts.  Yet when their elder son Triton emerged from the mists he had been transformed into an aquatic being with green scales who required a water-based atmosphere to survive.  Although Triton would eventually go onto be seen as a great warrior highly esteemed among The Inhumans, his initial transformation was viewed as shameful and monstrous.  Azur was so distraught over her elder son’s transformation that she chose not to subject her younger son Karnak to The Terrigen Mists.

Instead, young Karnak was sent to live in the Tower of Wisdom where he learned the ways of a secretive sect of gnostic Inhuman monks.  There Karnak was taught philosophy, spirituality, along with an esoteric and highly effective brand of martial arts.  Karnak had been an especially gifted and precocious child to begin with and he greatly excelled under the monks’ tutelage.  Through his studies and meditation Karnak cultivated the ability to identify the weakness of all things.  

This awareness enables him to perceive the precise points of vulnerability in any given object.  Identifying such points of weakness, coupled with his skills as a martial artist, aided him in becoming a highly formidable warrior.  He could strike an object and, knowing the precise point to hit, shatter it into countless pieces.  

As Karnak further honed these abilities, his perception for weakness has expanded beyond the physical.  He is now able to perceive points of weakness in a more abstract fashion, such as spotting the weakness in a tactical plan, philosophical theories, or even the base sense of another person’s sense of character.  

Following his return from the Tower of Wisdom, Karnak’s judgement and enhanced awareness earned him the position as the advisor to his cousin, King Black Bolt.  Although Karnak has not always seen eye to eye with his king, he has frequently remained Black Bolt’s most staunch advocate, chastising any who would question royal decree.

Karnak’s strict pragmatism and unyielding adherence to the customs and laws of Attilan notwithstanding, he has maintained a very close friendship with his cousin, Gorgon, whose impulsivity and hedonism cast him as very much Karnak’s opposite.  Their differences aside, Karnak and Gorgon greatly enjoyed each others’ company and the two have embarked on many adventures together. 

As a member of the Royal procession, Karnak has fought valiantly in numerous battles in defense of Attilan.  He has matched wits against foes that include Magneto, The Mandarin, Blastarr, Ultron-13, Ronan The Accuser, and of course Maximus The Mad.  Karnak assisted in rescuing Queen Medusa from The Wizard, helped save Ahura Boltagon from the clutches of Blackheart, and was a field martial during the Kree/Shi’Ar War. 

Along with his role as an advisor to the king, Karnak was also heavily involved in the training of the younger generation of Inhumans.  The queen’s niece, Luna Maximoff, was among Karnak’s most prized pupils. 

Karnak experienced something of a psychological crisis in the wake of The Fall of Attilan and the release of The Terrigen Cloud.  It still remains unclear what exactly had led Karnak to feel so despondent and undone (it is possible that he became aware of the encroaching alternate realities and the end of existence as entailed in the lead up the to the Secret Wars event).  In any case, Karnak seemed to come to the conclusion that his knowledge and awareness of this secretive matter made him a risk that needed to be eliminated.  He took his own life, leaping from the top floor of Avengers’ Tower and falling to his death.

Although Karnak’s body died, his soul or essence lived on.  It turned out that Karnak is a distant relative to the new Inhuman known as Lineage.  Lineage’s specific Inhuman powers allows him to keep the souls of all his past descendants within him, ushering forth any given decedent to advise him and provide secretive information.  

Karnak’s sentience found itself trapped within the limbo-like confines of Lineage’s mind.  Initially mistaking this limbo as hell, Karnak came to see the confinement as a type of prison… and like any prison it was not without a flaw, a means of escape.  

Karnak ultimately divined this flaw and exploited it, causing him to burst out of Lineage’s midsection in a fully reconstituted version of his former physical being.   The whole turn of events was quite confusing, but the long and short of it is that Karnak was reincarnated and reunited with his former allies among the Inhuman Royal Family.  

Having died and being reincarnated has had a profound effect on Karnak, leading him to delve into his spiritual studies with an invigorated interest.  The original Tower of Wisdom had been destroyed when old Attilan fell.  Karnak has since constructed a new Tower in the desolate plains of an undisclosed rural countryside.  He has amassed a group of followers, acolytes made up of humans and Inhumans alike.  

The basic tenets of Karnak and his followers’ faith is a bit difficult to describe.  Based in an ancient philosophy of old Attilan, it appears to be something of a combination of Taoism and neo-nihilism .   He believes that life is fleeting and ultimately meaningless and the full and entire acceptance of this raw truth brings about an awareness and contentment that frees one from the obscuring illusions of meaning.  Shedding himself from the distracting shadows of faith, belief, and the construct of existential meaning, Karnak is able to see things as they truly are: empty and ultimately insignificant.  And it is this true, unadulterated vantage is what allows him to perceive the fault in all things. Karnak’s reinvigorated dedication to this rather stark and disquieting philosophy has left him a good deal alienated form others.  He has yet to rekindle his old friendship with Gorgon; the humans that he interact with are terribly frightened and disquieted by him, and he has rarely participated in mission alongside his fellow Inhumans of New Attilan.  

Karnak has not gone through Terrigenesis.  He seems to prefer to keep it this way, which means that he had to keep an eye out for the Terrigen Cloud (in that exposure to the cloud would trigger his transformation).  He avoided the cloud by monitoring its location as well as sequestering himself in hermetically sealed chambers within the new Tower of Wisdom.  What might occur were Karnak to ever go through the transformation of Terrigenesis remains unknown.  With the cloud’s destruction, however, it is a matter he no longer has to concern himself over.  

At some point following his resurrection, Karnak was recruited by the governmental agency Shield to help rescue a young Inhuman named Adam who had been abducted by a splinter faction of the criminal organization, Hydra.  Karnak went in search of this youth only to discover that Adam’s new Inhuman powers offers him a powerful degree of reality manipulation.  Adam’s gifts led him to essentially take over the terrorist splinter group, reforming the group into a cult that worshipped him.  When Karnak finally confronted Adam, he discovered that the young man had become everything that Karnak hates: a false god, fabricating an artificial sense of meaning by offering his followers the comfort of manufactured faith.  Karnak was ultimately able to defeat Adam, delivering a precise jab that irreversibly injured the part of Adam’s brain that control his powers.  The whole affair left Karnak feeling quite bereft as he came to feel that both cold reality and warm illusion were equally unsatisfying and that existence is harsh and lonely.  

As a possible byproduct of these feelings, Karnak began to spend more time among his fellow Inhumans of New Attilan.  He took particular interest in the young new Inhuman, Iso, whom he saw the potential for true greatness.  Karnak helped encourage Iso to lead the Inhumans in defending an attack on New Attilan by an army of Iron Man battles suits.  

Later, during the Inhumans/Mutant War, the X-Men attempted to neutralize Karnak by trading him in a psychic illusions generated by Jean Grey and the Midwhich Cuckoos.  Karnak was eventually able to escape his confinement, but he was occupied long enough for the rest of the X-Men to sack New Attilan.  The war between the two groups ultimately concluded when Medusa destroyed the Terrigen Cloud, thus ending its threat to end all Mutant life on Earth.  

More recently, Karnak found himself a member of the loosely cobbled together team of Secret Warriors battling against the Hydra forces who had taken over much of the continental United States.  The destruction of the Terrigen Cloud had essentially doomed the Inhuman people to extinction, a matter that seemed to invigorate Karnak’s nihilistic disposition.  At first he voiced a lack of concern for the fate of mankind and Inhumankind.  His attitude then appeared to change when he saw that young Lunella Lafayette (Moon Girl) was among the Inhumans who had come to rescue him from a Hydra internment camp.  

It turned out that Karnak’s entire participation with the Secret Warriors was all part of a highly complicated scheme to obtain a new source of Terrigen, consolidate power and seat Moon Girl and the new leader of The Inhumans of Earth.  Karnak believed that young Lunella possessed the intellect and cold pragmatism needed to rebuild Inhuman society from the ashes.

It was additionally revealed that Karnak has a son.  Where this son had been and the identity of the boy’s mother is has remained unrevealed.  About nine years old, Karnak’s son is named Leer and it appears as though he has been indoctrinated into Karnak’s specific outlook and philosophy.  

Prior to the Secret Empire event, Karnak had handed over Leer to the reneged Mutant geneticist known as Mr. Sinister.  Karnak and Sinister had entered into a pact to unlock the secrets of the Inhuman genome.  Karnak hoped that doing so would facilitate a new means through which latent Inhuman powers could be unlocked; where Sinister hoped to weaponize this information as part of his efforts to direct the evolution of Mutant-kind.  Leer was offered to Sinister essential as a test subject for Sinister’s experiments.  

As to be expected, Mr. Sinister ended up reneging on his end of the bargain and Karnak manipulate d the Secret Warriors into helping him get Leer back, misleading them into believing Leer could be the key to defeating Hydra.   The truth of the matter was eventually revealed.  Leer was rescued and Hydra was ultimately defeated by other means.  Sinister had managed to unlock Leer’s Inhuman powers, but failed in his efforts to create a synthetic form of Terrigen.  The combined forces of the Secret Warriors the Royal Guard of New Attilan were able to defeat Mr. Sinister.

Moon Girl declined Karnak’s proposal for her to become the new leader of The Inhumans.  Karnak had managed to manipulate his way into control of The Enillux Corporation, yet Lunella handed this control back to Ahura to fully punctuate her disagreeing with Karnak’s outlook on what is best for the Inhuman peoples.  As punishment for his unscrupulous subterfuge, Iso decreed Karnak as forever banished from New Attilan.   

Karnak’s misdeeds notwithstanding, it appears as though he has been forgiven by Medusa and Black Bolt and offered a home on the new Inhuman lunar settlement of Arctillan.  Karnak’s further adventures are set to be told in the pages the ominously titled Death of The Inhumans series scheduled to begin this July.  

KGAF Phase 2: Trade

Five: why just shells? Why limit yourself?

She sells seashells, sell oil as well!

Six: guns, sell stocks, sell diamonds, sell rocks

Sell water to a fish, sell the time to a clock

- Money Game Pt.2, Ren

(introduction)

Phase 1 was mostly normal gameplay with a weird focus on Academies, but now things get interesting. This phase, you'll be exploiting leader traits to boost your way to one of the most important upgrades in the game: Geodesy. This phase revolves around maximizing titanium and starcharts.

Upgrade a Merchant, Artisan, and Metallurgist to Rank 1. Take a moment to learn their names. Make up some backstory for them. These kittens are your new best friends - they are the reason this run is interesting in the first place.

The Merchant boosts resource gain from trading. Sadly, this doesn't apply to the zebras' ever-scarce titanium, but it does apply to their iron. Iron makes observatories for starcharts, and those are what you really need anyway.

The Artisan boosts all resource crafting. That means ~30x yields from anything you make in the workshop. The Metallurgist does the same thing, but specialized for metal products (plates, steel, gear, alloy). The Metallurgist's bonus for these products is 2x as strong as the Artisan's, but the Metallurgist provides no bonus to crafting other resources. 

You will be doing a lot of switching between leaders. Whenever you craft something, swap to Artisan first. If it's a metal product, swap to Metallurgist. Before every trade, swap to Merchant. 

(You might notice this is very annoying. Switch to village tab, scroll to census, select trait  from dropdown, click star. It was this particular nuisance that motivated me to go through the effort of making the addon in the first place, just so I could make a hotkey to switch leaders. When I finally got it working, I felt like I was neurolinking directly to the game.)

The main activity of this phase is trading with zebras for iron and titanium. Use the iron to build observatories, steamworks, and magnetos. The steamworks and magnetos boost your gold production so that you can, you guessed it, trade more. 

(This is one of the really interesting things about this run - normally, steamworks and magnetos would be way too expensive to be worth building at this point in the tech tree! But because they're made from crafted goods boosted by Metallurgist, because gold is worth more now due to Merchant, and because you have so much iron from Merchant, it's suddenly not only reasonable but a good idea to build them!)

Trade about half of your gold stockpile from Phase 1 to Griffins. Use the all iron on observatories, you'll end up with around 90. Once you have 25 starcharts, use Artisan to make a batch of ships and discover Zebras. Now you can use the rest of your gold for trading. Build a second batch of ships to round out your total to ~60, then save the rest of your starcharts for Geodesy.

The general trading technique is as follows: wait until you have enough gold for a significant amount of trades. Save the game and open a few new tabs. Trade in each tab, check which tab got the most titanium. Continue playing the game in that tab, and close all the others. Repeat every time you want to trade for titanium. 

With your new iron income, bring your Lumber Mill count up to about 40.  Reallocate about half your woodcutters to miners - you need to be building as many smelters as possible.

(Another interesting thing about this phase is you almost end up with two separate economies: the "gold -> iron/titanium -> observatories/SW/Magnetos -> gold" loop, and everything else: wood, minerals, etc. Because all your gold producing buildings are bottlenecked by iron/titanium, you actually have a great deal of freedom when deciding how to use your other resources (after the cost of Smelters is through the roof). Usually the best uses for them are housing and Academies.)

The first critical tech is Architecture -> Acoustics for Chapels, which can produce culture without costing your precious gold.  Make a few chapels, then go Physics->Electricity to unlock Magnetos,  Chemistry to unlock Alloy, and Geology to unlock Geologists.  Lower priority but still important is Drama and Poetry for Festivals. The rest of the tech tree can wait until Phase 3. 

Numeromancy causes Festivals to give bonus effects based on the current lunar cycle. A lunar cycle is a period of five in-game years, or about 66 minutes real time. Charon is the first cycle, and its festival effect is +50% wood and stone. This is a nice boost for building Smelters, but not critical - if you're hurting for culture, don't rush festivals before year 5.

But the second cycle, Umbra, has a downright amazing festival effect: +50% gold production. From year 5 to year 9, you really want festivals 24/7.

Don't worry about  Zebra Relations: Appeasement yet, the RNG manipulation is already letting you avoid the relation penalties with Zebras. 

The Artisan and Metallurgists allow you to pick up a lot of upgrades at a major discount, since you have tons of crafted resources. Get Steel Axes, Steel Saws, and Pyrolysis. Also get Reinforced Warehouses -> Ironwood Huts to boost population further. 

Do not get Astrolabe or Titanium Reflectors, even after this phase. They cost starcharts and give nothing useful.

Don't build Calciners - the iron and titanium is terrible compared to trading. Don't build Mansions either - titanium is too valuable, and kittens aren't that useful right now.

Due to increasing iron costs, stop building SW/Magnetos around 25/20, respectively. (Make sure you have enough Oil Wells to support them - I've forgotten about this more than a couple times). 

You'll have to eyeball your titanium and starchart income to decide when to stop spending titanium and start saving it. If you start saving titanium too early, you lose out on potential magnetos -> gold -> iron -> observatories -> starcharts, and could have gotten geodesy earlier.  If you start saving titanium too late, then you wait and trade more before you can get Geodesy, even though you have enough starcharts.

Once you finally rack up 500 starcharts and 250 titanium, pick up Geodesy and enter Phase 3.

My personal record for Geodesy is 4/3/15, or 1:00:30 real-time.