X-Men In General

I dunno if all that’s really “burn it all to the ground” stuff. Punch Xavier and Magneto in the face (a lot), sure.

Oh God! Natural light!

New costumes for X-Factor.

So what's the overall feeling on Hickman's run so far?

I mean, seeing the X-Men actually build something and tackle things from a new angle besides oh no! we're being genocided again was good, but it feels like they've lost their empathy as well.

Trying to take Franklin entirely because he's a mutant; Xavier and Magneto being shady (though Erik has always had a low opinion of humanity on his best days, and Charles...well being a relatively well meaning mentor isn't as cool as him having so many skeletons in his closet that it undermines everything he believes in), and the fact that now they seem to be giving mankind even more reasons to hate them.

Then again, when they tried to avoid the last one, mankind hated them anyway. Moira revealing that they always lose and this might be their last chance may have radicalized all of them (if they all know what Moira knows, and Charles may have found a way to tell them without revealing her).

The fact they don't care what their members have done if they are mutants, meaning Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister (who wasn't even always a mutant) and Mystique are being allowed to run free and just waiting to destroy everything.

I want this to be something new for them; it needs to change things because they can't keep up the same shit, and we expect Hickman to change the game, but at the same time it seems like they are being punished for trying. We all expect this to explode in their faces, but I don't want that.

I don't like how they are acting (but I can't blame them at all with all the shit they've had piled upon them for years), but I understand why and I want for what they are trying to build to endure with some tweaks so as to be less hostile to everyone else.

It's hard to not be concerned.

One Strip! One Strip!

I'm loving it, especially the main X-Men book and Excalibur. The only books I've not really liked are Fallen Angels and X-Force.

I mean, they weren't trying to take Franklin; they were there to politely ask if he wanted to come to Krakoa. They weren't going to kidnap him, but rather give him the choice, which Reed took away from him.

1. Hickman retconned Sinister into being a mutant.
2. They aren't allowed to "run free." In fact, they specifically put in place a law that states that they can't murder humans anymore.

Also, preview of Wolverine #1.

Edited by alliterator on Feb 13th 2020 at 12:55:19 PM

I still maintain the jerkishness and the weird cult vibes are being set up because presumably once the MCU casts its X-Men, the self destruct button will be pressed and we can’t feel too sorry for them when they push too far into the rest of the world and everything is reset back to Square 1.

Well, the possibility that this will blow up is always there.

Do we know what Life Moira is currently on right now?

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I'm less concerned about that and more concerned that they're going to go for a Golden Mean Fallacy - "Mutant liberation turns you into an asshole; accept The Good Old Status Quo instead!"

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

That too.

One Strip! One Strip!

Moria is on her tenth life currently as per Power of X #2.

So she should have one left then if Destiny was right about the 10 or 11 guess.

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I could see kind of a less extreme reaction; in light of how Xavier and Magneto are acting, they wind up exiled. From the very land they acted like such utter jerks to make.

Sign on for this After The End Fantasy RP.

That'd be my preference, especially since how they made a big show about making a council so they weren't the ones calling all the shots, only to turn around, string along and gaslight another council member and just casually state that they don't have the follow the number one law the council just made.

That be pretty fitting.

They are assholes after all.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

I hate asshole Xavier.

Why did he need to become an asshole? He's not perfect by any means, but he's been trying to help his fellow mutants for years, but writers kept revealing he's a bigger dick with every new arc.

It's like they were trying to ruin him. If they wanted him to bow out, why not let him do so gracefully? Why keep dragging him through the mud?

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Maybe they wanted to reduce the similarities in the endless Mutant Rights parallels of a white dude to Martin Luther King.

....huh.

Kinda makes you wonder what things would have been like if Xavier had been black.

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I mean, I think you guys are forgetting something: Moira has been trying to break Xavier of his ideals for years and it's only now that their plan is going into effect. It's Moira who has been pushing him and pushing him to change, because she's seen nine other timelines where he stayed idealistic and died with the rest of the X-Men.

So yeah, he's an asshole. But she made him into an asshole in order to get him to survive and get the rest of them to survive. What's more important: survival or being liked?

I feel that’s a false choice, and I’m not a fan of the cynicism that to save mutantkind Xavier had to throw away his dream.

I'm not saying that's the case, I'm saying that Moira believes it's the case. She's seen mutants die so many times that she became radicalized and decided the only option was to break Xavier of his idealism.

And considering that someone tried to assassinated Xavier (and succeeded) one month after Krakoa became a nation, was she really wrong? I mean, this is the Marvel universe, where Canada had a mutant death camp in the present day and it didn't change anything.

Edited by alliterator on Feb 14th 2020 at 12:53:45 PM

Everyone says that, but it's not true. Life 1: No Sentinels or mutant genocide. Life 2: Died before she met Xavier. Life 3: Tried to find mutant cure, killed by Brotherhood. Life 4: Allied with Xavier, possibly saw him killed by Sentinels. Life 5: Radicalized Xavier and got him to abandon enough of his idealism to found a mutant separatist state. (That this was still too idealistic for Moira should be a red flag.) Possibly saw him killed before she died. Life 6: Unknown. Life 7: Assassinated Trask family. Killed by Sentinel, no mention of Xavier. Life 8: Allied with Magneto, defeated by X-Men/Avengers/Fantastic Four. Died in prison break, Xavier alive. Life 9: Allied with Apocalypse, who killed Xavier.

WMG: It isn't mutants who always lose, it's Moira when she tries to alter events.

We know what happened in Life 6 — she lived long enough to see post-humans replace mutants and then try to join the Phalanx, which would destroy the Earth.

We don't know that at all, all we know is that Moira eventually died of old age. Mutants could have been killed off and she wouldn't have known.

So lives Four through Nine had Moira seeing Sentinels kill off mutants. That's still a lot of watching your people die over and over again. And considering that even getting the mutants to live on a separate nation didn't work, yeah, I think she has reason to be radicalized.

I mean, no, that's not the case. Mutants continue to die over and over again, even while Moira has lived.

Edited by alliterator on Feb 15th 2020 at 9:44:14 AM

Well, to be fair, we don't know how things went for Mutants in Lives 1 and 2 due to Moira never getting involved, and dying by accident before she could get involved specifically.

We'll probably never know, so we can't say for sure if it was her interference starting with Life 3 that starting buggering things for them or not.

We do know that her attempts to help once she got involved (even before the Radicalization) saw things always go pear shaped.

There's still enough leeway in those first two runs to question if Mutants just always lose, or if it's something about Moira herself that causes them to lose.

Hell, now that I think about it, isn't it suspicious that in the universe where she first realizes she's a mutant (life 2) she gets randomly killed in a plane crash before she can even meet Xavier? Makes you wonder if there's something there as well. We know Destiny made it her business to wreck Moira's shit in timeline three, and make it clear she'd always do so if Moira turned against mutants (and as such Moira is now scared shitless of Precogs and Destiny specifically) but what if Irene saw what Moira might have done in timeline 2 and moved to prevent it?

I can picture her doing so easily.

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The question was whether "he stayed idealistic and died with the rest of the X-Men". There's no way of knowing whether that happened in Life 6. He might have continued his loss of idealism from Life 5.

Life 1 was supposed to be a peaceful, happy one. How would that be possible with giant robots? If it was like Days of Future Past, Sentinels would have taken over North America and threatened a nuclear war long before her death of old age. None of the genocides depicted were subtle.

She didn't see Sentinels kill off mutants in Life 7 (just herself) or Life 8. Arguably, the latter was a vindication of Xavier's ideals. There's only three out of nine, Lives 4, 5, possibly 6, and 8, the last which would could be considered self-defense against Apocalypse.

I said lose, not die. They couldn't die after she did anyway. She works against mutants in Life 3, and mutants kill her. She devotes herself to the mutant cause in her remaining lives, and anti-mutant forces thwart her.

Maybe the universe was trying to keep her from meeting Xavier prematurely, until she entwined her life with his in Life 4.

I mean, Moira lived in Scotland. I'm pretty sure stuff can be happening in America and she just doesn't know about it. Or the genocide happened in a quieter way. Either way, we don't know if "nothing bad happened," because all we have is her perspective and all we know is that she died of old age.

Edited by alliterator on Feb 16th 2020 at 9:38:00 AM

Again, it was described as "a good life ... mostly pleasant". Moira Kinross was an intelligent woman from a politically connected family. I doubt she could ignore giant robots taking over North America. Scotland isn't on another planet. Days of Future Past had the Sentinels threatening to expand to the rest of the world, with the world planning a nuclear response. Excalibur had issues showing that Black Air collaborated with the Sentinels to take over the UK, including Scotland. The other mutant-human conflicts were big dramatic events affecting the whole world based on House of M (Life 8) and Age of Apocalypse (Life 9). Occam's Razor would say that no genocide depicted would mean no genocide.