#Rogue and Nightcrawler had both been raised by Mystique

[maedelin]

I love this issue.

What If . . . ? #98

[amageish]

Thinking way too hard about the queer possibilities of X-Men ‘97

When X-Men ‘97 was first announced, I’ll admit I was kind of ambivelent to the entire project... It felt very nostalgia-focused and was just less interesting to me then an all-new X-Men cartoon that could do its own thing without being burdened with established canon...

...and then I listened to the X-Men 60 Uncanny Years event earlier this year and hearing the executive producer of the series discuss what the X-Men meant to him as a kid as a gay black man in Florida basically changed my mind about the entire project. Now I’m excited for it!

The X-Men are so fucking queer. Even ignoring the ways that the mutant metaphor have been used to discuss queer issues before queer issues could be discussed textually, Marvel’s merry mutants just have... so many queer members and even more when you expand the list to include sub-textual and intended queerness.

So, with all that in mind, I did a little thinking and decided to take some guesses about who could make for queer representation in '97... Let’s dive in!

Part One: The Comic Canon Gays

Let’s start with the characters who are explicitly no-subtext-required queer in the comic books themselves. These are a few of the characters Marvel uses in Pride events and generally parades around every June.

Northstar

Jean-Paul Beaubier may seem like the vanilla ice cream of this rainbow sundae, but there’s far more going on with this character then the “Marvel’s first explicitly gay superhero” title that he is so often boiled down to. A French-Canadian superstar athlete, he’s lived never being entirely sure if his skiing career success was a result of his talent or his mutant abilities.

While his depiction in X-Men The Animated Series just had him be painfully French-Canadian with an on-the-nose accent and French exclamations, there’s a mean catty gay under the surface that is just waiting to be unleashed. They could also adapt his famous wedding arc, wherein he married his husband Kyle Jinadu...

Also he hates cops, so y’know... Maybe Marvel did nail the queer experience on their first try?

Iceman

Bobby Drake is arguably the most famous queer character at Marvel. A member of the original five X-Men, he was famously confirmed as gay when his teenage self was transported to the present and, with some unsolicited help from a teenage Jean Grey, questioned why his older self remaining closeted, even in a world that was (comparatively at least) accepting of queer desire.

In the original show, he showed unrequited interest in Polaris, as he had in the comics before his coming-out. This reboot could potentially give a more grounded and less fantastical take on coming-out then what he had in the comics... or maybe time travel will be involved again - who knows really!

Prodigy

David Allyene, aka Prodigy, is one of the most notable bi men at Marvel with one of the most distinctive coming-out stories. His mutant powers cause him to instantly learn things that other people know, hence the name Prodigy, and, through his powers, he also learned his own sexuality. How’s that for a crazy journey of self-discovery.

Prodigy is a newer character who did not appear in the original animated series at all, so there’s no continuity concerns there...

Mystique and Destiny

Destiny, also known as Irene Adler, met her lover Mystique when he was presenting as male and operating as a consulting detective in Victorian London.

Yeah uh. This is implying what you think it is.

The two of them have been lovers for centuries now, though both took other partners at different points during their relationship. Their love is something special though and together they raised Rogue as a child - as well as maybe sired Nightcrawler together? That was once intended to be Nightcrawler’s origin, but it was famously scrapped due to Marvel editorial not wanting to depict a child that is a product of a queer relationship at the time... but now this November a new comic will explore the “true” origin of Nightcrawler, so maybe Mystique/Destiny having a biological child is back on the table!

Mystique was, of course, in the original series. I’m not sure the actual odds of her relationship with Irene being acknowledged in ‘97 - partially just because I imagine Marvel would be concerned about backlash to queer villains... but also they’re adorable and good to me so I’d like them!

Captain Britain and Askani

Betsy Braddock and Rachel Summers are two incredibly complicated characters to summarize. Rachel is the time-displaced daughter of Scott and Jean from a hypothetical alternate feature, while Betsy Braddock spent like 30 years of her publication history trapped in the body of Kwannon, a Japanese assassin. While these two characters are some of Marvel’s most actively in-your-face unquestionably queer characters - the last Betsy story had a surprising amount of implied sex for only five issues - they’ve never really had a chance to shine in a multimedia way (well, at least not with Betsy in her own body and not being merged with Kwannon).

In the original show, Rachel cameoed briefly as a prisoner of Apocalypse while Pyslocke appeared without being named - assumedly they didn’t want to bother explaining the body-swap storyline. Personally, if they were to be in the show, I’d suggest that Betsy should be introduced as having inherited her brother’s title of Captain Britain, with Pyslocke of the original show being revealed to have been Kwannon in her own body all along...

Part Two: The New Mutants

There’s so many queer New Mutants that I’m just giving them their own category here... plus, with Sunspot being in the main cast, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the time got (Sun)spotlighted as well!

Note that the sapphics of the first generation of New Mutants can also be mixed and matched when it comes to shipping. I present them based on the pairings that are currently canon/teased in the present comics, but Dani/Xuan, Xuan/Kitty, Kitty/Rahcel, etc. are all valid too and could be within the cards for the show.

Karma & Galura

The first explicit lesbian of the X-Men line, Xuân Cao Mạnh is a refugee of the Vietnam Boat Crisis, a thing which makes no sense when you consider that she is still canonically like 20-something years old in 2023. Her coming-out was a much lower-key affair then Jean-Paul’s, with her friends just casually running into her at the Exploding Person festival (i.e., Burning Man) with a shaved pink haircut and already travelling with her two “girlfriends”.

After the musical festival, she proceeded to fall in love with her roommate Kitty Pryde and then her co-worker Dani Moonstar, both of which were never (textually) requited. Recently, she’s started dating the winged mutant Galura and finally gotten to do stuff like “kiss a woman on-panel regularly” after two decades of being a lesbian denied a girlfriend...

She has cameoed in X-Men ‘92-related media with a design that is truly terrible IMO, but I think she could be rebooted and appear in this series in her full glory... especially after the New Mutants movie left her out entirely!

Mirage and Wolfsbane

Introduced in the original New Mutants run, Dani Moonstar and Rahne Sinclair share a unique telepathic connection, helpfully described as them being “soul-mates.” The Comic Book Code prohibited depictions of queer people, but uh. This first run is incredibly not subtle, even as Rahne nominally has interest her male teammate Cannonball.

Unfortunately, post-Claremont, their relationship was more or less abandoned for a few decades (coinciding with a massive downward spiral in Rahne content in general) climaxing with Rahne being killed off entirely in an allegory for transphobic violence... Thankfully, she recovered from her death and has recently been written by a non-binary author and now a trans author, both of whom have leaned back into the idea that these “soul-mates��� may, in fact, have romantic feelings for each other.

Oh, also they were explicitly gay in the movie. So. Good for them for that!

Magik and Shadowkat

Another classic pair of X-Men “roommates,” Illyana Rasputina and Kate Pryde are another Claremont-created “soul-mate” duo - albeit without the telepathic bond. After decades of queer-coding, both were able to do queer-adjacent things explicitly for the first time in the Krakoa era, with Illyana asking a group of people of various gender presentations to make out with her and Kate kissing a tattoo artist who looks suspiciously like her bestie on-panel.

Pryde famously lost the spot of “Teen X-Men PoV character” to Jubilee in the show, but maybe X-Men ‘97 could give her a second chance... plus Illyana is one of the most popular X-Men characters not given a full spotlight in the original show, in spite of her more or less being an A-list X-Men in 2023. I don’t know if Marvel is brave enough to make this one canon, but I do think these two are two of the most obviously missing characters from the ‘97 line-up.

Escapade

Shela Sexton, aka Escapade, is a transgender sapphic who debuted in Marvel Pride last year and has since then had a starring role in the most recent New Mutants series. She has the incredibly unique power of the ability to “steal” things from people - including everything from stealing physical objects like their wallet to stealing abstract concepts like their emotional or physical state. Her character also generally has embodied the intersectional approach to mutant identity which has become more and more prevalent in the modern era - her mutant identity and trans identity are both important to her character, but neither are allegories for the other.

I think she’s probably too new to be added to the X-Men ‘97 cast pragmatically, but maybe they could have snuck in a cameo at the last minute? Idk. I figured I’d include her on the list.

Part Three: Let’s Get Wild!

Okay. Fuck it. Let’s talk about some comic book justifications that could be used to queer up the actual main cast from the original classic X-Men The Animated Series.

Jubilee

Jubilation Lee, the teen PoV lead of the X-Men, has been written as queer a handful of times, but never explicitly in 616. Most notably, she was gay in an AU Runaways story (written by N.D. Stevenson), where she dated a bisexual version of Pixie as well as an ice-powered sapphic named Frostbite. Monet also had a crush on her in the X-Men ‘92 animation-inspired comic book series. In terms of 616 content, her relationship with Laura Kinney has often been read in a sapphic way, especially in Liu’s X-23 series where Laura notably breaks up with her boyfriend only for Jubilee to be waiting back at her apartment to go out with her.

Storm

Ororo Munroe, aka Storm, famously has had a subtextual Sapphic fling with the bundle of chaos that is Yukio. They two met for the first time when Ororo went to Japan and their time together was almost immediately followed by her famous punk Storm era, which is very queer when you consider that context. Yukio was also later made explicitly queer in Fox’s Deadpool 2 movie, though the movie character doesn’t share much of the personality and thrill-seeking antics of her comic book counterpart...

Storm is the central protagonist of the original Claremont Uncanny X-Men and will be central to the ‘97 series as well. It’d be really bold to confirm her as queer, but I’d say this is the kind of move that would be worth it if they want this to stand out among X-Men adaptations.

Wolverine, Phoenix, and Cyclops

Finally, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, and Logan were implied to have been in a poly relationship throughout most of the Krakoa era - though they have fallen on hard times recently in the run-up to Fall of X.

I’ll be blunt: I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that Marvel corporate would approve this being textual... but I’m willing to be proven wrong, I guess!

WHEW. Okay. That’s my list. This is nowhere near definitive of course - I didn’t discuss Shatterstar’s bisexuality, Deadpool’s pansexuality, Gwenpool’s aroace identity, et al - but also basically every X-Men character is either textually queer or could be justified as being queer based on comic book lore. This entire brand has a queer poly energy that even the straightest writers weren’t able to fully shake off of it... so, while this is my list, they could really do anything they wanted (and that Mickey Mouse lets them do, at least)... We’ll see what happens!

[PS: In light of the strike and the general shitty way that megacorporations in entertainment have been treating their workers for years now, I’d be remissed if I made this post and didn’t encourage people to consider donating to the Entertainment Community Fund as well!]

[spongebobafettywap]

Here's the ultimate truth about Margali Szardos and Azazel that these fans need to realize and make peace with because it's been 40 and 20 years already : These two are the only characters in Nightcrawler's cast and family tree that were specifically created to be part of it from their inception.

Mystique was originally just a Miss Marvel villain that was going to be revealed as an alien : Dave Cockrum designed her himself but her final colouring was randomly decided by his coworkers during lunch break so her being blue with yellow eyes like Nightcrawler ? A pure coincidence. Her being a mutant and possibly related to Nightcrawler ? Came way later.

Destiny was just a mutant villain part of Mystique's Brotherhood who wasn't even a co leader or that close to her. That came later. Same with Rogue having been raised by them.

Rogue was much older and a totally solo player before it was changed to her being a teen, part of Mystique's Brotherhood and her adoptive daughter.

Azazel and Margali never have had any intermediate step to their character before being made part of Nightcrawler's relatives. Removing them from him out of spite would be like removing Polaris from Magneto's family tree : It defies the entire point of their creation.

Yes you're right Azazel and Margali were both designed as his family members so it makes far less sense to remove them than anyone else.

What is the source for her intended as an Alien? Because I've heard seen sources showing her intended to be revealed as a young Mutant woman (around Nightcrawler's age so couldn't be his mother) rather than an ancient Mutant but never anything about her being an alien. I'd also be interested in seeing the source for her colour palette being chosen by someone other than Cockrum.

That's true about Mystique, Destiny and Rogue's relationship as a family having come far later into their characters stories rather than being something that came from the start.

Funny you should mention Polaris because Marvel did EXACTLY that well Claremont did at least. For some reason he really hates Polaris and wrote her in a really sexist way no connection to Magneto being used as a way to make her just a submissive partner who only exists for Havok's stories and then later making her a She-Hulk rip off because you know Super Strength is SUCH a unique Superpower compared to Magnetism even though I can only name 3 Characters across Marvel and DC who can use Magnetism.

It also seems like these fans just love endless amounts of retcons for characters it's almost like they think "more retroactive story changes means a better story!!" Even though that is just objectively wrong lmao.

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on Powers of X #1

Well, I did this for the one, might as well do it for t’other...

Well, any thought that this mini-series might be less weird than its companion was completely blown away by the very first page, which revealed that Powers of X (pronounced Powers of Ten) is going to be taking place in four different times:

Year One (X^0)

Year Ten (X^1)

Year One Hundred (X^2)

Year One Thousand (X^3)

...with each segment increasing by a power of ten, because apparently Hickman has decided he’d like to drive us all mad with math puzzles. That first page is a doozy of design, I must say, laying out four key moments (and four or three key players) in the past and future of mutant-kind, with the layout suggesting a parallel between all of these characters (as well as a suggestion that the guy in the Cerebro mask shares Charles’ lower facial features exactly.

Year One

We then get an un-interrupted six page sequence which, on the surface, seems the most normal but is anything but. The first page shows Charles Xavier strolling through a fair and sitting down on a bench to enjoy the weather and his good mood, although the symbolic connection between the dwarf ringmaster and the strongman and Xavier’s dream of mutantkind is quite ominous. Then someone who looks a lot like Moira McTaggart sits down next to Xavier, and this is where x-fan’s expectations all of the sudden get flipped upside-down. On the face of it, Charles meeting Moira around the same time that he first has his Dream of mutant/human co-existence would be quite normal...except that Moira’s tarot cards are depicting people and places in the Year One Hundred (more on this in a bit), and Moira is talking to Charles very familiarly, but he hasn’t actually met her yet. 

This is where a little alarum bell goes off in my mind shouting “TIME-TRAVEL SHENANIGANS!” 

This much-hyped scene turns out to be Charles reading Moira’s mind, but it’s very clear from what we’ve just seen that this is not the Moira we know. And if this Moira is a clone from the future (I’ll get into that in a bit), the publicity tag-line would make sense: after all, time travel to avert a bad future goes way back in X-Men, and often that time travel has involved things happening to Charles Xavier before he could get his X-Men off the ground. 

However, we’ve never see anyone go back just to tell Charles what happens in the future, even though that would profoundly change the timeline just by changing his mind. Is this what turns Charles Xavier into the be-helmeted man in Year Ten with the very different dream? Or would informing him of the future change or prevent the events of Year Ten?

Year Ten

Probably the most straightforward sequence - and the best argument for why HoX and PoX should be viewed as two halves of the same story - this sequence shows us exactly what happened to Mystique after she went through the Krakoa portal in Washington Square Park in HoX #1. 

It turns out that, as much as even Magneto is feeling the “hope-y, change-y” vibes, he, Mystique, and Professor X all have their own agendas regarding the information - note the running theme of the issue - that she pulled out of Damage Control’s servers. 

Further ominous notes: Charles Xavier has never been a telekinetic, and yet here he clearly uses telekinesis to grab Mystique’s thumb drive. That’s very ominous, especially given what we learn about cloned mutants have multiple, spliced-in mutant powers. Also, Professor X’s comment about “everyone who would live in...a better mutant world...owes something” echoes ominously with the interstitial material’s description of Omega class mutants as a natural resource for the state.

Year One Hundred

The most conventionally super-heroic segment, this section shows us an all-too familiar dystopian scenario, with cyborgized humans and cerberus-like sentinels working together to not merely kill mutants but violate their minds and bodies. Further signs of what they’ve been up to comes in the literally black-brained ex-Hound who was genetically designed for infiltration and subversion of her own people. 

A sign that mutants have adapted to this conflict by abandoning moral principles as well comes in the fact that the dead mutant in question is not only programmed to mind-wipe on death, but is repeating Professor X’s speech from Year 10. In a parallel to that era, it turns out that the mutant group who’ve been interecepted were downloading information from the Nexus 

We also meet our two main characters in this epoch - the red-skinned Nightcrawler lookalike Cardinal (whose Tarot card is the Devil, “the red god and the lost cardinal of the last religion” (no idea what that means)) and the metal-skinned Soulsword-slinging Rasputin (whose Tarot card is the Magician, “the metal metapmorph, the great sword, and the girl with one foot in two worlds” (no idea what that means)). As we will learn later, these are not names but clone-types, because war has its own way of getting us to dehumanize ourselves in the pursuit of victory. 

Important Interstitial #1: The Sinister Line

It wouldn’t be a Hickman comic without infographics, and this one was a doozy: at some point after Year 10, a crisis rocked the mutant nation which caused “the almost universal death or disappearance of senior leaders.” This crisis apears to have been engineered by none other than Mister Sinister in order to motivate the remaining mutant leadership into approving “breeding pits” located on Mars, where he could breed and clone mutants for “aggressive, militaristic traits,” to counter-balance the humans’ HOUND program. That’s a hell of a fall from grace.

We then learn that there were four generations of Sinister clones before the whole thing fell apart in a horrific calamity and yet further declension occurred:

First generation: straight-up clones of existing x-men, although the language of “divergent copies of a...pure, uncompromised X-gene” is as disturbing as you might expect from a Victorian eugenicist. (Are these the mass-produced units following from the prototypes we saw emerging from Krakoan cocoons in HoX #1?) Anyway, they all got turned into child soldiers to defend Krakoa until it eventually fell 30 years later. (Keep this date in mind.)

Second generation: combinations of only two x-genes, “mostly predictable.”

Third generation: combinations of up to five x-genes, apparently were wildly successful against the “Man-Machine Supremacy” and about to win the war, when...

Fourth generation: apparently were “produced with a corrupted hive-mind,” went rogue, destroyed 40% of all mutants, destroyed Krakoa, and then killed themselves taking out Mars and the Sinister pits therein.

And now we learn what our protagonists are: Rasputin is (seemingly) a fourth generation mutant with the combined powers of Quentin Quire, Piotr Rasputin, Unus the Untouchable, Kitty Pryde, and Laura Kinney, rather than Kitty and Colossus’ kid as some had feared. Notably, however, Rasputin doesn’t have the same gifts in the same strength as her progenitors: she’s half as strong a telepath as Quire, half as good as phasing as Kitty, half as good at healing as Laura, and about half as good at force-fields as Unus. The only places where she equals them is in turning into organic steel. BTW, if those powers seem somewhat redundant - why would you need to be intangible, made of organic steel, force-fielded, and self-healing all at the same time rather than focusing on just a few of those - well, clearly the intent was to create a tank and a half.

Meanwhile, Cardinal is a (seemingly third-generation) “outlier,” a failure in the breeding program that gradually got worse and worse. All Cardinals - and it’s not clear whether all Cardinals look like Nightcrawler - are pacifists and have “an obsession with creation myths,” and are extreme communitarians who reject individual identity. (Incidentally, Cardinal is where we get the religious through-line of the issue.)  One question: if he’s a pacifist, why is he carrying a rapier? Genetic holdover from Kurt Wagner?

Which raises an important question...given that more than 60% of generation four were pacifists, how exactly did they carry out so thorough a massacre of their own people?

And finally we learn that all of this was Mister Sinister’s plan...which ended with his execution. I remain skeptical, because while I absolutely buy that Mister Sinister would arrange things so that he could run his eugenics programs, I don’t get why he’d self-sabotage in order to defect to such an unrelentingly hostile enemy. 

Year One Hundred, Part 2

Here’s where we see the structure described as “the ower, the axis, the pillar of collapse and rebirth, the monolith of ascension.” (Keep your eye on that word.) Here we meet Nimrod the Lesser and Omega, and see the other side.

And what we find is a society where the machine is clearly beginning to become the dominant part of the Supremacy, despite a formal pretense at equality, a society where Nimrod makes polite noises at decency (”I am embarrassed and ashamed at what we did in the name of both expediency and annihiliation”), but then claps with childlike glee at the thought of getting to turn mutants into biological databanks.

(In a much less important interstitial, we learn that the HOUND program turned out to be a failure, with the scary ones being “ineffective hunters of their own kind,” and the majority of the black brains defecting en masse.)

Finally, we see an old man Wolverine, along with a green-suited Magneto, a very tree-like Black Tom Cassidy, and a Xorn, rendezvousing with the team to receive the data and bring them in touch with “the Old Man.” Which raises all kinds of questions as to when this happened vis-a-vis Mister Sinister’s betrayal.

Important Interstitial #2

In the wake of the fall of Krakoa, we learn that the once-burgeoning mutant population has been reduced to less than 10,000 refugees living in Shiar protected territory, with only 8 mutants left in the solar system...presumably the group we saw in part 2. 

Year One Thousand

And now we find out what happened to our poor Hound, namely that she’s been stuck in a tube for 900 years, a crumbling historical manuscript beyond the ability of the Librarian to preserve.

As we move outside, we learn something critically important: that the “human-machine-mutant war” ended, with humans reduced to zoo animals kept in a nature preserve. Does this mean mutants won? Or did the machines do away with both their enemies and their allies? 

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

Random Things You Should Know About the Brotherhood in the Comics

Fun fact, there’s been more than one Brotherhood of Mutants, and not all of them were led by Magneto. He wasn't even in all of them! There's a lengthy list of members, some more widely-known than others, these are just some fun facts about a few of the more well-known members.

- Toad has one of the worst backgrounds in the Brotherhood. He was abandoned as a baby by his parents, probably due to his appearance, and grew up in an orphanage where he was bullied and tormented by the other children for the same reason. Toad is actually very intelligent in the comics (he's an expert with machinery!) but due to his shyness and learning disabilities as a child, he was considered to be mentally disabled. I'm not sure what specific learning disabilities he's stated to have had though. I'd really like to know though, so tell me if you do! Between this and the bullying, he dropped out of school at an early age.

He was later recruited by Magneto, and they developed an abusive relationship. Not romantic, mind you, but besides that the dynamics were the same. Toad believed that Magneto cared for him and became dependent on him, while Magneto physically battered him and verbally belittled him. Read more about it HERE

I like Magneto, but people who think Magneto is a good man aside from his villainy need to take a good look at how he treats his followers. He abuses all of them, including Wanda and Pietro, but Toad got it the absolute worst and actually has a form of Battered Spousal Syndrome as a result.

- Pyro and Avalanche are super duper best bro-friends in the comics and I love it so much. Also, while they may or may not actually be lovers, depending on how you want to interpret it (I generally see them as friends), they were used to metaphorically represent gay lovers in THIS issue.

- Pyro is not an aggressive fire-obsessed nutjob like in Evolution or the movies. He's not angry, he's not insane, he's not a pyromaniac. He's a very nice, normal dude who just also happens to be a fire-controlling super-villain. Besides terrorism, he's also an author who writes Gothic romance novels. I'm not making this up, it's canon and it's terrific and I love it so much.

- Pyro's first name in the comics is St. John, not just John like the movies. It's pronounced Sinjin, I think. He's Australian, maybe it's a more normal name there? Also, speaking of him being Australian, his buddy Avalanche is an immigrant from the Greek island of Crete, and Toad is from England, specifically York.

- Pyro once saved a group of children from a T-rex

- Daredevil once tricked the Blob into getting jealous that Pyro always got the girls on their Freedom Force missions so that the two of them would fight with each other, suggesting Pyro is probably a ladies man ;D

- Once, when Pyro thought he was going to die, he held Mystique's hand and said "Worse ways to go, than with friends" ;A;

- But Pyro did NOT in fact die then. His death would come later. He contracted the Legacy Virus, and his last act alive was saving the life of Senator Kelly, a man he'd once tried to assassinate. The strain of this good deed was too much on Pyro's weakened body, and he passed away with a plea to Senator Kelly to change things for the better. Kelly promised that he would, and he kept his word, changing his anti-mutant stance and working towards improving mutant/human relations instead. Sadly, this led to Kelly being assassinated by a human who felt he'd turned traitor.

- Just as Pyro was made American in the movies, Avalanche and Toad were made American in the cartoons.

- Toad's real name is Mortimer Toynbee in the comics, and Avalanche is Dominikos Ioannis Petrakis. In X-Men: Evolution, they were re-named Todd Tolansky and Lance Alvers, probably to make them easier for children to pronounce. Alias that the comics Avalanche has used include Dominic Janos Petros, Jon Bloom, Dominic Szilard, and Nick.

- Avalanche enjoys gardening and establishes a bar under the name "Nick" to get away from his life of crime.

- One of the Red Skull's S-Men claims to be Avalanche's daughter. Her name is Dancing Water and she's basically a woman made of water who has squid tentacles for legs. She can reshape her body at all, spray blasts of water from her hands, control any nearby water, and teleport via water. As far as I know, it's unknown if her claims of being his daughter are true, who her mother is, what her history is, and why she wants to help the Red Skull destroy mutants.

- Fred "Blob" Dukes is fat because of his mutation, and the X-Men make fun of his weight ALL THE TIME. Making fun of someone for being fat is pretty bad, but there are some X-Men for whom I can still see it as in-character, they're not all the nicest people. But making fun of someone for how their physical mutation effects them? I'd think they'd ALL know better than that. If it's not okay to do to Nightcrawler, it's not ok to do to Blob!

- Blob eating a lot is frequently a gag too and haha I get it, fat people are gluttons, real nice Marvel. Besides that being a cruel stereotype in a series supposed to be a statement AGAINST bigotry, let's go back to the fact that THIS IS BLOB'S MUTATION. He is going to be this size no matter what. And a bigger person or animal needs MORE CALORIES. That's why a bear eats more than a chihuahua! He is eating a lot because guess what, he would probably DIE if he did not, it's basic biology, but it's made into a joke at his expense by the narrative itself. It's so messed up.

- Blob has a super duper best friendship with Unus the Untouchable, they are mega bros and it is so sweet and it is made even sweeter by the fact that Blob is frankly a HUGE JERK (no pun intended) to everyone else. But Unus is his BFF!! Read more about their Brotp HERE!

- Lesser known female Brotherhood members: Lorelei, Phantazia, Mastermind (Martinique Jason), and Astra. When Magneto abandoned his second Brotherhood and they became the Resistants instead, a woman named Mist Mistress joined them, and Spiral joined Mystique's Brotherhood when they became Freedom Force. The more well-known female Brotherhood members are, of course, Mystique, Destiny, Rogue, and the Scarlet Witch. See a post on Lorelei HERE and on Phantazia’s tag HERE for more about these ladies!

- While Mystique has consistently been portrayed as Magneto's subordinate in the movies, this has NEVER been the case in the comics. In fact, they have never even worked together until VERY recently. In the comics, they both led different Brotherhoods, and Mystique was the LEADER of hers, not anyone's second-in-command. In fact, up until recently, she and Magneto barely even crossed paths; the only time I'm aware of them even meeting was in the 1980s when she arrested him at a Holocaust memorial (this was when she and her Brotherhood were working for the government as "Freedom Force" in return for being pardoned for their crimes) So, needless to say, they do NOT have the same relationship depicted in the movies! Currently, they're both X-men and serving on the same team. Yeah, weird.

-Sabretooth is on the same X-Men team that Mystique and Magneto are, but contrary to the first X-Men film, I don't think he's ever been a Brotherhood member. I could be wrong though. But considering Sabes led the massacre of the Morlocks, I have a hunch not...by the way, Riptide was part of that too, he's sure as hell not a Brotherhood guy in the comics. Magneto HATES the Marauders!

- Ah, ok, I checked TV tropes on Sabes: "Something of an associate to Mystique's Brotherhood, as he was never affiliated with the team's present-day incarnation, but was shown in a flashback as joining up with an earlier iteration, even declaring himself their leader before being betrayed and handed over to the authorities by Mystique the next morning. He also worked for Exodus's Brotherhood, and is usually affiliated with the Brotherhood in adaptations."

-As mentioned, Mystique was NEVER  subordinate to Magneto, she led her own independent Brotherhood as LEADER...and at her side was Destiny, aka Irene Adler. Implied to be the woman who inspired the Sherlock Holmes character of the same name (with the equal implication Mystique inspired Sherlock himself...hey, she's Raven DarkHOLME) Destiny was a blind mutant who could see visions of the future. She was also Mystique's lover. Yup. They could not be explicitly referred to as such during the 1980s due to the Comics Code, but Claremont did everything he could to convey to the readers they were couple. They lived together, were affectionate with each other, and even raised a child together...none other than Rogue of the X-Men! In fact, his original plan was that Destiny would be Nightcrawler's mother and Mystique would be his FATHER, having impregnated Destiny in male form, but of course Marvel wouldn't let him get away with that. He also managed to sneakily slide in characters referring to Destiny as "Mystique's leman"---an antiquated word for "lover" obscure enough to slip by editors.

It used to be a common trope in media to use same-sex desires and relationships for villains as a way to emphasize their wickedness. For instance, a movie would never allow a hero to do such a thing, but it could be suggested with villains because it cast homosexuality in a negative light, as something bad people do to show how bad they are, like showing them kicking puppies. Claremont, however, went the opposite route. He used Mystique's tenderness with Destiny to humanize her instead, using their relationship to show a capacity for goodness in Mystique rather than play up how evil she was. They were depicted as loving and normal together, not depraved and decadent and bizarre. They were downright domestic.

While Claremont did have a notable fascination with lesbians, as shown by his use of sexy evil women who would pursue young heroines with a thinly-veiled subtext of sexual creepiness, he didn't fetishize Mystique and Destiny at all. He could have made Destiny a hot leather-clad young dominatrix like Selene or Emma Frost, but she's actually an elderly woman. Neither she nor her relationship with Mystique are ever sexualized. There are some f/f scenes in the X-Men series where you can imagine Claremont wrote it with one hand, but there's never anything like that between these two. Speaking of Destiny being old, she and Mystique were together FOR LIFE. They met during the 1800s when Destiny was much younger, and while they do seem to have had sexual relationships with men during their time together (as evident by both of them having children and grandchildren) their true loves were always each other. Destiny aged slower than an average person, but she did get old, and yet Mystique still stayed with her even though she remained young and I just love them so much. Destiny eventually met her end not by old age, but at the hands of Legion, Xavier's son.

Also, sorry to turn this into a personal soapbox but I have to here: Tumblr is all about "uwu LGBT representation uwuuu" but don't actually give a fuck about an actual canon woman/woman couple, even though tumblr's X-fandom collectively threw a fucking SHITFIT over Cherik not being made canon in DOFP and each of them having a girlfriend/wife and it being the worst most homophobic thing ever and the women in question getting bashed despite them being involved with these same women in canon...but Azazel gets to totally replace Destiny, who is nowhere to be seen in the movies, and fandom doesn't make a PEEP. Fandom is cool with that. In fact, they love Azazel and love drawing him in a happy heteronormative family with Mystique. Tumblr likes to be “uwu support LGBT representation uwuuu” but they give absolutely no fucks about Mystique's bisexuality and Destiny's very existence being erased. I've seen so much fucking Azazel/Mystique/Kurt fanart, but I don't even see much of Destiny even in COMICS fanart.

I get that it's an AU, it's not the comics, but it just leaves such a bad taste of hypocrisy in my mouth considering how tumblr X-fandom AS A WHOLE flipped out about Erik and Charles having relationships with Magda and Moira instead of each other in DOFP , even though they had relationships with those women in canon and, despite all subtext, have never been confirmed as a canon same-sex couple like Mystique and Destiny have. But people were ready to go to WAR for them. But two women who are a CONFIRMED CANON QUEER COUPLE? Who cares, right? Seriously, if it's not hot young cis white men, NO ONE CARES, even when it's a case of a REAL CONFIRMED CANON queer character (two, in fact!) being erased in the films. They had a lifelong relationship together, they raised a child together, they have all these affectionate moments...there is so much Mystique and Destiny stuff in canon, and Claremont WANTED to put in more and wasn't allowed.

And now that we're in a time period where that could be allowed, I think it's a fucking TRAVESTY that this wasn't put in the movies to make up for what wasn't let into the comics, to finally let them be “out” while Destiny was still alive. But it's even bigger travesty to me that tumblr not only ignores this, it endorses the heterosexual ship that replaces it, and then pats itself on the back for being “progressive” when it comes to shipping two DUDES (especially if they can shit on women in the process---there was a LOT of bashing Moira and Magda both in fandom when DOFP came out). Seriously, I swear the reason some people are into slash is just because there's not any EW GROSS GIRLS in it.

Sorry I had to get salty but this really bothers me. Mystique's bisexual and had a lifelong relationship with another woman in which they raised a child together and the movies not only erase that, movie fandom just accepts it while patting themselves on the back about being progressive because they have fanon m/m ships.

[oceniram]

Becoming a Family

It's been about four months since the apocalypse fiasco. In between those months Mystique otherwise known, as Raven Darkholme, has joined the X-MEN. Mystique only joined them to get close to her children; unfortunately for her it was proving to be more difficult than she ever imagined; specially with Rogue, whom did everything in her power to avoid the shape shifter. Mystique has felt, and experienced  hatred most of her life, however the hatred she felt was usually  directed to others. Now a days her hatred is only to herself. Every night she wakes up wondering how life would be, if she had raised all her kids. The only thing that calms her is checking up on her children, like tonight she was walking down the halls, when she noticed the door to Rogue's, and Kitty's room was opened. Mystique  saw that Rogue's sheets were on the floor; she went inside the room and picked the sheets off the floor and placed them over her daughter then she left an pull the door closed.

Mystique's mind now turns to her son Kurt, also known as Nightcrawler. He is more likely to forgive her, than Rogue. It seems that Kurt has been near her sight the moment she came in. He never talks to her but unlike Rogue he's willing to come to her view. Mystique is not sure what to make of this, she heads back to her room. Mystique laid upon her bed, staring at the ceiling teary- eyed, overwhelmed with guilt, and sadness over her life choices, her eyes closed as she slowly drifts in to sleep; with one last tear falling, as she slept her mind enter the dream world.   

Dream Sequence:                                                                                                                                                                 Mystique was in her Raven Darkholme  persona, dressed in a gray business-power suit with her hair in a bun, and glasses. Two small children where running around the house "Anna, Kurt get ready for school!"  Raven exclaimed when the kids didn't answer she went to their room when all of a sudden the two kids she was waken-up turned into there teenage self both in union crying out you left us, your no mother, you don't deserve a second chance, we hate you and  always will. Stay away from us.                                                                                                                                        End of Dream sequence.

 The blue female mutant woke-up from her dream, or rather her nightmare. A plan forming in her head as she thought of a way to gain Kurt, and Rogue's trust. She figure it would be easier to start with Kurt, and then move to Rogue,  with the help of her son.  The reason Kurt would be easier is do to the fact that he's more open-minded  than Rogue. She made a mental note to get info on all of her son and daughter's activities. She decided to talk with Xavier as mush as she despised the man she couldn't deny that he held  some wisdom, however she didn't get a chance as if reading her mind (he probably did) she got called to the briefing room with Rogue and Kurt. "Glad you could make it." The professor stated as the trio walk into his office "Get to the point Xavier" Mystique demanded from the corner of the room "HEY LAY OFF THE PROF!" the gothic mutant exclaimed "Yeah" Nightcrawler agreed with his adoptive sister against his mother. The only reason Kurt was agreeing with Rogue is because he still felt betrayed by his mother's actions "Anna Marie Kurt Wagner don't take those tones with me." The blue shapeshifting mutant ordered. "Or what you'll ground us " Rogue glared at her adoptive mother "I just might ." Mystique replied nonchalant like.

The looks, and hostility her children were given her was making her feel pain; a type of pain she hadn't felt in a long time,  she hid her agony from the world. The professor  tired of all the drama "Enough, I like to get back to the mission at hand " he calmly told them. Seeing how her kids respected the bold man over her brought a stinging twist into her heart. The professor continued to talk; explaining the  details of the mission. It turns out that a mysterious group pop out and is terrorizing the mutant population. "This group is targeting families of mutants." The professor took a small pause for dramatic effect  then he continued "your mission is to pose as a family of four." 

 "Charles, not to criticize  you but theirs only three of us." The red-haired blue skinned mutant mother of two observed. The professor looked amused at her statement, as if he knew something they didn't. "Logan has already been briefed on the mission, he's waiting for you." Rogue and Nightcrawler looked disgusted at the idea of working with their so called mother      "Ah don't think so,"  Rogue stated angrily leaving the room. Nightcrawler teleported out the room to catch up to Rogue; "Sis vait." the fuzzy mutant called to her. " No Kurt don't ya see?" Rogue asked her brother while at the same time she was battling to keep her composure. See vhat,  that ve're   going to help mutants because   ve are X-MEN,"  Nightcrawler declared  proudly, "Kurt they want us to pretend we are a happy family with the mother that abandoned us." Rogue explained desperately  "I know but still there are people more specifically our people in trouble and that's a problem that ve need to fix."                                                                                             "Fine Kurt ya win but am telling ya this is a bad idea." The adoptive siblings walked back to the planning room and meet up with Mystique.

[spongebobafettywap]

Hhh I don't like the new origin story personally. It's supposed to explain everything, make complete sense and be all in the feels but... It doesn't ? At all ?? At least not for me.

The timeline is now more broken from all the continuity errors : Nightcrawler's still officially 30-35 years old while Destiny is stated to be born in the 1850's-1860's cuz the writers really hammered in on the "Irene Adler from Sherlock Holmes" shtick. We got to see her in Immortal X-Men post WWII looking her age, as in old with white hair and wrinkles, cuz she doesn't slowly age like Mystique at all (it's one of the most pivotal part about their dynamic and relationship of Immortal vs Mortal), so ? Was Nightcrawler born before both WW ?? When Margali herself wasn't even around yet since her father was a young soldier still during the wars (who am I kidding the writer for this comic hates Margali judging by how he straight up killed her in his last one shot) ??? Destiny shouldn't look or be younger than 90 years old by the time Kurt was born (he was 21 in the 1980 annual) so why is the comic acting like she's still in her 20's-40's when she supposedly had him ??

Nightcrawler is supposed to be made from like what ? 50% of Destiny's DNA (unaltered and full on hers) + 30% of Mystique's + 10% of Baron Wagner's (an old infertile human...) + 10% of Azazel's ? Okay so why the H did he end up looking like a (+)70% Azazel baby when none of his other children ended up like that with the usual 50% ratio ??? From all his powers coming from him (because they retconned the way Mystique's were and always worked meaning Kurt doesn't actually have anything from her on that aspect), his appearance both as a mutant and when depowered (Some of Azazel's kids are just blue and depowered Nightcrawler is the human disguise Azazel uses without a beard...), his daughter TJ having a retractable tail like Azazel to Sinister's chimera experiments (splicing different mutants's DNA together to make a new one) which had Kurt's DNA mixed with two other mutants (Rachael and Ajax) resulting in Cardinal, who just looks like Azazel with red hair and red eyes, there's a fundamental lack of any "Destiny" in him. It doesn't help that Sinister (guy who makes entire genealogical trees of everyone as a flex) now has a longtime history of going against Destiny so you bet your ass he would have ran his DNA bank computer looking for any descendants of hers, saw a good 50% on Kurt and exploited that ratio to the ground for his splicing experiments. (Kurt is now the og spliced baby too)

And like we really lost something important here in the tone. Because no matter how you looked at the one from Lobdell or the one from Austen (a continuation of and addition to Lobdell's technically), there was a deep layer of tragedy to Nightcrawler's origins and you couldn't help asking yourself if things couldn't have been different for both Mystique and him if she wasn't in such a precarious situation to begin with when she had him (knew this would have happened at all) or if she just tried harder to keep him. That's why the Age of Apocalypse version of them is interesting, this is why the What-if where she raised him from birth with Destiny and Rogue was good addition. It showed that there WAS an alternative... But it wasn't in the cards he got. It was beyond either his or Mystique's control and it was just the usual uncertainty of life being at play. You felt bad for Kurt and even sympathetic for Mystique because she was somewhat a victim of circumstances. It was a tragedy because life back then was unpredictable for both of them

Not here. Mystique and Destiny planned everything, worked years for it to go exactly as intended, went to very specific terrible people for it, picked exactly what they wanted for Nightcrawler (the "child they always wanted") to look like... And on the first notice/freak ass future vision, just unceremoniously abandoned him. After all of that. Did Destiny just never check for the immediate future of them both raising the baby during the entire pregnancy ? Or noticed how her diaries never mentioned him once but did for Rogue many many times ? Then, they felt SO guilty about it that, instead of trying to make the life they forced upon him be slightly better in any way shape or form, they chose to FORGET about it to live their current lives with this adoptive daughter of theirs in peace of mind. Mystique, for some wtf reason, decided to keep the knowledge of her biological ties to Nightcrawler and has since then used it against him whenever. Destiny, the one who wanted this kid in the first place and was the reason he was suddenly abandoned because they just "could never ever possibly raise him due to VISION" (*points to the What-if story where they did raise him and she was pretty much the reason why Kurt died because she did jack and didn't even care that he died*), chose to erase everything. Gg to the one who started it all.

Nightcrawler's origins isn't a tragic story anymore. It's a comedy : the set up ? payoff ? All there. The punchline? The writer wants us to sympathize with Mystique and Destiny in these new origins like the other ones did for Mystique. They want us to sympathize with selfish lazy cowards, who've lived consequence free of the child abandonment they committed and even abandoned said child again in that weird event with Sinister this year, all in a heartbeat. Because Mystique suddenly remembered that she "cared" since that kid was related to her lover... Instead of caring because he was HER KID even with the memory erasure (that factor never stopped her from raising and loving him in those other realities)

So Kurt now : 1) is the closest thing to an IVF baby genetically profiled to be a certain way by the same parents who abandoned him at birth in a place where he was eventually found... Near death. 2) has not one, not two, but 3 irredeemable deadbeat parents (+ one straight up dead) and we now have to like two of them every time they'll get shoved into any stories that includes him (yes from the way this one-shot ended, he's an inclusion, not a main character) and 3) has no actual free will of his own. His argument with Azazel about how much fate/destiny was at play in Kurt's life when they had their fight in Heaven? Azazel was right. It's just that Nightcrawler's life was under someone else's thumb than his, Mystique and Destiny from the very start sure but also Charles since he apparently knew everything ALL ALONG being the one who erased their memories when they asked him to... The very guy that rescued Kurt from a mob, got him in the X-Men, had him face these two ladies time and time again, was there when he wanted to investigate Mystique after she name dropped Margali (never got answered still) and was his confident after the whole Azazel debacle. That guy

I just can't, man

Well yeah but to be fair Kurt's age has always been a problem given that he was originally written to be born just a few years after WWII. Best resolution I have for this problem with his age that I am amazed isn't official canon yet is just make him one of the many ageless mutants, I don't see WHY that's out of the question given Azazel and Mystique's nature.

lol wow gotta love how much contempt X-men writers have for Margali, its not enough to make her a Supervillain they also have to kill her off whenever they get the chance, she's only the only remotely healthy parental relationship Kurt has had with a person who is still alive why even try to write her properly?

The retcon with how he's made is so messy, its like okay they want to make it so Mystique and Destiny are his parents but then they realised they can't exactly just remove Azazel from the picture so now they had to make a version of having their cake and eating it too. So Mystique and Azazel had a baby together but then Mystique put that baby into Destiny. That's how I understand it, I know apparently they tried to factor Baron Wagner into it when its just like wow damn who was even asking for that irrelevant character to be involved? The actual origin makes little sense given that Kurt as you said inherited nothing from Destiny (almost as if her being his mother was a stupid idea or something!)

But you are right now instead of it being a love affair between Azazel and Mystique that ended up exposing her as a mutant due to a mutant child and having her run out of town. Now its some really convoluted origin to Nightcrawler, him being a child of like 3 parental figures and apparently of the 3 only Azazel even remotely cared about him. Which is just you know really amazing writing for all the people who demanded Mystique and Destiny be both his parents lol great job now they both look like even worse parents given they had a kid together and they opted to abandon him for no real reason.

See when it was Mystique on the run it at least made some kind of sense she abandoned him in a Moses basket as her life was too dangerous to involve a baby in and she had no one else with her at the time, now its just like "oh yeah you know me and my partner already had an adopted child but we also had a biological one that we gave up for no reason". It's also funny how Destiny wanted this child but then she doesn't have like any interaction with him or concern over his well being at all in all her years of existing as a character.

I don't like this origin much either as it really does play more like a comedic parody of comic origins than anything actually serious, but the one good thing about it is the hardcore Destiny fans didn't get it their way either.

[spongebobafettywap]

In the same vein as that anon asking the very good "if destiny's plan just needed someone to look like azazel's kid to trick him and counteract his plans, why not have mystique, a shapeshifter, do that at the needed date since azazel has already been tricked into thinking she was pregnant and never even checked how that went down in this retcon ?" question (hope the anon had better days since then), let me present you to mine :

Why didn't mystique and destiny raise nightcrawler together and teach him that, on the big day, he just needed to kill azazel/stop his plan ?

And if it's about how nightcrawler "needs to be a good guy when he'd be facing against azazel" (which is false since azazel got taken down by someone who doesn't even think like a human, let alone is a benevolent being), then look no further than rogue, who was raised by both since childhood, remained good and even became a super-heroine who hasn't switched back to the villain side since joining the xmen

Tl;Dr: rogue really needs to punch some sense into nightcrawler these days

can Rogue punch Mystique and Destiny too???

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

NON-MUTANTS ON X-TEAMS

Something I've run into a lot while RPing in the X-Men fandom is the idea that anyone who is not a mutant, and ESPECIALLY if they are a baseline human, is an unwelcome oddity at the Xavier's school. However, nothing could be further from the truth. From the beginning of the series to the current cast, there have always been non-mutant cast members ranging from androids to aliens to plain ol' regular humans, and they've never had a problem being accepted by the X-Men. Thus, I decided to make a list of them all.

I kept it strictly to non-mutants who served with the X-Men or among their affiliates (New Mutants, X-Force, etc.) but there have also been non-mutants who served on villainous mutant squads too, such as the mutate Lorelei with the Brotherhood and Donald Pierce with the Hellfire Club.

This is probably not even a COMPLETE list; I'm sure there are many more non-mutants among the X-Men and their affiliates!

Calvin Rankin/The Mimic - Calvin is a  not a mutant but a mutate, having gained powers due to an accidental mixup of chemicals from an experiment his father was doing. As a result, he can take on the superpowers of anyone near him, as well as any skills or knowledge that they have. Kind of like Rogue, but without the drawbacks. He first used his powers to attack and bedevil the X-men for sheer spit back in the 1960s when it was just the O5, but in recent times he has changed his ways and was allowed to join the X-Men when he asked. Rogue even says she thinks he'll be a wonderful teacher!

Juggernaut/Cain Marko - Comic book Juggernaut is NOT a mutant, he gained his powers from the magical Gem of Cyttorak. He is also the step-brother of Charles Xavier, and you can guess from the name "Cain" what kind of relationship they have. Since his first appearance in 1965, he's been a villain. But in the 2000s, he joined the X-Men team. Not everyone liked him, and it turned out to be a ruse on his part, but he was allowed to become a member. And any problem anyone had with him was not due to not being a mutant, but on having TRIED TO KILL THEM SO MANY TIMES and being a general abrasive jerk.

Moira MacTaggert: If you're imagining a sexy young American CIA agent, stop it right now. I'm talking about comics Moira. Comics Moira is around Charle's age, very Scottish, and she is actually DOCTOR MacTaggert, a world-renowned leading geneticist whose area of specialty is mutants. She's badass, she's smart, she calls Charles out on his shit when no one else does, she has dark issues of her own, and she goes after a kelpie with a giant gun. She's a longtime ally of the X-Men and friend to mutantkind, she lives at the mansion and forms a relationship with each team member of the time, and even forms/leads her own team of X-Men on Muir Island (the site of her research center) when it appears the original team has been killed. Moira debuts at an early point in the comics, and is an important player in numerous stories for years to come up until her death at the hands of Mystique, but not before she discovered the cure to the Legacy Virus, saving the lives of countless mutants. If you remember no one else on this list, remember Moira MacTaggert.

Amanda Sefton - Many fans know that Nightcrawler was not raised by Mystique, but they don't know much about the family that did raise him. Well, that would be Margali Szardos, his foster mother. She had two biological children as well, Stefan and Jimaine. They were humans, but also practitioners of magic. When Nightcrawler left to join the X-men, Jimaine secretly followed him, using magic to disguise herself with the identity of "Amanda Sefton" under which she became Kurt's girlfriend. Yeah. His sister became his girlfriend while using a magic disguise. I'm serious. No, it's not treated as gross. After she reveals herself, she helps the X-Men on several adventures, using her magic powers to aid them against the Hellfire Club, Mystique’s Brotherhood and the aliens known as Dire Wraiths.

Madelyne Pryor- I know, you're all going "but she's Jean Grey's clone, that makes her a mutant!" Well, the X-Men didn't know that, and neither did she. She was with the X-Men for six years as a normal powerless human before anyone knew she was Jean's clone...before the writers knew, actually, as that was NOT their original plan. She was actually just supposed to be a human woman with an uncanny resemblance to Jean but no connection to her. The Gobyln Queen/clone thing got decided waaay later down the line. And even if it had been intended from the start, the CHARACTERS still regarded her as an ordinary human, since she had no powers until the Goblyn Queen thing, and yet she was a contributing member of the team, and proved herself a very valuable one.

Longshot - Longshot is an alien hailing from Mojoworld.  He is one of many slaves created by genetic engineers in the employ of Mojoworld's masters, but he was one of the ones given free will by the head geneticist in hopes they would rebel, which they did. They also underwent a mystical ritual to give them good luck powers. However, their rebellion failed, and Longshot's memory was erased. Mojo then sent him to Earth, where he joined the X-Men and has been a regular member of their crew since the 1980s. He is often involved romantically with Dazzler.

Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander - Tom and Sharon were both humans who worked at the Xavier's School as staff. Sharon was the nurse and Tom was the PE teacher. Also, this was during the New Mutants era, when Magneto was the headmaster, so even he was a-okay with having them there. He was also outraged when Empath, an evil young mutant, did something horrible to them. Tom was also faculty at the school during Generation X, alongside their 'main' teachers Banshee and Emma Frost (Sharon had sadly been killed by then) When Generation X disbanded, Tom left once more as he had when the New Mutants had done the same, but he later returned when the Xavier's School student body grew once more. When M-day resulted in most of said students losing their powers, Tom was out of a job once more, and his current whereabouts are unknown. Oh, yeah, and they were originally white people but due to an incident with a demonic bear, they were magically transformed into Native Americans. Because comic books.

Stevie Hunter - Stevie Hunter is a human who was Kitty's ballet teacher. Through a series of adventures, she found out about Kitty's real identity as Shadowcat, and the X-Men in general. She not only kept their secret, but became their ally, trying to do what she could to help them whenever she found herself caught in the crossfire of their frequent battles. Xavier offered her a part-time job teaching ballet to the New Mutants, and she accepted. As with Tom and Sharon, Magneto had absolutely no problem with her when he took over the school. In fact, at one point, she chides him for being too hard on the kids for giving her trouble! Even after the New Mutants were no more, Stevie was still a welcome guest at the school, such as when she joined in the Thanksgiving dinner there Uncanny X-Men #308 and the wedding of Jean and Scott in X-Men (second series) #30.

Warlock - Warlock is an alien from the cybernetic race known as the Technarchy. Warlock, unlike others of his race, possesses a distinctive degree of compassion, and as a result was dubbed a mutant in spirit. He was a member of the New Mutants for almost the entire course of the group's existence, and has featured in many X-men stories since.

Bird Brain - Bird Brain is an Ani-Mate, an animal/human hybrid creatures created by a mad scientist known as the Ani-mator. Bird Brain escaped the island where the Ani-Mator created and tormented the Ani-Mates, and befriended the New Mutants. The New Mutants went with him back to the island to help the other Ani-Mates, which sadly resulted in the death of Doug Ramsey. After the Ani-Mator is no more, Bird Brain remains on the island with his fellow Ani-Mates to teach them how to live a better life from the lessons he learned with the New Mutants.

Gosamyr - Gosamyr is yet another alien, and another non-mutant taken in by the New Mutants. She first tried to manipulate them into rescuing her family, but after her family died, she stayed with the New Mutants and began trying to change her manipulative nature for the better. Realizing that her powers were beyond her control and she would cause trouble and manipulation even if she didn't need to, she chose to go in search of a rumored planet of mystics said to be able to help her people control their nature. She has still not returned or been heard from since.

Ship - Ship is, well, a ship. The Ship is specifically an AI created a millennia ago by the beings known as Celestials. It came into the possession of Apocalypse, which he used as his headquarters. When X-Factor defeated Apocalypse, he left Ship behind, and X-Factor decided to adopt Ship as their own new base. Ship revealed its AI to them and became something like their butler, even assisting in taking down the booby traps that Apocalpyse had left. Ship would also later house the New Mutants and the X-termintors. It would at one point be reduced to an orb inside Cable's chest, because comic books, and acted as an adviser to Cable while helping to keep his TO virus infection under control.

Ariel - Ariel is an alien and while she initially joined up with the villainous Vanisher and his Fallen Angels when she first came to Earth, she later aligned with the good guys and resided with the X-Men on the mutant community of Utopia, where she used her teleporting powers to help them. While teleportation is an ability that all members of her species posses, Ariel also has an addition power of being able to supernaturally persuade and sweet-talk others. She claims that this bonus power runs in her family, which sort of makes her a genetic mutant too...just, not a human one.

Shatterstar - Like Longshot, he hails from the Mojoverse and is of the same genetically engineered slave race. In fact, he is the son of Longshot and Dazzler, raised in the future, because comic books. While on a mission to Earth to find the X-Men for aid, he instead found X-Force. At first he battled them, but after talking, they aided him in the slave rebellion and promised to help him defeat Mojo one day. From that point on Shatterstar has been a member of X-Force, and formed a relationship with his mutant teammate Rictor, making them one of the first same-sex couples in the X-comics.

Adam-X - Adam X, or Adam the X-treme, or Adam Neramani, is a half-human half-Shi'ar who also has the ability to make blood explode. Yeah, he's the 90s incarnate. He was originally intended by Fabian Niceiza to be the half-brother of Cyclops and Havok, but that never actually came to pass on the page, though many readers guessed it. In any case, this bad boy worked with X-Force during the 90s, and while his appearences have been sporadic since, he's also worked with the X-Men themselves in recent times as well.

Gaia - Though Gaia is sometimes called a mutant by others, it's actually not totally sure what Gaia really actually is. Generation X found her in another dimension. She looks totally human, but so does Ariel, so she could be an alien, or she could be a super-powered human, mutant or mutate or something else, who is just from another dimension. It's unsure. What is sure is that she was one of Generation X for awhile, but left them to go do her own thing and explore life on Earth. She has not been seen since. But consider her powers are pretty major, she's probably ok. Not only was she telepathic, empathic, and telekinetic, but she could reshape matter as she pleased, even creating objects out of nothing, such as a big fancy futuristic house for herself. Regardless of her odd origins and indistinct species one thing is for sure: Gaia was one of the team for the short time she was on it. No one ever cared one bit that she might not exactly be a mutant per se, or even mentioned it at all. She was one of Generation X, and that's what mattered.

Davis "Slipstream" Cameron - Davis was not a mutant, but his sister Heather "Lifeguard" Cameron was, and when she joined the X-Men, he came with her, and no one objected at all. Later, he would become a mutant himself; during a crisis in which Heather was in danger, Sage explained to him that while he was not a mutant, he carried latent mutant genes, so his children or grandchildren would probably be mutants, but not him. However, due to her own powers, she could activate these genes, enabling him to help the X-Men save his sister. Davis agreed to it, and gained the ability to teleport. Davis left the team when his sister underwent a physical transformation that revealed she was half-alien in addition to a mutant; despite having had no problem with his sister's mutation, her new alien-hybrid form horrified him. It is unknown if Davis too is part alien, or if he is in fact only her half-brother and thus fully human.

Annie Ghazikhanian - Annie succeeded the late Sharon as the human nurse at a mutant school. She had a mutant son, Carter, but she also had some anti-mutant prejudices which she was working through. Nonetheless, she developed a friendship with Northstar, and got on well with most of the X-Men. The only person she actually had a problem with was Lorna, and this was due to them both being in love with Alex...and the then-unstable Lorna attacking her with scalpels. However, she eventually left the school with her son due to her understandable fear of the supervillain attacks that plagued it, specifically after one resulted in the death of another student that her son was friends with.

Hepzibah - Hepzibah is an alien who has long been a member of the space adventurer crew known as the Starjammers, who have teamed up with the X-Men on many occasions. She eventually joined them, and served through many X-Men adventures such as World War Hulk, where she answered the Stepford Cuckoo's call for help when the Hulk attacked Professor X, and Messiah Complex in which she joined X-Force. When the X-Men make their new base Utopia, she is seen there, despite it being a "mutant sanctuary". Currently, however, she is back in outer space again.

Danger - So it turns out that the Danger room is alive and sentient, and then it turns into a vaguely female-looking android thing called Danger, and tried to kill the X-Men, but then joined them. Yeah. So that's a thing that happened. She has since been a member of X-Club and X-Factor as well as the X-Men, and has an interest in rehabilitating villains such as  Empath, Sebastian Shaw and Donald Pierce.

Karima Shapandar/Omega Sentinel - What's a more archetypal foe of mutantkind then than the Sentinel? And yet, the X-Men have even welcomed one of them into their ranks. Karima was an ordinary human police officers who was transformed into an Omega Prime Sentinel against her will by Bastion. A Prime Sentinel is a human  with cybernetic nanotech implants which, upon activation, transforms them into armored beings with powerful weapons systems...programmed, of course, to kill mutants. Though Karima tried to fight her programming, she was no match for it alone. It was not until she encountered Magneto and Xavier on Genosha that she was freed. Together, the two men combined their powers to restore her human consciousness and free will, rather than destroying her. She remained in Genosha to rehabilitate and adjust to the changes of her body, and used her powers to help mutants. Eventually, she joined the X-Men. Even Magneto of all people shows her great kindness; there's a scene of him reading to her from a Kipling book during her recovery! And yeah, Kipling was hella racist against Indians so maybe not the best choice to read to a woman who is Indian, but MAGNETO is being KIND to a HUMAN who is also a SENTINEL ok, it's amazing, and it's proof of how well-accepted she is among the X-Men and their lot. Eventually during the course of her adventures with the X-Men, her Sentinel aspects are rendered inert by a villain, making her virtually human again. She chose to continue to serve with the X-men and was a welcome member of their team. However, she later leaves the X-Men to take a job with the mutant superheroes Sabra and Gabriel Shepherd, saying she feels she'd be a better fit there and she wants to pursue a case they're working on.

Dr. Kavita Rao - Creator of the famous "cure" for mutation, Dr. Kavita Rao is an ordinary human as well as a brilliant geneticist. Though she saw mutation as a disease, she was motivated by good intentions rather than hateful ones, having seen so many mutants suffer or hurt others because of their powers, and believed that she was helping them. Considering that hundreds of mutants signed up for her cure, known as Hope, perhaps she even had a point in some cases....such as that of Tildie, one of her patients, a little girl whose uncontrollable powers had killed her own parents. regardless, Wolverine destroyed her work. Despite the hostile feelings of many X-Men towards Kavita's beliefs, and the fact she had allied with the alien villain known as Ord, she was recruited by the X-Men for their science squad known as the X-Club. This gave her a home and a job, as she had become a pariah in the scientific community due to her alliance with Ord becoming known, and, after M-day, out of work as someone who studied mutants, since there were virtually none left. She has since done her best to help the X-Men and mutantkind.

Broo - Of all the extraterrestrial species that the X-men have ever encountered, there is none more horrifying and loathsome than the evil creatures called the Brood. And yet, when the X-Men discovered a young and tiny specimen among them that, unlike the others, had the capacity to feel compassion, they welcomed him with open arms. Rejected by his own people, the little alien now known as "Broo" has found a home in the Xavier's School. Though he was teased in the beginning by some obnoxious classmates, the staff has always supported him, and he has made great friends among the other students. He's rather like the Warlock of his generation!

Fantomex and E.V.A: Fantomex was created by the Weapon Plus program, the same people who made Wolverine, to serve as a super-sentinel against Earth's mutant population. Weapon Plus created a population of technorganic organisms whose living tissue was fused with Sentinel nanotechnology at the cellular level. His mother, a member of this race, became pregnant when she was fertilized with nanomachines, resulting in the birth of Fantomex. So basically he's a sort of human sentinel but not in a cyborg way like Karima is. It's weird, Grant Morrison wrote it. Anyway, he escaped, and after a lot of contact with the X-Men, he ends up among them, living on Utopia and helping them in their missions. He then becomes a member of Uncanny X-Force, a secret team organized by Cyclops without the knowledge of other X-Men in order to carry out missions that they would never do, such as the assassination of Apocalypse while he was incarnated in a child form. Though Fantomex carried the mission out, he also cloned the child, resulting in Evan Sabahnur/Genesis. When Cable created his new X-Force team after this, Fantomex was a member, and he is a member of the most recent X-Men team in All New All Different led by Magneto. As for EVA, she's a sentient spaceship that is his external nervous system. I told you, Grant Morrison wrote it.

Deadpool - Believe it or not, this fan-favorite is not a mutant! He's a mutate, meaning someone who wasn't born with their powers. For instance, Captain America and Spider-Man are mutates. In Deadpool's case, while his backstory varies a lot, the general history is that he was given his healing factor artifically by Dr. Emrys Killebrew of the Weapon X/Weapon Plus program. However, since Deadpool was suffering from cancer, this made his cancerous cells as immortal as his healthy cells, hence his horrendous appearance. He was a member of the same X-Force team as Fantomex. He's also claimed to be a member of the X-Men, but I'm not sure if he actually was or not.

Deathlok Prime (Unit L17): A cybernetic soldier from an alternate future who joins X-Force and teaches at the Jean Grey School. He has Wolverine-like claws made of energy, carries an alternate version of Captain America's shield, and can predict numerous versions of the future.

I didn't count Lifeguard because she joined the X-Men as a mutant, it wasn't until later she discovered and manifested her half-Shi'ar side. So as far as they and she knew when they let her on, she was a mutant, and my point with this list was that the X-Men welcome non-mutants as much as they do their own kind. That's the same reason I didn't count Jubilee; she was a mutant on the team for a long, long time before she became a human-then-vampire, so it's a different dynamic.

I didn't count Valerie "Val" Cooper (the human in charge of X-Factor) because despite the "X" in the name, X-Factor was a government team, not affiliated with the X-Men and/or Xavier in any way. But you should check her out! You should also check out Yukio, a badass human lady who is a close friend and ally to Wolverine and Storm. She's not on this list because, while she's helped them, she's never actually been a member of the X-Men or a teacher at the school or anything like that. But she's super duper awesome!

But yeah, that's our list---mutates, aliens, Sentinels, and plain ol' baseline humans, there's a place for them all with the X-Men!

[rogueslove]

What If . . . ? #98