#anti Raven Darkholme

[mcmusing]

Previously, on X-Men: The Hypocrisy Games....

OMG, Charles, we're not kids! We inexperienced rubes are totally ready to stop WW3! Ugh, you're always so overprotective!

OMG, Charles, they're just kids! How could you put a heavily trained fighting force in danger?! You have no regard for our safety!

Why do I have to stay covered up during the segregated '60s? The world should worship my blue!

How dare Charles create a world that worships my blue in the integrated '80s-90s? Ew, better cover up.

[groovy-lady]

I loathe Mystique/Raven Darkholme in the XCU SO MUCH especially in the Alternate Trilogy!!!! She’s whiny, selfish, bitchy, narcissistic, and mean. It also makes zero sense that she is somehow Charles Xavier’s sister yet she asks him if he would date her, she gets jealous when he flirts with other women, and she doesn’t think it’s wrong or uncomfortable for others when she walks around nude and just reprimands Charles for being uncomfortable about her walking around naked, and just abandons Charles after he gets shot by Erik! And that’s just in X-Men: First Class! She gets worse in the rest of the movies! She didn’t deserve to be seen as a hero because she has done nothing to earn the hero status. If they wanted to give Charles Xavier a sister, then he deserved a sister who actually cared about him!

[mcmusing]

Charles Xavier is the epitome of love and hope 💛

erik: i have a son?

charles: my son now

[velvet4510]

What The Sequel(s) to X-Men: Days of Future Past Should Have Looked Like

I haven’t even seen X-Men: Apocalypse or X-Men: Dark Phoenix start to finish but thanks to this app i know practically the entire plots of both films and i’m just so utterly appalled by them. Not just with the way they mess up the timeline (Jean & Scott as teenagers and Warren as a young adult in 1983?? Excuse me?? No way Logan’s time shenanigans altered people’s birth dates, what??) But also with the way they just butcher every character arc - Charles being selfish? Erik settling down with a human instead of continuing to fight for his cause and make up for his 10 years of inactivity? Giving Erik an OC daughter JUST to kill her 2 seconds later rather than focus on his fatherhood story with Peter? Erik and Ororo siding with Apocalypse to destroy the whole world? Hank turning on Charles when he alone stood by Charles post-beach divorce all those years? Raven being ungrateful to Charles for creating a better world for mutants? Trying to convince us that Charles was somehow in love with Moira and Erik was somehow in love with Raven? The X-Men throwing Charles out of his own house?? WHAT IS THIS?????

Frankly I don’t get why the writers tried (and failed) to give us more Jean and Scott and Ororo when we got plenty of them in the other movies and we know thanks to the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past that Charles will still eventually recruit them. Jean and Scott’s very presence at the end of that film shows that the sight of Logan’s memories of Jean’s original fate prompted Charles to NOT repeat his other self’s mistakes and instead use a better approach to help Jean that enabled her to keep the Phoenix under control and not hurt Scott. That’s all we need to know about them in the new timeline. We don’t need to see Charles messing up yet again when it comes to Jean when that ruins a huge layer of the meaning and impact of DOFP’s ending.

James McAvoy himself pointed out how unnecessary it felt to recycle characters from the original trilogy when the X-Men in the comics are full of plenty of other characters that could’ve been introduced in a DOFP sequel instead. He’s absolutely right.

But here’s what I really think: if any sequels to DOFP just HAD to be made, they shouldn’t have tried to stuff in even more characters. If they HAD to include another old character we’d seen before, it should’ve been Kurt Wagner and Kurt Wagner only. Why? Because he’s Raven & Azazel’s son. And this would only add to the parenthood theme already present through Erik & Peter, and Charles & his students; add a new dimension to Raven as a character as we explore how she feels about being a mother, and what happened that caused her to be separated from her child; and add a new dimension to Hank as we explore how he feels about potentially being a parental figure to Kurt as a result of following his heart toward Raven.

The sequel(s) should’ve focused on developing the relationships that actually had been established/hinted at, and those that would naturally branch as a result:

Erik & Peter as father and son

Raven & Kurt as mother and son

Charles’ parental relationship with his young students

Charles & Erik getting back together

Hank & Raven getting back together

Hank dealing with being Kurt’s possible stepfather

Charles & Raven reconciling as siblings once again

Charles & Peter as stepfather and stepson

Charles & Kurt as uncle and nephew

Alex seeing all of this and being reminded of his bad relationship with his own parents that led him to get locked up before Charles and Erik found him, emphasizing Charles’ place in his life as his true “father,” and foreshadowing Scott by revealing he’s not in touch with his family (meaning he doesn’t know he has a much-younger brother)

Erik bonding with Kurt and making Kurt comfortable through being the only other native German speaker in the group

Erik & Hank dealing with their rocky post-DOFP relationship; Hank giving Erik a proper calling out for sending Charles into such a depression for a decade and for trying to kill Raven

Erik bonding with Charles’ other students and slowly realizing there is a place for him at the school

(Logan may or may not work as a character in such a sequel. But whether he has a big or small role, it must be acknowledged that Raven, not Stryker, saved him from the Potomac at the end of DOFP. So now he is on a different path, and is NOT Weapon X. Either he’s still at the mansion or went his own way with the open possibility of returning; I think the latter makes more sense since he’s such a loner and considering he wouldn’t remember the events of DOFP, he’d be pretty overwhelmed. Plus his explained absence would allow space for the film(s) to focus more on the other characters.)

Regardless, any villain(s) of those hypothetical sequels should’ve been the kind of antagonist(s) whose threat inevitably brought those aforementioned characters together and, in the process, fleshed out those relationships.

Also, no stupid 10-year time jumps between every movie. Keep it to 5-7 years after DOFP, at the most.

Think of the emotional impact that would bring:

Charles & Raven dealing with the fact that she chose not to come to him for help when she became pregnant

Hank & Raven discussing Raven’s history with Azazel and both of them admitting they went to great lengths to try to get over each other but nothing worked

Raven exploring motherhood and her feelings about either having abandoned Kurt as a baby or accidentally losing him, and Hank supporting her in this

Erik exploring his newfound fatherhood, and Charles supporting him in this

Peter’s feelings toward his dad for being absent from his life for so long and also for being a terrorist

Kurt’s feelings toward his mom for being absent for so long, and possibly for intentionally leaving him

Peter & Kurt becoming besties and bonding over being super-fast travelers who have spent too many years not knowing one or both parents

Hank wishing things had been different with Raven and that Kurt could’ve been his son and thinking about stepping into a stepfather role for Kurt

Erik & Peter perhaps getting stranded/separated from the rest of the group and forced to bond while trying to find their way back

Erik saving Peter’s life in battle, cementing their new bond

Hank fully embracing his Beast form (mutant and proud) in battle while protecting Raven and Kurt

Raven, Hank & Kurt as a badass blue family

Erik finally deflecting a bullet successfully to save Charles

Charles & Erik fighting side by side once again and realizing they’re better together than apart

Erik & Hank managing to find some common ground as they both have been unexpectedly thrown into fatherhood (see, no need for female fridging!)

Erik coming up with Quicksilver as Peter’s superhero name, at least getting the chance to name his son in this way

Basically the whole group becoming a big family

Perhaps closing with a flash forward a few years: Erik & Raven are now teachers at the school; young Scott arrives at the school and meets Alex for the first time; Charles & Erik hear about young Jean and head out to meet her; Hank & Raven manage to discover Logan’s location and head out to bring him back to the mansion - tying into the finale of DOFP

Those are just a few things that could’ve, and should’ve, been prioritized in a sequel to DOFP.

[1nt3rnalpu7ref4ct10n]

s4e14

[racefortheironthrone]

What did you think of X-Men Blue Origins?

(I may turn this into a People's History of the Marvel Universe later today, so keep an eye on this space.)

X-Men Blue: Origins and the Power of the Additive Retcon

(WARNING: heavy spoilers under the cut)

Introduction

If you've been a long-time X-Men reader, or you're a listener of Jay & Miles or Cerebrocast or any number of other LGBT+ X-Men podcasts, you probably know the story about how Chris Claremont wrote Mystique and Destiny as a lesbian couple, but had to use obscure verbiage and subtextual coding to get past Jim Shooter's blanket ban on LGBT+ characters in the Marvel Universe.

Likewise, you're probably also familiar with the story that, when Chris Claremont came up with the idea that Raven Darkholme and Kurt Wagner were related (a plot point set up all the way back in Uncanny X-Men #142), he intended that Mystique was Nightcrawler's father, having used her shapeshifting powers to take on a male body and impregnate (her one true love) Irene. This would have moved far beyond subtext - but it proved to be a bridge too far for Marvel editorial, and Claremont was never able to get it past S&P.

This lacuna in the backstories of Kurt and Raven - who was Kurt's father? - would remain one of the enduring mysteries of the X-Men mythos...and if there's one thing that comic writers like, it's filling in these gaps with a retcon.

Enter the Draco

Before I get into the most infamous story in all of X-Men history, I want to talk about retcons a bit. As I've written before:

"As long as there have been comic books, there have been retcons. For all that they have acquired a bad reputation, retcons can be an incredibly useful tool in comics writing and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Done right, retcons can add an enormous amount of depth and breadth to a character, making their worlds far richer than they were before. Instead, I would argue that retcons should be judged on the basis of whether they’re additive (bringing something new to the character by showing us a previously unknown aspect of their lives we never knew existed before) or subtractive (taking away something from the character that had previously been an important part of their identity), and how well those changes suit the character."

For a good example of an additive retcon, I would point to Chris Claremont re-writing Magneto's entire personality by revealing that he was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. As I have argued at some length, this transformed Magneto from a Doctor Doom knockoff into a complex and sympathetic character who could now work as a villain, anti-villain, anti-hero, or hero depending on the needs of the story.

For a good example of a subtractive retcon, I would point to...the Draco. If you're not familiar with this story, the TLDR is that it was revealed that Kurt's father was Azazel - an evil ancient mutant with the same powers and the same appearance (albeit color-shifted) as Kurt, who claims to be the devil and is part of a tribe of demonic-looking mutants who were banished to the Brimstone Dimension, and who fathered Nightcrawler as part of a plot to end this banishment.

I don't want to belabor Chuck Austen, because I think that Connor Goldsmith is right about his run actually being a camp cult classic in retrospect. However, I think we both agree that the Draco was a misfire, because of how the retcon undermined Kurt's entire thematic purpose as established in Giant-Size X-Men that Nightcrawler was actually a noble and arguably saintly man who suffered from unjust prejudice due to the random accident that his mutation made him appear to be a demon, and because of how the retcon undermined the centrality of Mystique and Destiny's relationship.

X-Men Blue Origins

This brings us to the Krakoan era. In HOXPOX and X-Men and Inferno, Jonathan Hickman had made Mystique and Destiny a crucial part of the story in a way that they hadn't been in decades: they were the great nemeses of Moira X, they were the force that threatened to burn Krakoa to the ground by revealing the devil's bargain that Xavier had struck with Sinister (and Moira), they were the lens through which the potential futures of Krakoa were explored, and they ultimately reshaped the Quiet Council and the Five in incredibly consequential ways.

This throughline was furthered after Hickman's departure, with Kieron Gillen exploring the backstories of Mystique and Destiny in Immortal X-Men and Sins of Sinister, and both Gillen and Si Spurrier exploring their relationship with Nightcrawler in AXE Judgement Day, Sins of Sinister, Way of X, Legion of X, Nightcrawlers, and Sons of X. One of the threads that wove through the interconnected fabric of these books was an increasing closeness between Kurt and Irene that needed an explanation. Many long-time readers began to anticipate that a retcon about Kurt's parentage was coming - and then we got X-Men Blue: Origins.

In this one issue, Si Spurrier had the difficult assignment of figuring out a way to "fix" the Draco and restore Claremont's intended backstory in a way that was surgical and elegant, that served the character arcs of Kurt, Raven, and Irene, and that dealt with complicated issues of trans and nonbinary representation, lesbian representation, disability representation, and the protean nature of the mutant metaphor. Thanks to help from Charlie Jane Anders and Steve Foxe, I think Spurrier succeeded tremendously.

I don't want to go through the issue beat-by-beat, because you should all read it, but the major retcon is that Mystique turns out to be a near-Omega level shapeshifter, who can rewrite themselves on a molecular level. Raven transformed into a male body and impregnated Irene, using bits of Azazel and many other men's DNA as her "pigments." In addition to being a deeply felt desire on both their parts to have a family together, this was part of Irene's plan to save them both (and the entire world) from Azazel's schemes, a plan that required them to abandon Kurt as a scapegoat-savior (a la Robert Graves' King Jesus), and to have Xavier wipe both their memories.

Now, I'm not the right person to write about what this story means on a representational level; I'll leave it to my LGBT+ colleagues on the Cerebrocast discord and elsewhere to discuss the personal resonances the story had for them.

What I will say, however, is that I thought this issue threaded the needle of all of these competing imperatives very deftly. It "fixed" the Draco without completely negating it, it really deepened and complicated the characters and relationships of both Raven and Irene (by showing that, in a lot of ways, Destiny is the more ruthless and manipulative of the two), and it honored Kurt's core identity as a man of hope and compassion (even if it did put him in a rather thankless ingénue role for much of the book).

It is the very acme of an additive retcon; nothing was lost, everything was gained.

I still think the baby Nightcrawler is just a bad bit, but then again I don't really vibe with Spurrier's comedic stylings.

[facetsofthejewel]

(New Artwork) Queer Icon: Mystique (Raven Darkholme)!! X-Men adjacent, mutant...anti-hero!! Intended to be the first queer & gender fluid character in a major comic company (Marvel). Sadly Chris Claremont was forced to make her to be heavily coded instead. Raven has recently FINALLY being allowed to be themselves and have everything they ever wanted... including getting married to her very long time partner, Destiny!! shannonhedges.com

[bigskydreaming]

stone-monkey

So what Im getting from this is that Nathaniel is now every new mildly mysterious supervillian?

LOL, no, just three of them. ;)

Basically - once upon a time, there was just one Nathaniel Essex aka Mr. Sinister, doing his eugenics fuckshit back in Victorian England when Apocalypse happened across him and was like yes, you get it. So he gave Essex a Celestial tech makeover and imbued him with longevity and all kinds of powers and set him on the road to becoming the Mr. Sinister we all know and loathe....except wait, maybe we never knew him at all.

Because in the last Immortal X-Men issue, we flashed back to when Irene Adler aka Destiny and Raven Darkholme aka Mystique aka Sherlock Holmes, were solving a mystery back in the late 1800s in London, which traced back to Essex and SEEMED to end in his death. But then cut to the 1940s, and Essex is somehow alive and well, and working on a shady US government funded genetics project with Irene and his other longtime co-conspirator Amanda Mueller (a mutant from the 1800s with the power of longevity but NOT eternal youth, and who happens to be the great-great-great-grandmother of Scott, Alex and Gabriel Summers). 

This project was really just a front for the original Sinister/Essex to use as a cover while in secret utilizing its resources to create four clones/genetic offshoots of himself. With each of them then implanted with a degree of his memories and made to believe that they were the original Sinister before he engineered their ‘escape’ and let them loose in four specific directions....because he was seeking the answer/solution to what he saw as the biggest threat to his own ambitions and well, Earth as a whole: the coming Phalanx invasion.

(The Phalanx are an infamous machine intelligence race in Marvel lore, think the Borg on steroids because they hail from extradimensional space and seek to assimilate life in every plane of existence, including the astral plane).

And so by creating these four under-Sinisters, each themed to a playing card motif, he sought to gain a foothold in the four most likely places to find viable resources or strategies to use against the Phalanx....but specifically in the four places he deemed too incompatible to ever work together for a common goal on their own.

Thus we got the Diamond Sinister we THOUGHT we’d known all along, as he looks the most like the original Sinister....but this Sinister was genetically engineered to be a mutant and obsessed with mutants and ended up on Krakoa as one of the Quiet Council.

Club Sinister is Dr. Stasis, a completely human version of Nathaniel Essex who ended up in the hierarchy of Orchis, the big anti-mutant organization obsessed with the eradication of mutantkind and willing to work with anyone to accomplish that....including Nimrod and Omega Sentinel, two machine intelligences who behind the backs of the rest of Orchis are plotting the annihilation of all humanity along with mutantkind, and are trying to pave the way for the looming Phalanx invasion.

Spade Sinister is Orbis Stellaris, the version of himself that Nathaniel heavily modified with extraterrestrial-derived Celestial tech and then yeeted into deep space, where he became a prominent figure in the Galactic Rim Collective, rising to power there by genetically engineering clone armies he mass produced and sold to the highest bidders, turning this into political cachet that eventually got him a seat in the Galactic Rim Collective’s government, similar to how Diamond Sinister weaseled his way into mutants’ government.

And Heart Sinister is Mother Righteous, the odd woman out of the group in all sorts of ways, not the least of which being she’s the one of the four obsessed not just with science and genetics but with magic and the occult as well. She’s spent the last few decades building a power base for herself on the astral plane itself, becoming known as ‘the wheeler/dealer of the astral plane, who can offer you anything you seek in exchange for a favor’ as she built up a system of quid pro quo wherein she trades in gods, spirits, wishes....by using the power and resources of beings who utilize her ‘services’ in order to fund and back the requests of the next people to seek her out. Like one giant occult Pyramid Scheme based out of her lair on the Astral Plane where she spies on everyone’s dreams. 

Currently Mother Righteous is hanging out in the Altar, which is a bubble-space in the Astral Plane that was created by Legion (David Haller, Professor Xavier’s omega level mutant son) and tethered to Arakko in real/physical space. (Arakko being Mars, renamed after twelve omega level mutants terraformed the planet and relocated Krakoa’s sister-nation Arakko to it, making it the mutant homeworld). Mother Righteous seems to think Legion is the key to defeating the Phalanx, and has as her right-hand man a fusion being called Vox Ignis (Voice of the Fire) who are basically a symbiosis of Sean Cassidy aka Banshee and a Ghost Rider-esque spirit that’s called the Spirit of Variance rather than the Spirit of Vengeance. We don’t know much about what their deal is yet.

But anyway.....this is all building up to an event in January called Sins of Sinister where Diamond/Krakoan Sinister is going to make a power play to basically take over the solar system.....and seems to be on a collision course with the other three Sinister-derivations, who each have their own agendas that don’t play well with ‘letting Diamond Dave screw up all OUR plans by playing Master of the Universe or whatever fuckshit he’s on about now.’

Odds are the event, which is almost guaranteed to pit all four against each other, will end with the four of them taking each other out, everyone else believing that Sinister is gone for good (because only Irene and Mystique know that there’s a FIFTH Sinister running around, the original who created the other four....well Apocalypse and Amanda probably know too, but the former’s in Amenth and who knows where the latter is these days). But ultimately I’m betting this is all according to OG Sinister’s plans and he’s just been biding his time til his creations all take each other out so he can co-opt everything they’ve learned and come up with for facing off against the Phalanx, and pick up where each of them left off without having to share, lol.

[mcmusing]

From the beginning, he always offered her love, acceptance, safety, forgiveness, and loyalty.

By the end, she only offered him disdain, ridicule, disregard, bitterness, and abandonment.

[flastar13]

It would have been interesting if instead of just Charles sucking, they ripped apart the entire main cast;

-Raven is often right about her criticisms of her brother, yes, but she's also unnecessarily antagonistic towards him, rarely giving him affection or respect, which is one of the reasons Charles is so hungry for these two. Also Raven is incredibly hypocritical towards her "Mutant and Proud" self, especially towards her brother.

-Hank, who is fighting his beastly side, is afraid of becoming a threat, is still fighting his enabling tendencies, especially with Raven and Charles, because he's afraid of being abandoned by them. He still can't accept himself because he's afraid of himself, and he won't talk about his problems with Raven because he's afraid of being abandoned by her, again.

-Erik, well something that failed in the movie was to explain how he obtained Genosha, in the comics the island nation used mutants as slave labor, going so far as to have breeding programs, of course the X-Men including Magneto came to the rescue, but then Mags turned off the planet's magnetic fields like in X-Men '97 and demanded the United Nations to give her the island as a nation of mutants, when all the nations of the world did it out of fear, Mags expelled the entire human population. Of course the mutants of Genosha were free and the mutants of the rest of the world had a home where they were not persecuted, but Erik's methods are horrible. They could show the effects of that, a human refugee crisis from Genosha, general panic and an anti-mutant sentiment, that explains why the X-Men accept more and more dangerous missions and Charles is so obsessed with the PR campaign. Erik, instead of being terrified by Jean's powers, wants to use them to protect Genosha, only to see how destructive they are when his son Pietro is almost killed. Then in the middle of his hunt for the Dark Phoenix, he is forced to contemplate how his actions help mutants in the short term but in the long run put them in greater danger or as always hurt innocent people.

-Charles, he is too overprotective with Jean and Scott (He is also his surrogate son), he fears abandonment, he craves love, respect and admiration, and that is partly guiding him; basically he has not overcome his problems he only hides them better until he explodes and gives a speech for the reason that you stink to everyone where he points out that while he has defects, Erik and Raven have many more.

Erik: *paralyzes charles, drops a stadium on him, and tried to kill his sister*

Charles: I forgive you :)

Raven: *constantly ungrateful for charles, invalidates everything he has done for mutants, always argues with him, leaves him bleeding on a beach to go with Erik*

Charles: It's ok none of that was your fault. I forgive you :)

Charles: *constantly offers support and help to all mutants, including the brotherhood. Pushed past his depression and drug addiction to help Raven, spent his time, money, and energy to take care and watch over the children. Saves the world more then once*

Mutants: *Idiolizes a woman for not being evil and killing someone*

Charles: *makes one mistake*

Literally everyone: HOW DARE YOU? You are a villain! You are disgusting you shouldn't be around the children you are harmful! I'm going to erase your legacy from the school you made from YOUR house! You have done NOTHING for mutants

Me: wtf

[deputy-ajay-ghale]

God Dark Phoenix!Raven is the w o r s t .

[starfanatic]

I cant be the only one who thinks Raven is very ungrateful and kinda toxic towards Hank and Charles and it’s overlooked because she’s... insecure ig?

1. Invisible Mutations

I fully understand what she means by it but i honestly could not feel bad for her. She’s a shapeshifter! Who cares if her initial form is Misses Smurf she can just change it after at will. I could understand Hank because he doesn’t have the luxury to change his body at will and he has to accept that. When Raven says Mutant and Proud to Hank I just know Hank was rolling his eyes in his head. YOU can change your body I cannot. She has more of a invisible mutation then Hank, Azazel, etc. Also she says “mutant and proud” but she wanted Charles to stay out of her head, thus suppressing his mutation. She has to hide her mutation, just like every other mutant has to do or they’ll get killed.

2. Erik

Now I love Erik, he’s not the problem here. But if we look at it from Hank’s POV, Raven is being extremely toxic. Raven has had zero communication with him and then she shows up at the mansion years or months later and she’s like “Hey there”. Hank is happy to see Raven again after so long but still upset she didn’t speak to him or write to him at all. Then the first thing she starts talking about is, you guessed it, Erik.

Imagine your ex (i know they weren’t really together but they were clearly romantically involved). Broke up with you and has basically ignored you for years (let’s say 13 years) and the first thing your ex does after seeing you is ask for help. And not only that, but ask for help for the man she/he left you for. And they didn’t do this once but TWICE.

Charles is a victim of this too, Raven doesn’t even try asking how he is it goes straight into a argument almost immediately. And then she’s like “this is about erik”. I would have told her to get out of my house (and helped erik on the low).

3. Her little line she had in Dark Phoenix

Honestly that was a slap in the face to a lot of Charles Xavier fans. HE DIDNT RISK ANYTHING? Raven saw Charles fight Erik and then saw the bullet his his spine. SHE IS LOOKING AT HIM IM A WHEELCHAIR. And did she forget Charles had to pull himself out of a drug addiction to help her. Also she’s literally standing in his house. He sacrificed his money, his time, his energy for the mutants so they have a safe haven to be. She had no right to say that.

Then she said “The women are always saving the men around here”. One, both of the women and men were helping the mission out easily. Also RAVEN didn’t do anything in the mission? She just barked orders the whole time. Jean, Storm, Peter, Kurt, and Scott was always working together like a team. And why is Raven acting like Logan didn’t have to go to the past to stop her from causing the extinction of the entire mutant race? Why is she acting like Charles didn’t have to stop her, even though she knew the consequences?

ALSO did she not say in apocalypse “you are not kids, you are x-men” why all of the sudden they are kids now? Does she think Charles is forcing them to do it? I know he put them in danger but he wanted to save every one on that ship.

THIS IS ME RANTING BTW DONT TAKE THIS ALL SERIOUSLY I JUST DONT LIKE HER

[mcmusing]

📣: Charles Xavier is a king, but X-movies are trash.

That's my message to the world.

[disneyprincessbuffyannesummers]

So, in the 80s John Byrne a comics writer for Marvel (well for The X-Men), had the idea of making Mystique, Rogue & Nightcrawler's father. Making her male all along. Which rubs me the wrong way. However, there is a theory, that she is Rogue and Nightcrawler's father. Which I find quite interesting.

I'm thinking about writing a fic for it. However, I don't want to seem Transphobic. Because John Byrne is a transphobe. And I really love Mystique and I wanna explore this idea. Should I or not?

[enixamyram]

alwaystigersgirl replied to your post “I have no idea if this is a popular or unpopular opinion but it’s mine...”

Erik comes off creepy any time he's around and all he does is fluff her ego. At least Hank's reaction was honest and realistic.

Well then! At least Hank was honest enough to let Raven know her natural looks were hideous and she should hide at all costs - even suggesting she undergo a dangerous experiment with him so she might be more attractive to other people. Thank god he’s not like creepy Erik who tells her she’s gorgeous the way she is and to not change her appearance for the world or anyone but herself.

But seriously, Eric is a bad guy for MANY MANY MANY reasons and Hank (eventually becomes) a good guy for MANY MANY MANY reasons. But in this particular case, Eric was the good guy.

[fulcrumredeemed]

Ahsoka wasn't that much younger than Jean in comparison to how young most mutants were thanks to the rise in x-gene revelations in children the more modern years or how much older other mutants like, LoganHowlett, Raven Darkholme, or Irene Adler who were 100 years or more older than herself; were in comparison to herself. So they were either children, which arguably were closer in age to her number-wise, or damn near ancient, who couldn't connect to her because of her younger age of 30. So having someone who was only 50-ish years older than her would be easier to connect with, although there is no way for her to know any of this, she hadn't yet met Logan, Raven, or Irene nor did Ahsoka know that Jean actually was the famous model and actress from the 1950's, Marilyn Monroe for that matter. Not yet anyway. If she hadn't been practically raised at Kamar Taj, by the monks, then she may have reached forward into Jean's mind and seen something that would tell her who Jean actually was, well that and the fact that the monastery didn't really have televisions or the like. She really didn't have access to the outside world or their celebrities, although her mother, Pav-tiwas a huge fan of Marilyn Monroe.

Ahsoka, thanks to her trauma from the death of her parents by the hands of her uncle's henchman, and her upbringing at the monastery, her 'need' for human connection was in disarray. She did want human connection, she just didn't know who she could trust. Her pilgrimage outside the monastery didn't help this, and discovering that her Uncle was still out there and now with a fully operational 'Weapon X' style program, let alone how many anti-mutant groups existed doing so many heinous atrocities and some of them being government run, especially didn't help this. Homo Sapien and Homo Superior alike, doesn't seem to matter, they were both dangerous.

Powers or No.

Jean's energy felt warm, soft, kind, but also sad, tortured, and if pushed far enough dangerous. Ahsoka didn't feel any deceit, besides her name, coming from Jean, nor did she feel that she was in any danger by going with her. Jean's attempt to ease Ahsoka's anxieties about her stomach growling and her joining in Ahsoka's laughter did help ease her anxieties. When the laughter subsided, Ahsoka let go of the model's hand, folding her arms once again across her chest. Ahsoka nodded in agreement with Jean's assessment of what her tummy was saying. Although she was still a little anxious about going with this stranger to eat lunch, Ahsoka weighed the options, and analyzed everything that she had felt and seen. Along with her premonition from a few moments ago, intrigued the 30 year old mutant so much that she pushed past her anxieties to make a new friend. Potentially.

Startled by the sudden touch, along with not being used to feeling another psychic like herself, caused Ahsoka to jump a bit at Jean putting her hand on Ahsoka's back. Caused her to blush a bit, become nervous in a different way, a way that Ahsoka wasn't sure what it was, but she didn't find it unpleasant.

She walked with Jean taking in the sights, enjoying the breeze, it was refreshing. The whole experience, not just the wind across her face. To the point where she almost forgot to maintain her hood over her horns, luckily she did still have her glamour up. Wait did her glamour work on Jean? Did this woman know what Ahsoka really looked like under her cowl?

Jean's compliment took Ahsoka off guard. Was she flirting with Ahsoka? Surely she couldn't be, or if she was surely the glamour was, in fact working. Ahsoka's face immediately started blushing again. God, Ahsoka hoped that her Sedona-colored skin didn't show that she was blushing and there was that feeling again.

"Oh! Uh.... Th...thank you!" Ahsoka, who's composure was usually never shaken, and was calm and collective, was now nervous and a little embarrassed. She had never received a compliment on her appearance before. Ahsoka pulled her hood closer to her face. She didn't know what to do in situations like these. Does she compliment the woman back? She tilted her head and tried to get a better view under Jean's hat to see her face better, still holding her hood closer to her face. She was gorgeous! And oddly familiar looking but Ahsoka wasn't sure why. She couldn't remember where she had seen her before. Maybe she just looked like someone she had seen in passing.

"You are also very beautiful!" Ahsoka said calmly and kindly, regaining her composure.

@all0fusstars

@fulcrumredeemed

Marilyn's gifts manifested in a number of ways. Really, it was IRONIC that there had been so many people around the world that had believed her to know precious little. The truth of the matter was that she knew FAR TOO MUCH a lot of the time, to the point that it made the entire world around her feel as though it was sitting heavily upon her shoulders, threatening to CRUSH her. Even having her POWERS, however, it didn't mean that she was immune to the effects of mental illness. Nobody was, really. If one had a BRAIN, it could become ILL...and Marilyn's mind absorbed and processed so much more than most people could ever dream of. Both her own thoughts and emotions, as well as that of others.

That being said, she couldn't fight the elation that filled her entire SOUL when she immediate connection with this woman. While she adored her neighbors and those that lived within the little town, she had still been made to live in relative isolation. It became very LONELY. Now, perhaps she could have another friend...one other than Charles that knew that she was alive.

When it was clear that Ahsoka's stomach was becoming DEMANDING, Marilyn couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up to her lips and her smile shone in the mid-day sun. Even with the sunglasses and hat that obscured her face slightly, that SMILE would never not be iconic.

That was alright though...so few people anymore saw it appear.

"Oh, don't be, darling!" She assured, letting go of the other woman's hand while adjusting the basket upon her arm. "It's just your belly crying out for something, and there's no better feeling than a full stomach and wonderful company!"

She placed her hand gently upon Ahsoka's back and begun to guide her softly down the wooden pier that crossed much of the beach itself. The wind blew softly as they walked side by side, and she turned to her new companion.

"If you don't mind me saying, you are just absolutely stunning," she laughed musically. "I've never seen someone with such a unique style!"