#xmen discourse

[that-binchh]

as much as i love reading cherik fics, i do have to turn off my brain every time because every fic seems to have a line or two about how mutant issues is the most pressing social injustice. and like as a black person, that line is so tone deaf to me because racism in the x-men world is both visible and invisible, which is actually so true to reality that it lowkey makes me sick.

[betsyworthingtons]

I'm probably the only Pyro girlie who hates Allerdr*ke. I tried years ago to ship it, and I just don't get the hype. And the hype has made me hate it.

[cowboylikeyouu]

my favorite gender is men finding out about the concept of shipping non-canon ships

[ffverr]

On the discourse (that somehow still exists) of why the X-Men are feared and hated but other genetically modified heroes like the Fantastic Four or some of the Avengers aren't :

I still see this argument online that some people, usually not X-Men fans, pull out in a sort of gotcha moment. To kind of stick it to Marvel for being unrealistic or to vouch for the fearing of other heroes in the marvel universe to tip the scales.

There are two points for the "why is *random x-men* oppressed and not *random marvel hero*" discourse that people are always intentionally missing.

One- A base of mutant fear and repression is the argument that "it could happen to your children too". It could happen to ANYONE, from birth, and there is nothing you can do about it. No being careful of scientific experiences can stop your close ones from becoming a mutant. (Kind of like people are okay with gay celebrities as long as they're doing their thing from afar but it's a threat when it comes to their children/Friends/family being gay)

They layed it on thick with this amazing advertisment back in the day: "do you know what your children are"??? I mean come on it's not rocket science

Fun fact, the kid labeled "mutie" here is actually Franklin Richards, son of Mister Fantastic and Invisible woman. He used to be a mutant and this goes to show how somehow johnny storm can be beloved but his super powered nephew doesn't get the same treatment.

Two- Spider-Man, the F4, the Avengers etc... All these heros who get some powers by some incident. They're supposed to be rare and few in between. The fear of mutants mainly comes from the fact that they started popping up in the MILLIONS. A mutant isn't necessarly seen as an honorable individual that acquires powers and realises they have the responsibility to use it for good. To humans, they're millions of people (or at least hundreds of thousands) that are, just by existing, threatening the status quo of humanity. They are changing the natural dominance of humans for good.

So of course humans love the F4 (usually). Because they're not scared to be replaced by them in their day to day life, however they are scared to be rendered obsolete by mutants. When humans look at the F4 they see brave selfless HUMAN heroes. They relate to them, they identify with them. They're a sweet family dedicated to the world's safety. In contrast, the mutants represent a world changing threat that truly shifts the balance. And that's not comfy at all no matter how cute or harmless the power is.

This difference can even cause very understandable tension in between the X-men and other super powered groups:

In short, the mutant moral panic comes from the fact that for exemple:

-humans are afraid to loose their jobs to super powered level talents.

-humans are scared from groups of super powered people that could threaten their safety.

-Governments are scared of these groups being the equivalent of entire armies concentrated in a single individual.

- They're scared that their children could turn into something unimaginable once they hit puberty

-And some just hate the idea of being manipulated by a random telepath on the street without ever knowing.

In contrast of Spider-Man, humans feel like nature is done with homo sapiens and THAT'S what brings hate and fear.

That's why everytime a mutant hate crime happens in the comics, it's always accompanied by some human saying "y'think you're better than us weirdo".

+ Contrary to the avengers, mutants also claim a culture, a shared history and common experiences between thousands. This binds them together in a way they doesn't necessarly make them identify with humans. And this is overall irritating and scary to humans.

Also, religious fear-mongering of mutants is rampant!!! It does a ton to set appart the mutants from the scientifically modified heros of the marvel universe.

In the end, one of the best comic to portray this whole thing is still God loves man Kills.

It depicts a villain, Striker, that gains popularity by spreading religious propaganda to justify mutant hate. In an emotional and shocking twist, we come to find that Striker has had a mutant son, that he killed with his own hand because he was a "monster".

You can understand how Captain America, with his super body, doesn't really evoke the same existential dread. Bigotry isn't rational, but also, a shit ton of things complicate the mutant's inclusion into society that doesn't necessarly parallel perfectly with real world struggles so that's also to take into consideration.

[pacing-er]

Real talk when/why did the narrative for Professor Xavier change from "empathetic telepath who believes in the inherent good of others" to "cold apathetic telepath who treats people like things"? Maybe it's just an issue with Spurrier as a writer specifically bc I've noticed he's particularly bitchy in Legion's comics but in general the tone of the comics have shifted to be overwhelmingly negative towards Charles.

They talk a lot of shit about how he always finds easy solutions and just cuts the problems out of people's brains instead of helping them grow but like... I feel like that wasn't always the case? Didn't he explicitly refuse to use his telepathy as a permanent solution when Sabertooth came to him for help?

Granted, there was a LOT more on his mind during the Krakoa era but this is a pretty drastic change. Legion even says at one point "I know that empathy was never your thing" and that's pretty ridiculous in the context of Charles' long history as a caregiver and father figure. The narrative bias could be attributed to Legion being the focus of those comics, and Charles was a pretty awful father to him specifically, but to write off every empathetic thing he's done just for the sake of making a point? I think that it does his character a serious disservice.

In terms of why it was done, my personal theory is projection on the part of writers and fans alike. As an authority figure in the lives of younger characters, they want him to have ulterior motives and be a manipulative bastard. The fact that he is motivated by genuine love and compassion for those around him rubs people the wrong way, because they feel betrayed and let down by their own authority figures regardless of their intentions. They don't believe that people who make mistakes and hurt others in the process can still be good people, with the results always outweighing good intent. This sort of black and white thinking is very prevalent and it leads to a lot of bad-faith takes.

The change in Charles' character could also harken back to what Moira pointed out in HOX/POX: Whereas in past realities Charles never changed as a person, in this reality he has been broken by her. This is the only rationalization I'd accept at this point, and the narrative that ppl have been pushing lately of "actually professor x was just a huge bastard the whole time" does not vibe with me. The pessimistic nihilistic impulse to project negative traits on genuinely well-meaning characters will always be fucking exhausting.

[unfortunately-obsessed]

I still don't get it. What's that about Magneto being so much older than Rogue that people use as a reason to not ship

1) it's fiction, not real life 2) Wolverine is older than everybody but people ship him with Storm and Jean, etc, who are the same age as Rogue...

I mean, you can not ship simply because you don't like them together. But the age discourse is so... Hypocrite

[rogunetocentral]

It is the height of hypocrisy to make a call-out post about fanon Rogue vs canon Rogue when you're staunchly part of the faction of the fanbase that exalts the fanon version as the true Rogue.

Back when Rogue was without Gambit in the 2010s, those fanon lovers hated Rogue on her own and hated that she flirted dated ANYONE who was not Gambit. Magneto, Johnny, Deadpool all were dragged no matter how cute or respectful those connections were. Rogue was hated for having a solo book in XML and leads in X-MEN and Uncanny Avengers without mentioning Gambit every 5 minutes.

There were always complaints that Rogue was boring without the Carol Danvers powerset, complaints about her costumes, complaints about her hair or artists not making her pretty enough.

All of these complaints came from the same group of people and specific individuals within that group. All because Rogue was not the Rogue they created in their minds or the one who catered to their 90s cartoon/comic nostalgia. The poster honestly does not care about Rogue if Rogue doesn't meet their specific requirements, so that whole angry canon vs fanon post is ridiculous.

[himbosuplex]

THIS IS ME... CUTE HUH? Maxine LeBeau. This is my dad... and this is my dad! How'd I get two dads? They're both dating my mom! She's gonna make sure we're one big happy family... with one dad who's down to earth, and one dad with his head in the clouds.

Do zoomers know "My Two Dads"? I'm guessing zoomers don't know "My Two Dads"...... Anyway, it's show about a girl who has two dads, which is to say, nobody yet knows which of them is her biological father. So, in the meantime, both have to learn to like each other for the sake of this teen girl. Also, the show has a baller theme song, up there with the likes of "Perfect Strangers."

After the sitcom bit in "Motendo" I couldn't get this idea out of my head. Even if it's a different situation since all three of Max's parents are in a polycule... the gag was too funny. The idea of a sitcom where Erik and Remy get into hijinks trying to raise a teen daughter and her toddler brother, and the viewer learns a lesson via Rogue having to repeat bail her idiot husbands out of whatever mundane situation they are failing spectacularly at.

"One of them is a Master of Magnetism... the other a Master Thief! But can they band together for their daughter's first day of high school?" This program was filmed in front of a live studio audience. *laugh track*

[atarashura]

my apparently obscenely hot take is that I fucking loathed the Outback era of x-men I found that shit HORRIFICALLY boring and I also didn’t like the main cast.

I missed Kurt and Kitty, Excalibur carried that era for me, I really really didn’t like the Outback era.

[chaos0pikachu]

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as people seem to think?

(Hope I'm doing this right 🙏. I've never done this before.)

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as people seem to think?

Hmmmmmmmmmm this is a tough one cause I have to think in context of fans just making characters who are evil into woobies or characters where the narrative says they're good people but aren't.

Like, off the top of my head there's Mew from Only Friends who's positioned in narrative as the moral center of the show and the one "in the right" at the end but I find to be a thorough self righteous hypocrite.

Then there's characters like MCU Tony Stark, whom in the narrative is positioned as flawless just sad but justified in his sadness and decisions. MCU Tony fans make it out like he's had the hardest life of any mcu character (ridiculous also a silly metric to even judge characters imo). The meta that proposited Tony was the "most female coded char in the mcu" as well as suggesting Bucky & Steve sexually assaulted Tony metaphorically in Civil War is an example of this imo

I don't fully put blame on fans b/c narratively the mcu is all over the damn place, and it's pretty clear in a Doyalist pov both Disney and probably RDJ didn't want Tony to look "bad". Which is why Civil War is so lopsided towards Tony's pov and why the narrative twists itself to not acknowledge the inherent hypocrisy of Tony being scolded for a child dying in AOU whilst also recruiting a different child (Peter) into a super battle.

I can't fully blame this in a Wastonian way on Tony because the reason Peter is in Civil War at all exists outside of the narrative - Disney got the rights to Spiderman and wanted to introduce and integrate him into the MCU as quickly as possible.

The idea of putting people in supermax prisons and taking away their human rights is also one that the mcu isn't actually equipped to handle, which is another reason the narrative is so lopsided towards Tony and his "side". It's trying to both sides a human rights topic without making it a human rights topic.

This is why I also think that 616!Steve isn't as moral as made out to be at times specifically because of Avengers vs X-Men. Like, Steve and the Avengers are great at dealing with like, normal superhero problems, but they really suck at dealing with mutant problems. They've struggled with connecting the two and being allies when the X-Men have needed it. This is also an outside issue because of the different editorial dept heads, and the difficulty in combining the two franchises into a cohesive singular story. Also that a bunch of white guys don't fully understand the concepts of systemic discrimination.

So Avengers vs X-Men really showcases the holes in this divide especially where Scott and Steve are concerned. It's a frustrating event and only serves to make the Avengers look self-righteous and hypocritical rather than morally in the right.

Like, no offense but Scott is right, Steve and the Avengers can't just show up on mutant island and demand to take one of their own into their custody what the fuck? Y'all can't roll up to someone's house like a bunch'a cops and be like "no we don't need a search warrant give us the child for the good of the world".

But this is really why whether in the MCU or the comics (including other cape comics like the DCU) you can't like, expect radical politics. At best you may get like, liberal politics, but both are corporate owned and as such are subjected to corporate interests. Avengers vs Xmen and hell, Civil War the movie are both examples of this imo

So, ironically, I find both MCU!Tony and 616!Steve less "morally good" than fans make out.

Disclaimer however neither are "evil" either. I don't think MCU!Tony is evil~~ don't harass me fuckin hell.

The idea that characters are either wholly "good" or "evil" is kids cartoons stuff and I never watched Steven Universe alright?

Other characters off the top of my head include Stiles from Teen Wolf (pack mom my whole ass), Kikyo from Inuyasha (the rant in my soul about this lmao), Yusuke from Yu Yu Hakusho, WWX from MDZS, pretty much any Greek characters and that's all I can think of off the top of my head lol

Ask game: unpopular opinion edition <3

[liquid-bonhomme]

Could we maybe get an analysis on her “stop making villains like Magneto, they suck” video?

Also, I for one am sat patiently for that Flowers In The Attic analysis.

FItA Lorch Analysis coming next.

For right now: Part 3, Final round. FIGHT!

[Part 1] [Part 2]

Lily Commits Elder Gay Mutant Abuse, feat. "Eldritch Lily" (Part 3)

8:30: "And making these characters hop in the giant death robot so they can randomly do some heinous act of evil so you feel less guilty for wanting to bring them down is very telling about your priorities as a writer." [We're still talking about Korra, for context.]

I'm highlighting this quote more than anything as a means to really dig into the big stink with Lily's media analysis here. I've said something along the lines of, "I kind of agree with her, but not actually," several times while writing this, and this is exactly why.

I think a lot of people come at media criticism from a very flawed position because of the way the grading works in our school systems, of all things. They judge it like there is the possibility of getting an A+ on your show, movie, novel, video game, etc. For the purpose of reviews, as a quick way to indicate quality/how much you recommend a piece of media, I understand why critics would use scoring systems like that-- but when it comes to analysis, that's not really a useful approach. There are technical skills and proficiencies in execution that you can grade media on like that, but even they have their nuances. Conceptual ideas presented in media, however? No dice.

There are certain filmmakers in particular who I fully acknowledged are very skilled at their craft-- I still strongly dislike their films. I don't agree with the conceptual ideas they have to present, and I don't think they convincingly rationalize their position textually, subtextually, or otherwise. With that said: I think most media produced, regardless of quality, is a net positive for the intellectual landscape of humanity as a whole. With the exception of media that is actively harmful in a very direct way, disingenuous propaganda, or particularly egregious cases of cooperate slop, I support any creative's ability to add to the long-form conversation art and creation offers. Those highly proficient filmmakers I ideologically disagree with, their ability to articulate their worldview so genuinely, and clearly helped me as a creative articulate why I disagree.

With all that said, it's clear Lily doesn't think in that regard. Lily has taken media crit she has heard from other sources. She has just retrofitted it to whichever property she wants to rip into. If it superficially applies enough that she can misrepresent a piece of fiction with an argument, she will apply it across the broad. Approaching media crit like there is a definitive way to "score" fiction on its conceptual value, like it's a high schooler's end of term essay. Context be damned.

What she is articulating here is a valid criticism of certain fictions that try to present morally complex villains. This is a complaint I've made myself over properties like the first Black Panther film (which, thankfully, they at least did their best to rectify in the second). But not Kuvira. Not Magneto as a whole.

9:07: "Which would have been interesting, and led to some criticism of the main characters for trying to restore the same monarchy that has previously failed the people."

They weren't trying to restore the monarchy. They were protecting the prince from assassination. I feel like it'd be pretty tyrannical of the Avatar to say, "fuck you Earth Kingdom, you don't get your royal family anymore," without their say, Lily . . .

9:18: "Maybe talk about the United Republic being a literal concurred settler state."

YET AGAIN LILY'S CRITICISM BOILS DOWN TO, "I HAVE NEVER READ A COMIC."

9:30: [Lily takes like, the 12th bullshit pot shot at the creators of Avatar.]

I've ignored it up until this point. There's been too much else to talk about. But Lily has assumed an absurd amount about the authorial intent of everyone she's discussed in this video-- including Jack Kurby's intent when creating Magneto.

9:40: Lily fumbles through some final point here with two sentences that make no sense when put together about how this is all people doing tropes badly, but if you did it well then the trope wouldn't exist and aaaaaaaaaaaaa.

God please strike me down.

10:10: Lily calls this all propaganda.

Again. She's sort of right in the abstract, divorced from the content of her video. Wrong when taken in context of what she's talking about. SOMETIMES "sympathetic villains" are used as political propaganda. Sometimes, they're a legitimate expression of a creator's misunderstanding or mischaracterization of an ideology. Sometimes, they're an earnest dissection of the ideological concept.

Good argument of specific pieces of media, retrofitted, flattened of any nuance, used to discredit a thing Lily doesn't like across the board.

We're in a timeloop.

10:25:

God is dead and we have killed him.

11:01: "The problem is that this idea of all villainy being nuanced and complicated has just never really been true. Evil people in real life will often just invent justification for evil things they already want to do. And there's a point where someone crosses the line of evil so much that nothing they say earns them sympathy."

Lily thinks people commit acts of extreme violence and atrocity for . . . Fun, I guess. Disturbingly enough, this tracks real well with how she's justified her own abhorrent actions in the past. When other people do bad things, it's because they like it and are bad. When she does a bad thing, she has a reason, and therefore, it's justified. Another self-tell Lillian.

11:42: "The problem with my idea for these kinds of villains is that they inherently make white people of any gender uncomfortable."

GOD FINALLY FUCKING DONE THIS GOD FORSAKEN VIDEO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Pray for me, the fucking psychic damage I just fucking took for you guys.

I suppose the only take away here is this:

The thing that's so exhausting about Lily's videos is the complexity of the degrees in which she is wrong. She's developed, for lack of a better word, a talent for laundering good arguments in a very disingenuous fashion. I wouldn't go so far as to call what she does plagiarism. Her work is more than just stealing other people's arguments and regurgitating them back-- but what she does is a spiritual cousin of sorts.

She bootlegs intellectualism to sharpen it into a shiv she can use to stab at anything that displeases her. The same way she weaponizes her marginalized identity, she weaponizes honest and thoughtful media analysis aswell.

This video was, frankly, barely even about Magneto. Barely even about sympathetic villains. She has no interest in the material that was the topic of this video-- not even enough to do a bare-bones Google search beyond looking up vague facts she could massage into supporting her claims.

A lot of those very early X-Men comics are fucking rough. They include shit like Charles expressing some very creepy thoughts about a (I believe then) teenage Gene Grey. Some very yikes dynamics with the then mostly/arguably entirely white mutants acting out very on-the-nose imagery associated at the time with the black liberation movement. And some very questionable framing and dynamics due to the fact that, real life marginalized groups typically don't have dangerous superpowers.

However, you can almost sense the moment when Kurby started to take the reigns and make the X-Men into something really special. Not to imply that Stan Lee is a bigot or a bad writer, he had very good intentions. By his own admission, he did his best work as a collaboration with his artists guiding the story along with him (sometimes, well, functionally being the actual writer, no offense, Lee left a bit of a complicated legacy, we can't get into it right now.) Anyone familiar with Kurby's work as a whole will know just how profoundly humanist he was with the stories he told.

Despite what Lily arrogantly implied here, he always intended Erik to be a very sympathetic character. Even as a "villain," a sympathetic character vaguely coded as an "extremist" black activist was kind of bold for the 1960s. I can't tell you for certain what ol' Jack's authorial intent was, the man very rudely died 3 years before I was born so I never really got the chance to ask him-- but dare I say this was his best attempt at laundering the idea that maybe "radical" activists actually maybe had a point? To an audience who would have been VERY against that idea if presented to them outright at the time? Even now?

Media does have the power to shift cultural perception-- even if that takes time. In the early 2000s, when I was taught about Malcome X for the first time as a child, even then, 40-some-odd-years later he was presented to me in a negative light. It was in the context of him being the inspiration for Magneto, however. The emotional connection I had to that character made me question whether that characterization of Malcome was entirely fair-- even though I was too young and didn't have the full context to grasp what I was being told at the time. I do believe to some extent that Magneto's popculture relevance has helped preserve the legacy of some of the more controversial activists in history. By being a figure people can personally connect with. Of course, it's all more complicated and messy than I'm making it sound, however. It's unfortunately very easy to flanderize figures of history, boil down their motives, and flatten their narratives. A character in a story, detached from any direct sociopolitical baggage, is something you can form a bond with. Something that can (if handled properly) promote empathy for their real-life equivalents.

There absolutely is a conversation to be had about certain ideologies or positions being more often than not, for practical or political purposes, cast in the antagonistic role in fiction. However, Lily's thesis here, boiled down to the bones, has been disproven ten times over by the abject failure of shit like The Comic's Code Authority and The Hays Code. People don't emotionally connect with squeaky clean moral paragons as much as they do messy, complicated, emotionally challenging complex characters-- even when you paint them as the abject villain of the story.

People fucking adore Magneto. He's a cultural icon. Even before the FoX-Men movies came out, he was probably one of the few comicbook characters your mom could name. Vaguely recognize, at the least. And yes, that doesn't always translate into people being charitable to "radical" civil rights activists in real life-- but doesn't necessarily harm it either. Anecdotally, it helps, if but just a smidgen.

Anyway, get fucked Lily. Magnet Daddy FTW.

P.S. X-Men '97 is really good. Also, it's 100% alluding to these two having fucked. Maybe outright confirmed it by now, I'm not totally caught up.

I mean, we all already knew they totally were lovers, but.

Come on Disney, give the people what they want. Make 'em kiss. These poor old men have been having sexual tension for like, 60 years.

[cowboylikeyouu]

having a discussion about logan‘s sexuality in a tiktok comment section rn and i‘m making you suffer with me:

(the fact that they have sirius black as their pfp is the funniest thing about this)

[burninblood]

Steve Rogers and Logan Howlett in Wolverine: Madripoor Knights #4

[pacing-er]

1) Erik from Phantom of the Opera and "Toxic fucking shipping". Oh my God.

2) More aggressive Charles hate with talking points taken directly from the one TikTok they saw on the subject. "Knows nothing of the comics and is illinformed" someone give me the confidence of a Professor X anti who has never touched a single X-Men comic. It is honestly so fucking baffling.

3) "Stay the hell away from me." Oh trust me bitch! You were blocked instantly!

[spectrecowboy]

i open twitter.

i see the same xmen discourse it always is.

I regret remaking my twitter acc and close twitter.

tldr, Cyclops is right. (again) and idiots who think comics arent political are wrong and have no understanding of cyclops as a character (again).

most everyone in the replies is clowning him for it but there are a hell of a lot of people who aren't

post in question below the cut bc spoilers for X-Men (2024) issue #10

[humanveil]

*cradles xmdofp to my chest* it's okay baby he didn't mean it