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This has become a HUGE bugaboo for me

Seeing the original plans that writers had for X-Men that just got fucked by editorial

I know this is a problem in general for books from The Big Two, but X-Men seems notorious about it (likely because of their cash cow status for so many years)

For instance

Madelyne Pryor

Her entire story, and subsequently Cyclops' character development, AND subsequently Claremont's entire goal with X-Men, got thrown to the wolves because editorial wanted Jean Grey's death undone and for the original team to reunite for their 25th Anniversary

Which means the Inferno event, in its current form, ONLY exists because editorial made the writers fuck up Madelyne

Like, the whole plan was

Jean dies after Dark Phoenix, Scott ends up meeting and falling in love with Madelyne, settles down, gets married, has child(ren), retires from active X-Men duty

The goal being that, yes, characters will age up, find new goals, and possibly even leave the team entirely. Claremont wanted it to be a thing where, if you checked in on the X-Men in ten years, who would still be there? Who would have moved on? Would you even recognize the team?

And. That. Would. Be. FANTASTIC.

But no, editorial wanted Jean resurrected and the team reunited, which meant that Scott ABANDONED HIS WIFE AND SON because his ex turned out to be not all dead.

Which.... yeah, that's a great trait to have in a hero.

And then poor Maddie went down a depressive spiral, got attacked by villains, got her child stolen, got to see her husband hooking up with this not-dead woman that looked exactly like her, and... they decided the best way to wrap things up was to have her find out she was a Jean clone created by Mr. Sinister. And then she went crazy and summoned demons.

And tried to sacrifice her infant son

And also got her mack on with Havok, because reasons.

dk;nghsiklouqghopiughirf

Basically, the X-Men are ripe for fix-it fic ideas, because MOST OF THEM ARE ALREADY OUT IN THE PUBLIC EYE BECAUSE THE WRITERS ARE OPEN ABOUT HOW EDITORIAL CONTROLS THE FRANCHISE

...damn that explains so much about how convoluted Marvel gets

Yeah

Mark Waid said once, in regards to writing X-Men specifically, that it was less like trying to steer an elephant, and more like being tied to the elephant and hoping it goes where you planned.

Dawn of X has been pretty damn wild. Have you been following at all?

I'm actively refusing, to be perfectly honest. Everything I've seen from the outside is not compelling me. Like, I get that Hickman did some great stuff with Avengers, and he's a big X-Men fan, but it really looks... regressive in a lot of ways.

And very nostalgia-fueled, which I'm kinda tired of with X-Men

(as a side note, they have the book Marauders, about essentially pirate X-Men... AND THEY DIDN'T INCLUDE KURT ON THAT TEAM?!)

Like, the last books I read were a bunch of the Age of X-Man titles, and those were more for the writers

NGL I absolutely stan Leah Williams

I will say that there's some interesting ideas in there. I like the twist they gave to Goldballs' powers, and I'm kinda into the implied Scott/Jean/Logan thruple

But things like the Moira retcon, which is one of the major plot cruxes, rubs me the wrong way

(Oh, and the ban/implied murdering of clairvoyants, which... way to fuck over Blindfold and Destiny, jeez. Like they weren't boned by continuity enough)

I did like the writing I saw in a few panels from New Mutants, though

I mean Destiny literally burned Moira to death in one of her lives, so it’s not out of character for her to be boning the precogs, but yeah that was my exact same response to the Marauders lineup. Especially given all he and Kitty have been through together.

Well, see, that just ties into my main problem with the retcon

Moira being a mutant

it just

it's like, let's take one of the longest-standing human allies of the X-Men, and make her only be relevant because she was actually a mutant

It's missing one of the whole points of her character

I mean, keep in mind, she was working so hard on finding a cure for the Legacy Virus, that she ended up becoming the first baseline human to contract it

And that was important! It had weight to it!

But no. No, we'll just say she was ACTUALLY A DOOMBOTMUTANT ALL ALONG

guh