Sep 4, 2025
Child Prodigy Tactician
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Child Prodigy Tactician
I've said this on Bluesky, but I've realized that the one X-Men related crossover that I want more than anything is a scenario where Scott Summers somehow ends up babysitting Maggie Braddock.
I imagine it comes about by accident, somehow. Maybe Betsy is doing Brian a favor, but an emergency comes up. Rachel just happens to be hanging out with her dad, and they decide to leave one incredibly focused, strategic genius child in the care of an incredibly focused, strategic genius adult.
I feel like, once the mission is over, everyone comes home to find every utensil, toy, salt shaker, et cetera being incorporated into a giant schematic representing a plan to liberate the entirety of the Otherworld.
(It'd work too.)
I'd like to think this leads to a decades long pen-pal relationship. Like how some folks play chess by letter? Only it's battle plans.
"I can't play tiddlywinks with you today, Father. Aunt Rachel's father has just assaulted my supply lines with artificially enhanced woodchucks, and I need to plan my counter-maneuver."
Excalibur #26 (2021)
Weird as in racially-wise like the way she is a super-genius baby compared to Meggan
Just to be clear, this concept did not originate from Excalibur (2019). Maggie is given this treatment from her very first appearance the X-Men Gold Annual, from 2018, where she is introduced as a three month old baby who has already learned how to form complete sentences. Meggan, in this story, expresses feelings of inadequacy about her own educational background, along with remorse over the childhood she believes Maggie will never have due to her rapidly advancing intellect.
I've made it pretty clear by now that I'm not a fan of Meggan, as a character, or her relationship with Brian. Many of Meggan's most prominent characteristics directly relate to her Romani origins in a way that writers don't care to examine, and as a result, the character is surrounded by nuanced class and race issues that often go unacknowledged and unresolved-- and her marriage to Brian and entry into upper class British society is a big part of that.
Maggie was born into that white, upper class world, and she fits into it more easily than her mother while quickly outpacing her in an area that Meggan has faced many challenges. On the surface, this could seem like a slight against Meggan herself, but the narrative does treat her with sympathy and affirmation. Meggan's circumstances are unique, but her experiences with class, race and privilege are not unusual. I think that a lot of parents in similar positions-- immigrants, people in interracial marriages, or really just anybody who grew up poor-- may face similar anxieties. Through a superhuman lens, Maggie sheds a new light on these complicated facets of Meggan's life.
Now, that's a very generous reading. Maggie is introduced into a continuity that has been mishandling her mother's background for decades, and the writers of this Annual fail to directly acknowledge their Romani heritage. For those who are aware of Meggan's background, Maggie's genius intellect can create some challenging optics-- by marrying a white man and assimilating into white society, Meggan has produced a "white" child who surpasses her in the one area where her disadvantages are explicitly tied to her Romani upbringing. It's not great, and for me, it calls to mind the racist eugenics behind the very real forced assimilation efforts against Romani people in Europe and the UK.
Those optics could be avoided if Meggan were able to give more of a voice to her Romani identity, but that almost never happens anymore, and it certainly doesn't happen in Excalibur. It's a long run, so I might be forgetting something, but I don't believe that Howard acknowledges Meggan's Romani background even once. Regardless, I do think that she avoids any unfortunate implications-- she allows Maggie to remain quite childlike, while affording Meggan a more competent and mature treatment that maintains her personality without infantilizing her. I don't find that Maggie's intellect is ever contrasted against Meggan, and overall she kind of comes across like a younger Valeria Richards, which I think is fine.
But this isn't a resolution, it's just side-stepping the problem. Meggan, and now Maggie, are Romani characters with a lot of baggage, and while Howard's treatment may have been a positive step forward, it didn't meaningfully address any of those problems-- it just minimized them. Howard proclaims to have Romani heritage herself, and despite having custody of these characters for four whole years, which is really quite unusual these days, no effort was to improve the state of Romani representation in the Captain Britain universe. To be honest, I think that's a shame.
The Hole
Round 1, Match 23
Professor X | Charles Xavier
Maggie Braddock
Contestants Index
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Written as a thank-you for a generous donor as part of the @marvelgotchaforgaza project! I had an absolute blast with the prompt. I played pretty fast and loose with it, but I hope you enjoy it!
Side note: I read probably 75% of Lunella's appearances for this, and also a thorough suffering read of the Red Goblin limited series. I also trudged through the most recent Excalibur and Captain Britain series, so never let it be said I don't do my research!
That said, Maggie is absolutely delightful and I really wanted Normie and Rascal to have a win. (:
Title: It Takes Two, or Three, or Four
Characters: Normie Osborn & Rascal (Symbiote), Lunella Lafayette, Brian Braddock/Meggan Puceanu, Maggie Braddock (age 3)
Summary: Normie Osborn, despite all the chaos in his life as of late, has found a place he feels he belongs in at Avengers Academy. He and his symbiote partner, Rascal, have also found kindred spirits in Lunella Lafayette and Devil Dinosaur. But he's new to this hero thing, and so far, it hasn't always gone well. So when Lunella offers her assistance while he takes a patrol out in the city, he accepts.
But things get a little more complicated when he comes across a couple from across the pond and witnesses their three-year-old daughter, Maggie, getting snatched up and held for ransom. Who better than Red Goblin, with a little remote help from Moon Girl, to rescue her?
Well... probably plenty of people could do it better. But Maggie doesn't seem to mind her rescuers being a little unorthodox!
Would you like a fic of your own? Or are you interesting in filling prompt requests? Check out the Marvel Gotcha for Gaza post to learn more! Together, we can make a difference (AND get some pretty sweet fanworks made too)!
From Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #004, “Earth’s Most Furious”
Art by Vasco Georgiev and Erick Arciniega
Written by Tini Howard
A preview of Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #5
BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #5
EARTH’S MOST FURIOUS HEROES UNITE! And the villains alike! Morgan Le Fay has saddled up with her old lover, none other than Doctor Doom! And that can’t mean good things for the old country. But Betsy Braddock has a plan up her sleeve…and a Multiverse of allies even Morgan can’t magic-wand away. The fight for Britain, for Betsy, for Captains everywhere comes to a head! Written by: Tini Howard Art by: Vasco Georgiev, Erick Arciniega Cover by: Erica D’Urso, Matt Wilson Page Count: 28 Pages Release Date: June 21, 2023