#marvel comicsverse

[gayfrenchtoast]

Don't forget to kiss your superhero Bf before he goes out on patrol

[angualupin]

ok I just want everyone to know that we are unpacking at our new place and one of my highest priorities was finding a safe place for this a file box containing a copy of every X-Force comic ever published plus all the shit I was still reading in the early 00s for the sole reason that those titles had X-Force characters in them

[angualupin]

also, this is 1000% not actually a relevant opinion any more because it’s been like fifteen fucking years, but I actually liked House of M and I will fight anyone who says it was terrible

[angualupin]

so I’m trying to write a brief explanation of what, exactly, X-Force was and the role it played in 616 at the time and a) it’s not fucking brief; and b) I am still, almost twenty years after I first started thinking and writing about it, not at all clear on how much the writers realized what they were writing.

X-Force -- specifically, the role X-Force played in contrast to the mainline X groups, especially the New Mutants and Gen X -- is ultimately a treatise on the morality of raising children as soldiers. it provides one set of answers to the questions, what do we do when we have decided the world is against us? what do we do with children our enemies have traumatized, and with children who are not yet traumatized but are still on our side of the divide? how do we raise children in a state of constant war? how do we find enough people to fight in our war, when most of the world doesn’t believe it’s a war? how responsible are we for the deaths of these people in battle, when it is our enemies who have killed them but we who sent them into battle? how responsible are we when these deaths are children? should children be allowed to be children if we genuinely believe that they are in danger simply for existing? to what extent do they, and we, have a choice about their future?

these are questions that the X titles have always sought to answer (and have generally failed to do so), but it was never more directly addressed than in the way Cable and Domino raised X-Force in contrast to the way Xavier and his minions raised the various groups that went through Xavier’s “school”, and in the consequences of those choices. and yet -- I still can’t figure out how much the writers at the time were actually aware that that is what they were writing. how much was a conscious choice, and how much was simply the natural consequence of writing a cool plot, or wanting to distinguish your title from similar titles so yours would sell better? I think we will never know.

.........although honestly I think was probably more “brah this is a cool plot!!!!!1!1!” rather than the former. *sigh* something good came out of it, nevertheless.

[angualupin]

man, I keep saying “I quit reading Marvel comics in the early 00s” but I didn’t actually quit most titles until 2007 so “early 00s” isn’t really accurate, even though that’s what I think I did

and even then I stuck with X-Factor until the bitter end, so

I guess Marvel did take my money for a lot longer than I’m really comfortable with

[angualupin]

gods I wrote X3 fic, how desperate was I, X3 was such a shitty shitty movie

[angualupin]

so I was going through a box of papers from my undergrad days (2002-2006), and along with insurance and tax documents I also found a) a lot of calligraphy practice; b) some early attempts at my life-long Quenya translation of the Silmarillion project (note: I have not gotten substantially farther along in this project in the ensuing 12 years); and c) a number of hand-written fanfiction drafts, primarily comics-verse X-Men because that’s what I was writing in those days.

which included the following. I have to say that the lyricism isn’t too bad, but I have zero fucking clue who this fic is supposed to be about. Cable? Scott Summers? Sean Cassidy? like, wtf. I have no idea.

anyway, fic snippet below the cut, if you want to play the “mystery early-naughties obscure marvel comics mutant character guessing game” with me

But you never have been able to tell her no, and when you wake up the sheets are stained with something other than tears. The funny thing about your body is that you could bleed in the night and never know it in the morning.

You think maybe death is too complicated for people like you, that the simplest thing is just to cling to life and that is why no one ever manages to stay dead.

Breathing has become routine but living hasn’t, and it’s been a long time since you remembered what the difference is. You find a reason to continue every day when you wake up but by night you’ve forgotten, so that when she comes to you it is a relief and not a terror.

You hear everything that goes on at the mansion but when she calls to you for real it is not distinguishable from your dreams and so you are deaf to it. Later you wonder if this has saved you or condemned you. Even later you realize there is no difference.

[angualupin]

ok, but has anyone written 'Star encountering 2010's reality television because that is a thing that needs to exist