Mutants in Grind Fiction: A Non-Canonical X-Man's Recreation of Academy X
by The Liondrake(s)
This essay was originally uploaded on Dreamwidth and has been cross-posted onto Tumblr.
Estimated reading time: around 14-15 minutes
Imagine that you're a student. You go to a nice school, but the school is known for its controversies. These controversies get a lot of people hurt, including the students. You've witnessed and dealt with things that a teenager normally shouldn't have. A classmate dies. Multiple classmates die. Your school is put on lockdown because it’s been targeted. You and your friends are supposed to carry on like none of it happened. You hardly have a moment to grieve before the cycle repeats, and it's taking a toll on you.
You fall into the wrong (or right?) crowd. Your trust in the adults and authorities around you is reduced to zero. Most of all, you’ve grown rebellious. You're not a bad kid, you tell yourself. You say it not out of comfort but out of defiance. You know you don’t deserve what you’ve been given, but life seems to work against you at every chance it gets. The whole world feels out of your grasp, but you're not helpless. You refuse to be helpless. So what do you in a world that doesn't give a shit about you? You get up and do something about it.
Now, imagine you've made your mark. You gain a reputation among your peers. You're a menace to society in the best way. Maybe the worst way, too. But as the years go by, there's no trace of you. You're not shown in the yearbooks. You're not listed as an alumni. There's no reference of your existence whatsoever. It's like you weren't even there.
That's what it's like for me, a non-canonical character from Marvel Comics. I'm not an original character (OC) nor am I a self-insert of sorts. I’m a member of Homo sapiens superior (mutants), but not in the general sense. I’m aware of this because of how different this fictotype feels compared to experiences where my fictionhood ends at the species. I‘m someone who was a consistent part of my source's narrative. I am an X-Man, and I come from a specific era of X-Men comics. My fictomere is New X-Men, specifically Vol. 2/Academy X.
Published in the early 2000s, this series geared its focus around a young generation of mutants. My fictomere bounces off of the original New X-Men run, which focused on our teachers and mentors. You'll likely recognize them more than us. Cyclops, Wolverine, White Queen, Beast, etc.— you know ‘em! That said, they're not my class. I remember my class clear as day. Prodigy, Hellion, Surge, Dust, Wind Dancer, Icarus, Gentle, those goddamn Stepford Cuckoos— these kids were my friends. Well, some of them were my friends. My memories are foggy, to say the least. I remember my code name, my friendships, my plurality in that world, and my attendance at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. What I don't remember is the events that happened in the comics associated with my fictomere.
I should preface this essay by saying I am an imagithrope, an individual whose identity is often created through imaginative play (art, writing, roleplay, etc). When I‘m devoid of noemata, I feel inclined to exercise what’s called “created knowledge”. Created knowledge is exactly as it sounds: information that was purposefully created to supplement one’s alterhuman identity. I’ve been meaning to create something around this fictomere, but attending Khadgar Chromatath’s Wrenching Yourself From The Jaws of “Canon”: Creating and Re-creating Personal History gave me the push I needed to make it happen. This wasn’t my first time attending aer panel; I attended it during this past Centaurus Festival, and Khadgar’s presentation made me feel seen. When I learned the presentation would be held again, I knew I had to go. Gaining that refresher led me to this point.
I know who I am.
I know the world I come from.
I know that I was an X-Man, and if Marvel Comics has no awareness of my story, then I’m taking it upon myself to reintroduce that story.
The medium I’ve chosen is familiar to many, not by name but by aesthetics. Some look at it, and the first thing that comes to mind is Y2K. That’s not too far off! I’ve decided my fictomere will fall within the medium of Animemo, also known as Grind Fiction. It’s a fitting choice since my class came onto the scene around 2003 and started our run in 2004. If you’re unfamiliar with grind fiction, then worry not. I’ll explain in due time.
When “Canon” Decides You Don’t Exist
Since I’m non-canonical, I believe I owe my audience an introduction. My name is Solomon Cane. In-source, I am median; I was the core of muir little group. Muir medianhood included four semi-distinct facets of me: Ezra, Malik, Ahadi, and Tariq. Tariq in particular is better known by us as “The Tarasque” for having a more visibly nonhuman appearance than us. You would've known muis by muir collective codename: Miracle.
So, who is Miracle? Miracle is an Omega-level mutant of African-American descent. Wei am a Cheyarafim, a type of mutant whose appearance is comparable to angels. I have the standard qualities of my community: feathered wings, flight, a blood-based healing factor supported by my wings, and by extension, the ability to heal others with my blood. My secondary mutation is an ability known as "manifestation". If wei need something done, wei have to collectively will it into existence. This is best represented by my habit of petrifying my entire body, which happens when wei manifest an indestructible form. Wei look a lot like an angelic statue or a weeping angel in this form; where wei land on that scale depends on how badly a threat has pissed muis off. With muir petrification activated, I trade out head-spinning flight speed and fast healing for impenetrable stone skin, superhuman durability, and destructive blows. I can control when the petrification activates as well, much like Colossus and his organic steel mutation.
At first, I didn’t know what to make of this mutation when it developed. After some counseling with both Ms. Munroe and Ms. Frost, I was informed that my secondary mutation allowed me to warp the nature of myself and my surroundings. I'm capable of willing something into existence as long as it's a physical change. For example, I couldn't warp fate. Manifesting boatloads of money into my bank account or a positive outcome in a battle were out of my mutation's scope. However, I could manifest resistance or invulnerability against telepathy since that directly changes my brain matter. While Ms. Munroe was still my advisor, Mr. Muñoz (also known as Darwin) was called in to help me with some specialized training.
In order to make use of this skill, I had to start small and work my way up in understanding the extent of my abilities. I figured making use of my petrified state would be a good starting point, and soon, it became a trademark of mine. Through working with Mr. Muñoz, I learned that most of my manifestations were temporary. If wei manifested something consistently, it would remain in our arsenal of abilities, but new or sudden changes were harder to keep. Although we both harbored protective abilities, my mutation wasn't like Mr. Muñoz's. Unlike his evolutionary mutation, muir manifesting mutation didn't trigger on its own. As mentioned before, all facets of me must agree on something to manifest. Much of our training focused on honing muir collective reaction speed so wei could quickly respond to situations where our manifestation ability may be of use. Sure enough, this training helped muis excel as an X-Man (or X-Men whenever wei felt distinct enough from each other).
Despite knowing who I am as an X-Man, I have little to no recollection of the New X-Men comics' arcs as events in my life. I've hesitated to have in-depth discussions on my mutant background because of this. To add insult to injury, I don't exist in any "canonical" comic. My best friend, Jay, is a prominent character in these comics yet we're never seen together. If you try to look up Miracle in relation to Marvel Comics, all you’re getting are two different versions of Miracle Man. There’s not a single trace of me as I remember myself. It’s a terribly cruel but expected result of my position.
Furthermore, “canon‘s” got a whole heap of missing events to account for. The statistics for M-Day are completely off, be it victims or survivors. There’s also the fact that I survived M-Day and saw firsthand how it totaled the mutant population. There's barely any coverage on the Zephyrs, Storm's squad of students (i.e. the team I was assigned to), and our development as trainees. “Canon” left out the time Tariq snuck muis out, ransacked a Purifier base in his enraged grief, and accidentally discovered we're Omega-level in the process. “Canon” also left out the time my entire summer vacation was ruined because Ahura Boltagon, Powerhouse, and I were forced to confront our timeline's Beyonder. In the Krakoan Era, Jay and I even took a study abroad trip to this chain of islands where Cheyarafim and Neyaphem cohabitated... and that still got left out. I've had an eventful parallel life, all things considered!
It’s hard to look at your world and sit with the knowledge that you’re simply not in it. Although many fictionfolk can relate to that experience, it’s downright suffocating when even your source doesn’t recognize you. On one hand, I don’t put all the blame on Marvel‘s writers. It’s unfair to expect them to have the same knowledge of my life as I do. On the other hand, it drives me up a wall to see references of my class without me or some of the people I knew in it. From comic book covers to fanart, seeing it irks me because I know I should be there with them.
Articulating this with other alterhumans can be a bit difficult as well. Since folks tend to parse things from labels they’ve heard in passing, the immediate assumption towards folks like me is that we’re OCkin. Take this account as a casual reminder that non-canonical fictionkind, and noncanon fictionfolk in general, exist. I cannot speak on the experience of being an original character because I don’t have it. I didn’t create myself, consciously or subconsciously. This fictomere doesn’t originate from a ‘sona I made or a muse meant for roleplay. If things were different, I wouldn’t have to recreate my fictomere. I would’ve called myself Miracle with a canon-divergent background, and that’s that. Instead, I don’t have the leeway to do that. No one has ever heard of a canonical X-Man by the name of Miracle, let alone one who’s black, plural, and ambiguously queer (because we all know how writers were in the 2000s).
Personally, I can’t stress enough how significant this distinction is. To settle for another framework would gloss over everything I’ve experienced, or at least what I remember from it. If I could, I’d scream that I’m an official X-Man at the top of a mountain until I‘m blue in the face! Instead, I‘ve taken a more productive route. I may be at an impasse with my fictomere, but it doesn’t have to be that way forever. Reconstructing my fictomere gives me the opportunity to unpack my experiences and establish this identity on my own terms, but I can’t do that without going back to the era where it all began.
Mutant Teenagers in the 2000s, or “Miracle Catches A Case of Deja Vu!”
When people think of the X-Men, they tend to have a wide array of media to pull from. A couple of generations grew up on the 1990s cartoon, be it reruns of the series or its initial release. There’s also the live action films produced by 20th Century Fox. And of course, there’s our roots within the comic book industry. However, there’s a subset of people who cite X-Men: Evolution as their introduction to our cause and community.
X-Men: Evolution was an animated television series that originally aired on Kids’ WB. Running from 2000 to 2003, this series stood out as it took several well-known X-Men and depicted them as teenagers in the early 2000s. Some X-Men remained as adults, teaching the younger mutants throughout the show. Those who were aged down for this plot included: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Rogue, Gambit, and other returning characters. In between homework and run-of-the-mill teen angst, the class of Evolution had their hands full with all sorts of chaos from mutants and non-mutants alike. X-Men: Evolution is a source of nostalgia for a decent amount of millennials, zillenials and older Gen Z, but it’s more of a weird coincidence to yours truly. Although I have a fair number of fictomeres under my belt, X-Men: Evolution has to be the greatest case of deja-vu I’ve felt as a person from fiction. X-Men: Evolution isn’t my source, but its familiarity hangs heavily over my head as if it was.
Only a year after X-Men: Evolution’s end, New X-Men: Academy X was published under Marvel Comics. As mentioned before, the comics centered teenage mutants learning to control their powers and training as the next generation of X-Men. These events presumably took place sometime within the early 2000s, based on our fashion, technology, and socio-cultural environment. We were taught by prolific X-Men, and we faced more than enough challenges to last us a lifetime. When I think of X-Men: Evolution, I can’t help but think of my fictomere. I get this nagging feeling that Evolution’s a little too close to home. Evolution’s class reminds me so much of my own and the bonds we made despite everything we went through. “Bittersweet” is quite the understatement in this context.
Admittedly, I‘m envious. Although the challenges we face as mutants aren’t worth desiring in any X-Men source, X-Men: Evolution leaves me feeling melancholy. It’s like a time capsule of everything I’m missing, but it was made by somebody else. Seeing our teachers and mentors in a similar position as we were in throws me through a loop, especially since Evolution occurred when my class became active in the field.
The mutants of Evolution need no introduction, even if it’s an atypical depiction of them. Meanwhile, the mutants of Academy X never had something like Evolution that was entirely centered around us. The comics have compensated us on more than one occasion, but the rest of X-Men media aren’t as considerate. At best, we float around among other X-Men. Take Pixie’s cameo in X-Men ‘97 for example. Megan’s always been a good friend of mine, but her position in that timeline came completely out of left field. We’ve been reduced to filler characters in recent projects with nothing to show for it. Yet, at the rate things are going with Marvel now, I don’t think more exposure would help us. We’re scattered throughout the comics’ narrative, and I’m just a nomad with nowhere to turn to, thanks to “canon”.
Quite frankly, I’ve had enough. I’m sick of companies like Marvel Comics and Disney fumbling around with our lives, and I’m even more sick of being M.I.A. within our narrative. Months before this essay, I didn’t know where to begin with recreating my fictomere. All I had was a few names, a few faces, and some snapshots of my life that came in waves. But after pulling inspiration from those around me and doing a bit of research, I know where I want my fictomere to go.
Grind Fiction, Rebelling Against “Canon”, And The Art of Taking Back What’s Yours
That brings me to the heart of the matter: what is grind fiction?
This is a genre of many names: Shibuya-kei, Shibuya Punk, and most notably, Animemo. If you haven’t heard of grind fiction by name, chances are you’ve seen or experienced it by trade. Think of Jet Set Radio and Jet Set Radio Future. Think of The World Ends With You, NEO: The World Ends With You, Scott Pilgrim, FreeJack, and Sunset Overdrive. There's also animes like FLCL, Air Gear, and perhaps Kagerou Project: The Animation to consider. Or, you can think of media that’s revived this genre recently: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, No Straight Roads, Hi-Fi Rush, RKGK (Rakugaki), Umurangi Generation, Urbano - Legends’ Debut and the Splatoon franchise.
It's that slick jazz track you can’t get out of your head as you tag the hottest spots. It’s inner-city kids forming gangs, starting fights that feel way too dynamic, and running from the cops. It's chasing the latest trends from hip-hop and street fashion to alternative styles and bands, then mixing them together so you can stand out from the crowd. It's far from escapism, but it’s the closest thing you’ve got to freedom. Grind fiction is a beautifully complex clusterfuck of media that’s been around long before me, but why apply it to this fictomere?
Well, I have my partner to thank for that. Nani is very passionate about grind fiction. So much so, she read aloud Grind Fiction: A Summary of GrindWorld while we were on a call together. GrindWorld is a forum dedicated to Jet Set Radio, The World Ends With You, and all the media that falls in between. GrindWorld user SelMelvins’s essay was a love letter to animemo on the forum, all of which my girlfriend heartily recited to me. I certainly picked up what SelMelvins was putting down, and I respected the inspiration their words gave to Nani. That said, this information didn’t impact me initially. I finally had a name for a neat string of concepts I’ve seen since I was a kid, and there wasn’t much else to it until now.
Shortly after attending Khadgar’s panel, I thought about the kind of world I wanted my fictomere to be. What made sense for us? I didn’t want to settle for the comics because I already settled on the likelihood that I’m not from Earth-616, but what choice did I have? Take X-Men: Evolution, skin it of its narrative, and replace it with my class? Make no mistake, I was tempted to do so. I wanted a distinctly 2000s-esque or -inspired structure around my fictomere. I started thinking of all sorts of media that could classify as Y2K, regardless of their execution. As I cycled through various games, shows, and movies, my brainstorming ceased when I recalled my conversations with Nani. I realized grind fiction was the perfect concept to frame my fictomere around.
In SelMelvins’s essay, animemo is best described as “Youths Having Fun Being Fantastic”. At first glance, it’s a vague statement to make. Trust me, you’ll want to read the whole essay to really get why they summarized it so broadly. There’s subgenres upon subgenres to unpack within animemo/grind fiction, but I digress. “Youths Having Fun Being Fantastic” is absolutely a bar that my class can pass. If there’s anything that sets us apart from Evolution’s class, it’s that we knew how to get ourselves into some real trouble… and get a kick out of it while doing it! You could argue the same for Evolution’s class, but there’s a reason why X-Men fans young and old have a habit of referencing just how fucked our lives were in retrospect. If we had the opportunity to enjoy something, we absolutely took it. If that moment happened while confronting corruption in our area, then we took it regardless! The New X-Men had no shortage of teens who’re down to rebel, and that alone is a good precursor to incorporating us in grind fiction.
In addition to that, there’s a few snippets from SelMelvins’s essay that jumped out at me as qualities we have:
"Emo-ish youths doing rebellious, expressionistic, or even anarchistic things..." (Very applicable, although I'd say we're an aesthetically diverse group)
"... Battling overwhelming odds usually with power hungry adults at the forefront..." (Our many, many face-offs against Rev. William Stryker and his anti-mutant, christofascist terrorist group "The Purifiers")
Spraying graffiti and other petty crimes done for fun or to tick off the authorities (The Hellions broke a kid out of FBI custody— if anyone fits this bill, it's them), sometimes including teen angst and/or love (a bill that we all fit, to be honest)
Dark Animemo. "... The fist-fighting traits and sometimes tragic elements of Animemo are more prevalent. Hopelessness is a common theme and suspense is built constantly." (Very applicable, especially considering Stryker’s obsession with killing all mutants—starting with us— and the plethora of kids who've died throughout our time as students)
This gave me something to work with. While combing through the essay, I asked myself what my ideal source would look like in the scope of grind fiction. Here's what I've got:
Earth-767A: There's no special meaning behind the name. I chose a random combination of numbers and threw a letter at the end for the hell of it.
New X-Men: Academy X incorporates both the transhumanist and magical elements found in various animemo works. From mutant technology that stabilizes superpowers to unfathomable levels of telekinesis, there's no shortage of speculative madness. With the things we can do, we take SelMelvins's quote, "In all essence, animemo is almost like an anime where the characters think they're in an anime!", to the extreme.
The setting of this fictomere is a retro-futuristic take on the New York metropolitan/tri-state area, much like what New Amsterdam is to Bomb Rush Cyberfunk.
Additionally, the mutant nation of Krakoa never got destroyed. It’s still around. Why? Because I said so. That’s the one writing decision I will fault Marvel’s writers for because they insist we can’t have anything nice for once.
At Xavier's, mutant squads are akin to rival gangs (JSR, JSRF, BRC) and often clash with each other over missions. Everyone wants to show they’ve got what it takes to become an X-Man, but being a X-Man isn't about your strength or your street cred. It's about working as a team towards a common goal: liberation. This is a lesson that we’d learn the hard way.
A mutual practice among mutant squads is the art of tagging our insignias all across the area. It's less about claiming somewhere as turf and more about getting our names out there as up-and-coming heroes, even if some of the public doesn't see us this way. Enemy territories (the Purifiers) are risky but popular spots to hit.
Mutant-led communities, such as Mutant Town, are safe havens when the feds are after us.
Although Xavier's makes teamwork a key component of our studies, you'll find every team has its fair share of people who want to shine above the rest. Everyone wants to be seen as unique, but it's hard to do that in a school full of other superpowered teenagers. Imagine the sort of youth movement that’d come from bold, ambitious mutant teens from all corners of the globe in such a limited space!
If there's anything I can vouch for, it's a mutant teenager's dedication to their self-expression. Elixir turned his skin gold to prove he's the "golden boy" of our school for fuck's sake.
Don't let this fictomere's appearances deceive you, because its storytelling heavily aligns with dark animemo. Let's revisit the very tragic, very depressing opener to this essay. Those scenarios were laced with personal truths, things that my peers and I experienced as teenagers. I suppose that's where Marvel and I see eye-to-eye in a way.
To be a New X-Man is to be a target before you're ever a teenager. The writers weren't wrong in titling our coming-of-age arc "Childhood's End", but with this fictomere's created knowledge, I hope to weave in the bits and pieces of our youth that was taken from us too soon.
Truth be told, this is the tip of the iceberg. I want to do more with this fictomere, even though it means having to build it up by myself. I'd rather have the agency of reconstructing my narrative than leave it in the hands of total strangers who lack any knowledge of my existence.
“Canon" is the boogeyman to a lot of us fictionfolk. It can be invalidating without trying to be. It can be exclusionary or flat-out wrong without any insight as to why it's either of those things. Only we have the ability to confront "canon" and its unwitting transgressions. Some may struggle with altering "canon" to suit their needs, but I think opportunities of this caliber have been underutilized for too long. Whether filling in the blanks of noemata or actively creating information around one's fictomere(s), taking "canon" and turning it on its head is cathartic. It's a reclamation of the self. In this practice, I have taken back a part of me that I once neglected out of uncertainty. I wanted to feel whole again so badly, so I'm going to work towards feeling whole again as long as I see fit.
