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Endless Mike
Aug 13, 2003



Archyduchess posted:

I really don't like this implication that Xavier has just been putting on a song and dance in every monologue he's given over the past five decades of comics. I'm also not sure when this fall-out with Magneto alluded to in the text piece happens, how long it lasts, what's been quietly retconned-- like, I don't know, was ripping Wolverine's adamantium out part of the plan? Was the Mutant Massacre part of the plan? Did they have any sort of heads-up on Cassandra Nova and Genosha-- for that matter, was Genosha always doomed to failure? Was the Dark Phoenix stuff something they could have prepared for or did prepare for or was that a fresh wrinkle? It just opens up a lot of questions completely separate from the characterization stuff, and maybe in a different context I'd be very interested in seeing those questions get resolved, but right now it seems like a weirdly myopic approach to writing shared characters in a shared universe.
A couple things: as others have noted, there's the "out" that Xavier has rebooted his brain a couple times, though I'm not sure that's a great excuse. Moira's journal also notes that it takes her "decades" to get "wear down" Xavier, so it's entirely possible that those decades of monologues he's given were sincere at the time. Similarly, she talks about how he's difficult to win over at all, and there is the noted falling out with Magneto, though given it comes AFTER Apocalypse becomes "known to the world" I'm not 100% sure what it refers to. Possibly the very first arc in adjectiveless? (The HoX2 timeline notes a Moira/Xavier/Magneto schism in Year 48, so it might be that.) As for specific events that occurred, there's nothing in the various timelines to suggest those events happened in previous timelines. (Life 4 comes closest, perhaps, but even the only indication we get is that there's X-Men and the Phoenix Force, but that's all we know, really, and we don't know much of anything about contemporary Life 6.)

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FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant
I'd like to think it's "at that point genetic engineering makes the mutant human distinction irrellevant" so Moira's working towards some kind of post-human unity.

Maybe We're All Mutants type poo poo with the plant pills.

Else, the point with infecting the World Mind to provide some kind of Phalanx Dominion trojan horse.

Wanderer
Nov 5, 2006

our every move is the new tradition

Skwirl posted:

Weird thought experiment, pre HoxPox ,who was the most important X-Men character who's never died? Beast, Iceman and Storm are the three that jump out to me but I'm not sure if they haven't actually died at some point.

That's a tall ask for any character who's older than the '00s. Thanks to various crossovers, events, and Claremont-style issue-long fakeouts, more or less every major X-character has at least a couple of deaths on their record that I can think of. Beast and Iceman were both identified as among the "disappeared" in the first Infinity Gauntlet, and Storm was on the team for the "Fall of the Mutants" story where all of them were (temporarily) sacrificed to drive off the Adversary.

If you narrow the focus to characters who've had a big, cover-story shock death only to return later on, then it's easier, and I think you're right on all three. Gambit's also managed to skate on being killed and subsequently resurrected, somehow, although he has a couple of really close misses (including a bit in the James Asmus solo book where he gets shot in the face, but Faiza Hussein is right there to fix it).

Edit: I just reminded myself of the obscure Mys-Tech Wars limited series from Marvel UK in the '90s, where everyone on Earth dies except for a handful of surviving superheroes, among whom are Professor X, Wolverine, Gambit, and a badly injured Psylocke, but everyone gets brought back by a magical deus ex machina. I remember reading that as a teenager and feeling slightly traumatized, because a couple of the major characters who die, die badly.

Wanderer fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Oct 10, 2019

danbanana
Jun 7, 2008

OG Bell's fanboi

Wanderer posted:

I just reminded myself of the obscure Mys-Tech Wars limited series from Marvel UK in the '90s,

Holy poo poo that's a loving deep dive...

Edge & Christian
May 20, 2001

Earth-1145 is truly the best!
A world of singing, magic frogs,
high adventure, no shitposters

Archyduchess posted:

I'm also not sure when this fall-out with Magneto alluded to in the text piece happens, how long it lasts, what's been quietly retconned-- like, I don't know, was ripping Wolverine's adamantium out part of the plan?
There are only a few entries that can definitely be lined up to existing continuity points, but

MOIRA IS 17? 05 - This is right after the scene of Moira "opening her mind" to Xavier, so clearly X^0

MOIRA IS PROBABLY 25 17 - They talk about both Legion and Proteus as not-yet-born people, so this is also long before X-Men #1

MOIRA IS 43 22 - Magneto recruited - still before X-Men #1, given the sequence

29 - "Apocalypse has made himself known" - I was going to say this should be around the time of Fall of the Mutants, but upon reflection Apocalypse could have "made himself known" well before that, either in a pre-existing retcon or in a yet-untold X^0 story.

MOIRA IS 31 ?? - Moira gives birth to Proteus

35 - Redacted

48 - Visiting Sinister - this is shown to be happening in "X^0", which if I'm reading the book correctly is all before Xavier recruits the original team from X-Men #1?

MOIRA IS 47 52 - "Lost Magneto" - This basically could be anywhere between "before X-Men #1" and "prior to 2000 or so"

MOIRA IS 50 57 - "Moira fakes her death" - This happens right before Morrison takes over in 2000

MOIRA IS 52 House of X

Looking at this, the whole "Year One/Year Ten" thing seems deeply metaphorical, but given the compression of time at play in the timeline, you could still place Magneto's 'schism' anywhere in the timeline of the X-Men's publication; two years pass between Moira faking her death (pub date 2000) and House of X (pub date 2019). I hope the sequence of events (not really interested in placing them at discrete years, but at least within the story flow) that Hickman is flagging get better explored in Dawn of X.

BrianWilly
Apr 24, 2007

There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand
So basically nothing is explained and everything still makes no sense and we're just meant to "wait and see!" for the answers that are supposed to make this engageable at all which might never come anyway 'cuz Hickman is notoriously great at ignoring his own foibles forever which is literally what I was afraid would happen so. Hey. :shobon:

Moira's great big revelatory revelation from the furthest-flung future she's ever stayed for her lives is that...humans will eventually surpass mutants because they can make their own superpowers? Like...isn't this what we were talking about a while ago, that mutants and humans will get on a level playing field the minute baseline humans manage to control superpower generation? And it took Moira a thousand years to figure this out? My question is...why does this mean that mutants "always lose?" Just because humans will eventually self-evolve into an even more powerful race than mutants doesn't mean that they must necessarily be...what, rivals? Victims? Subjugators? Why must they literally still be fighting a hundred decades down the line? What would they even still be fighting over, at that point? You can't tell me pointless age old racism is going to last right up to the point of cosmic ascension?

Like........I don't dislike this series, there are a lot of things to like, on an objective level I can objectively see it is a good thing for the X-franchise, and I appreciate that other people appreciate it. But these twelve issues have been filled with self-importance that doesn't pay off while they carelessly breeze past actual important matters of characterization and worldbuilding. If I don't accept "The answer to this mystery is that there's an even bigger mystery!" from my network television then I don't know why I would take it in my comics. I'm gonna keep an eye on what's going on here but I'm done with the day-one buys at this point.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
This "we black hole people are going to kill you" is kinda great. Everything I like about Hickman.

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Oct 10, 2019

Web Jew.0
May 13, 2009

Phenotype posted:

Huh, that was kind of a letdown. The secret of Moira's sixth life was ... it was actually the life we were watching in the far future. Not really much of a twist, beyond finally letting us know when the stuff with the Phalanx takes place.

It's the exact same twist as X2 being her ninth life. But with less interesting characters.

Edge & Christian posted:

Looking at this, the whole "Year One/Year Ten" thing seems deeply metaphorical

I think I said the same itt. Year One Thousand probably isn't exactly 999 years after the year that Moira would've met Xavier on the bench either.

BrianWilly posted:

You can't tell me pointless age old racism is going to last right up to the point of cosmic ascension?

lol come on man it absolutely will

Web Jew.0 fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Oct 10, 2019

BrianWilly
Apr 24, 2007

There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand

Web Jew.0 posted:

lol come on man it absolutely will
I live in hope! :doom:

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Web Jew.0 posted:


lol come on man it absolutely will

Yeah, cosmic ascension is probably the only way to eliminate pointless racism.

Aphrodite
Jun 27, 2006

BrianWilly posted:

So basically nothing is explained and everything still makes no sense

They actually announced that at NYCC so that people would know going into the final issue.

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
Also, the Homo Novisima or whatever who spent a lot of time talking about how human bioengineering completely surpassed the natural evolution of mutants got completely ganked by a mutant born over a thousand years earlier.

danbanana
Jun 7, 2008

OG Bell's fanboi

Skwirl posted:

Also, the Homo Novisima or whatever who spent a lot of time talking about how human bioengineering completely surpassed the natural evolution of mutants got completely ganked by a mutant born over a thousand years earlier.

Proving once and for all who would win in a fight between Logan and the Midnighter!

One thing that is bugging me is the last line of the Moira issue. I'm still not sure what was meant about "changing the rules." Her plan in X isn't exactly breaking anything. Bringing all mutants together is basically Xavier and Magneto's general plan. The journal entries imply that the resurrection thing was hashed out by her and Xavier on the fly (hence the decision to make Proteus and Legion). What's the big revelation at her death of life IX?

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
Moira's insistence about not bringing back Destiny might be less about not wanting precogs (but it's a handy excuse) and more about the time Destiny told Pryo to kill her in the most painful way possible, specifically knowing Moira would remember it.

Adder Moray
Nov 18, 2010

danbanana posted:

Proving once and for all who would win in a fight between Logan and the Midnighter!

One thing that is bugging me is the last line of the Moira issue. I'm still not sure what was meant about "changing the rules." Her plan in X isn't exactly breaking anything. Bringing all mutants together is basically Xavier and Magneto's general plan. The journal entries imply that the resurrection thing was hashed out by her and Xavier on the fly (hence the decision to make Proteus and Legion). What's the big revelation at her death of life IX?

They now exist in a timeline wherein Professor X, Magneto, and Apocalypse are all working together and in agreement about the general course forward for mutant kind, not just the end goal, but the methods for achieving them. She's lived nine lifetimes prior to this one and it has never happened before.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

danbanana posted:

Proving once and for all who would win in a fight between Logan and the Midnighter!

One thing that is bugging me is the last line of the Moira issue. I'm still not sure what was meant about "changing the rules." Her plan in X isn't exactly breaking anything. Bringing all mutants together is basically Xavier and Magneto's general plan. The journal entries imply that the resurrection thing was hashed out by her and Xavier on the fly (hence the decision to make Proteus and Legion). What's the big revelation at her death of life IX?

I'm pretty sure the Big Revelation - the driving force of Hickman's run - is the notion that mutants might be the natural next step in human evolution, but as soon as humanity enters a phase where it controls its own evolution - as soon as they can make their own supermen instead of waiting for them to be born through random chance - humanity effectively leapfrogs mutantkind. The "there are always Sentinels" bit isn't the scary part, the scary part is that the Sentinels are effectively there to buy time for humanity to become posthumanity and render mutantkind irrelevant.

Which, if you're a mutant who thinks mutants are cool and good and should be nurtured and inculcated as their own thing, as products of natural evolution and not humanity-directed tinkering, means that the biggest threat to mutantkind isn't robots and it isn't other mutants; it's obsolescence. That's what "We always lose" refers to. Playing by the rules he's played by up until now, Charles Xavier's dream has a failure state built in, and that's why those rules have to change - the creation of a distinctly mutant identity separate from, and not subsumed by, humanity.

Seemlar
Jun 18, 2002
The changing of the rules would be that Xavier's dream isn't just doomed to failure, success of the dream also leads to failure - if humans and mutants both continue to exist even peacefully, humans come out on top. So the plan ultimately is turning Xavier towards mutant supremacy (even in relatively mild form) despite his innate goodness and wish to just co-exist with humanity, to bring *everyone* together against them.

From the way Moira's journal describes this it was a precarious balancing act as to how far to push him

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

Yup. And her last mindmeld with him looks way loving worse than the previous time we've seen, like almost to the point it breaks his mind. I'm into it.

funny way to spell
Nov 4, 2012
How is Moira immortal?

In the Age of Apocalypse timeline Apocalypse changed her into a female version of him but in the Phalanx timeline where she's living in the "zoo" with Wolverine (who from what HoX/PoX has established is pretty much immortal) she looks like her normal self. Was there some bit about her being immune to aging/disease that I missed in an early issue because she can obviously be killed

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

funny way to spell posted:

How is Moira immortal?

In the Age of Apocalypse timeline Apocalypse changed her into a female version of him but in the Phalanx timeline where she's living in the "zoo" with Wolverine (who from what HoX/PoX has established is pretty much immortal) she looks like her normal self. Was there some bit about her being immune to aging/disease that I missed in an early issue because she can obviously be killed

The librarian says that it's fortunate that she and Wolverine share a blood type; I assume she's able to stay alive for so long by getting transfusions of healing factor blood somehow.

Alaois
Feb 7, 2012

so now that Dawn of X is starting can we get a new thread or thread title at least, the Age of X-Man has been over for months

Aphrodite
Jun 27, 2006

funny way to spell posted:

How is Moira immortal?

In the Age of Apocalypse timeline Apocalypse changed her into a female version of him but in the Phalanx timeline where she's living in the "zoo" with Wolverine (who from what HoX/PoX has established is pretty much immortal) she looks like her normal self. Was there some bit about her being immune to aging/disease that I missed in an early issue because she can obviously be killed

The librarian mentions they share a blood type, maybe Logan is giving her regular healing factor boosts?

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

Alaois posted:

so now that Dawn of X is starting can we get a new thread or thread title at least, the Age of X-Man has been over for months

The Groverhouse of X

Abroham Lincoln
Sep 19, 2011

Note to self: This one's the good one



Alaois posted:

so now that Dawn of X is starting can we get a new thread or thread title at least, the Age of X-Man has been over for months

A PoX On Your House of X

Web Jew.0
May 13, 2009

funny way to spell posted:

How is Moira immortal?

In the Age of Apocalypse timeline Apocalypse changed her into a female version of him but in the Phalanx timeline where she's living in the "zoo" with Wolverine (who from what HoX/PoX has established is pretty much immortal) she looks like her normal self. Was there some bit about her being immune to aging/disease that I missed in an early issue because she can obviously be killed

Yeah I was about to ask this and even looked up HoX 2 to check how she died in life 1 - passed peacefully in her sleep at 76. Like others have said, probably Wolverine blood.

Reread PoX 1: So the Librarian and Nimrod checking out Cylobel in the tube right after the scene where NIMROD put her in a tube was clearly a misdirect. Different Cylobels in different tubes. Perhaps she always ends up in a tube in every reality.


And about the resurrected mutants not being the same person as the ones that died: is it any different than any of the other ways they've come back from the dead throughout the years? Besides the slight gap in memories I guess. But how do we know Jean came back with a soul and of the other times.

BrianWilly
Apr 24, 2007

There is no homosexual terrorist Johnny Silverhand

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

Which, if you're a mutant who thinks mutants are cool and good and should be nurtured and inculcated as their own thing, as products of natural evolution and not humanity-directed tinkering, means that the biggest threat to mutantkind isn't robots and it isn't other mutants; it's obsolescence. That's what "We always lose" refers to. Playing by the rules he's played by up until now, Charles Xavier's dream has a failure state built in, and that's why those rules have to change - the creation of a distinctly mutant identity separate from, and not subsumed by, humanity.
But this...isn't Xavier's dream. At least, it wasn't. Not the way I'd felt it was portrayed in the past. Xavier's dream, the goal of the X-Men, was no more and no less than for mutants and humans to coexist with each other peacefully. Why does it matter if humans will eventually surpass mutants through artificial means? Who cares if someone's got the bigger dick on the evolutionary yardstick? As long as Homo Novissimo (I do like the sound of that, tbh) isn't hunting down mutant children in their cribs and that mutants are still allowed to live their lives freely and without fear, I don't see how this means Xavier's dream is doomed to fail.

Now, obviously, in the future that we saw, mutants (and humans) are being oppressed by Homo Novissimo and are essentially being kept as pets or zoo animals in an enclosed environment. So that does suck. But it seems to me that the blue humans' mindsets are what Xavier and Moira should be trying to prevent and not the fact that they exist at all. Why is it predetermined that the blue people are always zookeeping assholes instead of people who mutants can live alongside? That's like saying that mutants are always predetermined to subjugate and oppress humans, just because they are mutants. Which, ironically, is the exact mindset that Xavier and Moira are currently encouraging, when it should be the opposite way around.

If anything, the attitude that Moira and Xavier are exhibiting is the exact same sort of attitude exhibited by humans who want to eradicate mutants.

danbanana
Jun 7, 2008

OG Bell's fanboi

Adder Moray posted:

They now exist in a timeline wherein Professor X, Magneto, and Apocalypse are all working together and in agreement about the general course forward for mutant kind, not just the end goal, but the methods for achieving them. She's lived nine lifetimes prior to this one and it has never happened before.

Yeah but "Hey, all these guys should get together!" isn't a very good revelation. I've only lived like half a life and only spent part of that reading about mutants and even I know that was a good idea. And again, nothing that happened in IX specifically led her to be like "OH NOW IT'S SERIOUS."


DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

I'm pretty sure the Big Revelation - the driving force of Hickman's run - is the notion that mutants might be the natural next step in human evolution, but as soon as humanity enters a phase where it controls its own evolution - as soon as they can make their own supermen instead of waiting for them to be born through random chance - humanity effectively leapfrogs mutantkind. The "there are always Sentinels" bit isn't the scary part, the scary part is that the Sentinels are effectively there to buy time for humanity to become posthumanity and render mutantkind irrelevant.

Which, if you're a mutant who thinks mutants are cool and good and should be nurtured and inculcated as their own thing, as products of natural evolution and not humanity-directed tinkering, means that the biggest threat to mutantkind isn't robots and it isn't other mutants; it's obsolescence. That's what "We always lose" refers to. Playing by the rules he's played by up until now, Charles Xavier's dream has a failure state built in, and that's why those rules have to change - the creation of a distinctly mutant identity separate from, and not subsumed by, humanity.

Again, this is all good and true but nothing we saw in IX that led her to be like "OH IT'S ON NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS!" And all the post-Phalanx revelations were in VI! She had 3 more lives to deal with what she learned about then!

Seemlar posted:

The changing of the rules would be that Xavier's dream isn't just doomed to failure, success of the dream also leads to failure - if humans and mutants both continue to exist even peacefully, humans come out on top. So the plan ultimately is turning Xavier towards mutant supremacy (even in relatively mild form) despite his innate goodness and wish to just co-exist with humanity, to bring *everyone* together against them.

From the way Moira's journal describes this it was a precarious balancing act as to how far to push him

This isn't revolutionary! She already essentially tried this three times prior! If her new plan is "well, maybe if I needle Xavier into being a bit more of a mutant supremacist," I mean... that plan is kinda boring?

I guess my complaint here is that that particular line implied her plan was something revolutionary and... it's not? Or at least, it wasn't at the beginning of X, where even the biggest reveal in that- Goldballs and Co.- isn't even hatched prior to telling Xavier about her lives. So even if her idea was "immortal mutants" it was one where she didn't even figure out HOW to do that. So that's clearly not her big plan.

Sesq
Nov 8, 2002

I wish I could tear him apart!
Entry 35 - RE: XAVIER

oh poo poo oh poo poo oh gently caress oh poo poo Xavier got super pissed off at Erik and now they merged into a thing called Onslaught what the gently caress that didn't happen before oh gently caress how am I supposed to deal with this. Silver lining though, they killed all the Avengers.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

BrianWilly posted:

But this...isn't Xavier's dream. At least, it wasn't. Not the way I'd felt it was portrayed in the past. Xavier's dream, the goal of the X-Men, was no more and no less than for mutants and humans to coexist with each other peacefully. Why does it matter if humans will eventually surpass mutants through artificial means? Who cares if someone's got the bigger dick on the evolutionary yardstick? As long as Homo Novissimo (I do like the sound of that, tbh) isn't hunting down mutant children in their cribs and that mutants are still allowed to live their lives freely and without fear, I don't see how this means Xavier's dream is doomed to fail.

Now, obviously, in the future that we saw, mutants (and humans) are being oppressed by Homo Novissimo and are essentially being kept as pets or zoo animals in an enclosed environment. So that does suck. But it seems to me that the blue humans' mindsets are what Xavier and Moira should be trying to prevent and not the fact that they exist at all. Why is it predetermined that the blue people are always zookeeping assholes instead of people who mutants can live alongside? That's like saying that mutants are always predetermined to subjugate and oppress humans, just because they are mutants. Which, ironically, is the exact mindset that Xavier and Moira are currently encouraging, when it should be the opposite way around.

If anything, the attitude that Moira and Xavier are exhibiting is the exact same sort of attitude exhibited by humans who want to eradicate mutants.

As near as we can tell, it's because rather than being different species that can co-exist, mutants are fundamentally a rival to humanity and time won't change that.

One of the core ideas often espoused in X-Men is that mutants are the next step in human evolution. They are, given time and lack of extinction, going to replace humans. (This is something Xavier brings up early on.) However understandably humans don't fancy the idea of being the outdated species that dies off. Making humans accept the idea that they will die off is difficult and that appears to be part of what Xavier and Moira's new plan is. Not trying to make humans and mutants co-exist but to create a world where humans are okay with the idea of eventually changing entirely into mutants.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

BrianWilly posted:

But this...isn't Xavier's dream. At least, it wasn't. Not the way I'd felt it was portrayed in the past. Xavier's dream, the goal of the X-Men, was no more and no less than for mutants and humans to coexist with each other peacefully. Why does it matter if humans will eventually surpass mutants through artificial means? Who cares if someone's got the bigger dick on the evolutionary yardstick? As long as Homo Novissimo (I do like the sound of that, tbh) isn't hunting down mutant children in their cribs and that mutants are still allowed to live their lives freely and without fear, I don't see how this means Xavier's dream is doomed to fail.

Now, obviously, in the future that we saw, mutants (and humans) are being oppressed by Homo Novissimo and are essentially being kept as pets or zoo animals in an enclosed environment. So that does suck. But it seems to me that the blue humans' mindsets are what Xavier and Moira should be trying to prevent and not the fact that they exist at all. Why is it predetermined that the blue people are always zookeeping assholes instead of people who mutants can live alongside? That's like saying that mutants are always predetermined to subjugate and oppress humans, just because they are mutants. Which, ironically, is the exact mindset that Xavier and Moira are currently encouraging, when it should be the opposite way around.

If anything, the attitude that Moira and Xavier are exhibiting is the exact same sort of attitude exhibited by humans who want to eradicate mutants.

The idea as I see it - and I'm not sure whether I agree with Hickman on this or not - is that the inevitable rise of human into posthuman will, equally inevitably, mean mutants end up consigned to a sort of side spur on the evolutionary tracks, surpassed and forgotten, relegated to nothing more than genetic curiosities. And that matters, not because of Xavier's dream, but why he dreamed it in the first place.

Because Charles Xavier was not - and again, this is subject to interpretation but it's the way I infer Hickman's story seems to be going - interested in humans and mutants living together in peace because togetherness is good and it's what Barney the Dinosaur would have wanted. He was interested in humans and mutants living together in peace so that humans would stop killing mutants and sticking them in cages and poo poo. Coexistence was valuable because he saw coexistence as the only means to ensure mutantkind would get to keep existing, freely and unafraid, to be their own people and eventually, after a long time of relative coexistence, supplant humanity as the dominant species, not out of malice but out of simple biological inertia. All that talk about how mutants were the next, inevitable step in human evolution didn't just come from Magneto and Apocalypse; Xavier said that poo poo too, he was just determined that they didn't have to be dicks about it.

And if posthumans leapfrog mutantkind the way Moira is positing as an inevitability, mutants being killed and locked in cages and poo poo becomes just as inevitable as a result - or at the very least, mutantkind dwindling to a scant few as their place on the evolutionary ladder is yanked away and replaced by the posthumans. Mutants die out. Xavier's dream of peaceful coexistence and integration cannot prevent that from happening; the very best that it can achieve is that perhaps when the Cro-Magnons start developing tools they won't murder all the Neanderthals, they'll just let them run free in nature preserves to peacefully die out on their own.

Ponsonby Britt
Mar 13, 2006
I think you mean, why is there silverware in the pancake drawer? Wassup?

ImpAtom posted:

As near as we can tell, it's because rather than being different species that can co-exist, mutants are fundamentally a rival to humanity and time won't change that.

One of the core ideas often espoused in X-Men is that mutants are the next step in human evolution. They are, given time and lack of extinction, going to replace humans. (This is something Xavier brings up early on.) However understandably humans don't fancy the idea of being the outdated species that dies off. Making humans accept the idea that they will die off is difficult and that appears to be part of what Xavier and Moira's new plan is. Not trying to make humans and mutants co-exist but to create a world where humans are okay with the idea of eventually changing entirely into mutants.

One interesting thing about all of this is that when Lee/Kirby started writing these stories in the 1960s, the dominant scientific view was in fact that Cro-Magnons had killed off all the Neanderthals and replaced them (and/or the Neanderthals died away peacefully). But nowadays the dominant scientific view is that while there was a lot of killing/replacing happening, there was also a lot of peaceful intermingling and assimilation between the two groups, to the point where most humans have both Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon ancestry. But even though the IRL science has changed, the metaphor hasn't really - the characters in these books still talk about it like it's inevitably a zero-sum game where one group lives and the other one dies.

funny way to spell
Nov 4, 2012

Aphrodite posted:

The librarian mentions they share a blood type, maybe Logan is giving her regular healing factor boosts?

Great, now Wolverine blood is going to be a new plot device

Cabbit
Jul 19, 2001

Is that everything you have?

funny way to spell posted:

Great, now Wolverine blood is going to be a new plot device

Let's be honest, Wolverine's healing factor being a plot device is hardly new.

Diet Poison
Jan 20, 2008

LICK MY ASS
Up until she said something Moira-specific, I assumed that was supposed to be thousand-years-older Laura but didn't understand why shaven-Tobias-Funke cared that they had the same blood type. I don't really see how Wolverine's blood is supposed to keep someone else from aging, but uh... whatever.

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Diet Poison posted:

Up until she said something Moira-specific, I assumed that was supposed to be thousand-years-older Laura but didn't understand why shaven-Tobias-Funke cared that they had the same blood type. I don't really see how Wolverine's blood is supposed to keep someone else from aging, but uh... whatever.

People today are investing money in the idea that getting blood transfusions from the young will help you live longer. I imagine blood from an immortal mutant who can survive almost anything would be even better.

Adder Moray
Nov 18, 2010
So here's a thought:

Based on how her powers work, Moira literally cannot die before they become active when she turns 13 if she chooses not to.

How so?

Because time follows the path it's supposed to when she's not actively trying to change it.

Moira is supposed to live into her seventies in her baseline timeline and has made it past 13 in every single preceding timeline. Meaning that in lives 10, 11, and beyond, all she has to do to ensure she lives until her X-Gene becomes active is... nothing.

So for Destiny's prediction to be correct, Moira has to choose to die without her powers. That or be forced to through circumstances growing out of whatever situation she's engineered.

What I'm saying is: Moira X is the last Moira because the right choice, if this timeline turns out to be the one where mutants don't necessarily win, but also don't lose, is for her to die without her powers and not live an 11th life. Because "the right choice at the end" is to preserve the timeline she took ten lifetimes to build, since she knows the eleventh is the last possible one.

EDIT: This might also explain why she's so opposed to any precogs, especially Destiny, being around. She has perfect recall of her past lives, which means she still knows how to brew up a batch of mutant cure. She doesn't want to run the risk of Destiny flipping her poo poo with only partial understanding of Moira's intent.

Adder Moray fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Oct 10, 2019

fordyce
Nov 21, 2005

Please, call me Djo
It strikes me that Moira 6's big revelation is that the humans have to die - her next life is trying to limit that to a single human family (the Trasks), but realising that humans lead to killer robots rather than than specifically the Trasks, she then goes all genocidal with Magneto and Apocalypse.

I suspect she's still genocidal, which is why she's afraid of Destiny revealing where this is leading. It may be that the flowers are part of a plan to wipe humanity out.

Billzasilver
Nov 8, 2016

I lift my drink and sing a song

for who knows if life is short or long?


Man's life is like the morning dew

past days many, future days few

Adder Moray posted:

They now exist in a timeline wherein Professor X, Magneto, and Apocalypse are all working together and in agreement about the general course forward for mutant kind, not just the end goal, but the methods for achieving them. She's lived nine lifetimes prior to this one and it has never happened before.

Seemlar posted:

The changing of the rules would be that Xavier's dream isn't just doomed to failure, success of the dream also leads to failure - if humans and mutants both continue to exist even peacefully, humans come out on top. So the plan ultimately is turning Xavier towards mutant supremacy (even in relatively mild form) despite his innate goodness and wish to just co-exist with humanity, to bring *everyone* together against them.

From the way Moira's journal describes this it was a precarious balancing act as to how far to push him

These seem the correct takes to me. All of these lives were needed to first make Moira abandon Xavier’s dream, then to make her own plan, then finally to fit Apocalypse and Magneto and the other dangerous mutants into her plan.

Starsnostars
Jan 17, 2009

The Master of Magnetism
If humans can make the leap to posthuman then I wonder if mutants can make a similar leap and become postmutant or something in order to keep pace.

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fordyce
Nov 21, 2005

Please, call me Djo

Starsnostars posted:

If humans can make the leap to posthuman then I wonder if mutants can make a similar leap and become postmutant or something in order to keep pace.

This seems to have been one of the strands in life 9, with all of Sinister's splicing. It's hard to tell if Moira's distrust is of him or of that whole approach.

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