Professional musician and writer. Avid MU gamer and obsessed with silly internet memes.

2018-04-18T19:41:41Z

BlondieWiz:

A draft for fleshing out/refining some of the details of the X-Men's basic implementation.

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An eternal optimist whose rough experiences have taught him plenty about the value of compromising - a little - for the sake of turning a dream into reality, Charles Xavier founded the X-Men to forward his vision of a world in which humans and posthumans (posthumans? Are we using that term elsewhere?) are able to live harmoniously with one another.

In the years since Charles deployed his first students in their gym clothes to battle the embodiment of humanity's worst fears of their so-called 'mutant' cousins, the team has achieved a degree of both notoriety and genuine fame. The X-Men have been on their share of strange adventures and world-saving missions, but most of their work is focused on trying to make the world a more equitable place. To that end, they regularly cross paths with government authorities, corporate entities, and cruel scientists intent on weaponizing, monetizing, or otherwise controlling metahuman bodies, as well as bigots who'd be happy seeing them all restrained or, just, dead; metahumans interested in bending their gifts towards more destructive ends - and thus adding even more fuel to the fires of anti-mutant/'pro-human' sentiment - make for regular rivals as well ... though every now and again, they seem to find their way onto the team themselves.

The X-Men initially operated on a fairly strict covert basis in the hopes of letting progress march on while quietly clearing impediments to it. However, as the years rolled on, the Strykers of the world were only growing more incendiary, meta-exploitation efforts continued barely abated as each shuttered organization spawned several new ones from its remnants, and Sentinel Services - a law enforcement agency instituted in the wake of the Johnson-Kinsey Act - unveiled the dully named but frighteningly effective 'Sentinel' line of automated support drones that ultimately culminated in the towering, pseudo-intelligent killing machines that came to plague many of the team's outings. Covert ops and plainly functional uniforms could only go so far, prompting a shift towards colorful costumes and mindful efforts towards letting their deeds - if not their identities or affiliations to upstate boarding schools - be known, so that the X-Men could serve as positive examples of posthuman activism.

Covert ops remain on the table, of course, as they tend to find that some problems are best served under the cover of darkness rather than in four colors; however, the team is fairly stringent in its efforts to minimize the harm done to property and bodies alike, even on secret missions.

Despite years of ostensibly heroic efforts in the public sphere, the X-Men remain plagued by a mixed reputation owing to their status as a predominantly 'mutant' team, their vigilante nature ... and a proliferation of groups representing their ideals and overall 'brand', officially or otherwise. Since 2012 or so, Charles Xavier has withdrawn significantly from his role in leading the original team, leaving its day to day operations in the hands of his one-time students. In lieu of an active, 'official' figurehead of Charles' stature, there are those who - while broadly aligned with his ideals - see flaws in his X-Men's interpretation of it, leading them to start their '''own''' groups to fight for his dream as they see it. Some simply allude to the man and the movement he helped to start by incorporating the letter 'X' into the names of their teams or on their outfits; some go as far as to call '''themselves''' 'X-Men', albeit with a distinguishing adjective or color-coding of some sort. They don't always last long, but their exploits still have a way of coloring the way that the public at large views the X-Men; the average person on the street is unlikely to know or care about the political divisions between mutant vigilante-terrorists, after all.

Since the Sentinel Uprising of 2016, the X-Men operate out of a facility in New York's Mutant Town owned by the X-Corporation, a non-profit mutant outreach and advocacy organization founded by a number of wealthy investors including Charles Xavier himself. The team rents the space(for $1/year) and operates independently of X-C, though their interests do align with some frequency. Before then, the team was based out of a Manhattan brownstone; before then, they were on Muir Island. Only in the team's earliest years did they actively work out of the Westchester Institute; once security became an issue, they found other accommodations ... and occasionally explosive run-ins with their enemies have served to keep them moving.

The X-Men go through occasional spells of active recruitment, such as when the lion's share of its active members were captured on a mysterious island in the Pacific. Many of its members wind up coming from the ranks of the Xavier Institute, where many members of the team work as instructors; others might have been encountered as allies, or even victims during the course of a mission; a few were outright enemies of the X-Men until shifting hearts and/or circumstances brought them into the fold. That the team regularly seems to rotate barely college-aged faces and former criminals into its ranks doesn't do its reputation many favors among more sensitive segments of the population.
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Some notes offered:
*I would suggest then that it be a base not located in a heavily populated area, considering how often it's going to come under attack and how many innocent mutants and other residents will get killed when it does.
*There are islands along the coast, for example, that might be an idea.
*not to mention it['d be tough to hide the Blackbird taking off and landing in the middle of the city.
*I forget the year of the mutant relocation act, but that might be a good date to add to the Gen-X stuff.
*From afar, Lexi is still a bit grumbly about making Xavier dedicated to metahuman rights over mutant rights...while I'm not against them wanting to help with that, it seems like it dilutes the general mutant story and treatment by society to apply it to all metahumans.
:Mutants and metahumans both exist in Marvel, but they are not treated the same ways, even though mutants are a subset of metahumans (Homo sapiens superior or mutandis). This is because the nature of mutants, in that they represent a xenophobic reaction by many of the larger population based on the fact no one, not even the mutants themselves, often know they are a mutant until they manifest during puberty. And when they manifest their physical attributes earlier, they're regarded as freaks or monsters. It's the same hysteria that drove the Red Scare, and that was deliberately built into the mutant history for that reason, as much as as a stand in for minority racism in general.

:It's frightening to not know if the little girl down the street isn't one day going to level your house and kill your family accidentally when she develops the ability to make air explode into plasma. They are seen as a hidden threat, and because of that, mutants, unlike most other metahumans, have experienced a high level of racism, assault, and attempts at government control. The mutant gene and its manifestations are seen by some as a sickness, something that can strike randomly and with alarming side-effects, and that must be controlled to avoid these freakish powers harming normal citizens.

:Most metahumans don't have this issue. Their abilities are activated by scientificly rarer accidents, exposure to extremely rare types of materials or radiation, by deliberate goverment super-soldier programs, by latent alien DNA, etc. It isn't just one day Billy wakes up and has eyebeams, the way it is for mutants.

:Thus, I feel conflating mutants and metahumans as 'the same' undercuts the angst and societal stigma of being a mutant, and that Xavier's, while it might be sympathetic and willing to help metahuman rights as well, should be focused primarily on mutants, as it requires a specific toolbox to deal with the things mutants in particular have to deal with.

:I would suggest that if we want a primarily metahumans in general focused group, we have the Titans as a supergroup, or could have something like the Avengers Academy as a national or global school for those with metahuman OR mutant powers. Just it should not be Xavier's, as it cannot help to change its focus if the school goes from helping oppressed mutants specifically versus helping all beings with superhuman powers globally.

Talk:X-Men

2018-04-18T19:05:01Z

BlondieWiz:

Talk:X-Men

2018-04-18T19:03:48Z

BlondieWiz:

Talk:X-Men

2018-04-18T17:53:12Z

BlondieWiz: