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juliennedTHAT IS PRETTY MUCH THE ESSENCE OF THIS ESSAY OKAY.
Background
Trying to describe current continuity for the Marvel mutants pretty much involves me waving my hands vaguely and making noises in the hope that someone else understands what I mean. But in essence, the mutant population is under some pretty dire threats. It really all begins and comes back to Decimation, that day where over 90% of the mutant population woke up without powers. This was devastating to the mutants, with people dying as a direct result of losing their powers, being put on life support, dying trying to get back their powers … it was a really horrible, miserable day. Further, there weren't any more new mutants being born or manifesting powers: the students left in the school were, likely, the last mutants to exist.
The intervening weeks made it very clear the mutant kids that they are both extremely vulnerable and that no-one could save them. One of the tensions that goes on throughout the latter half of NXM is that while the staff of the school say they want to save the kids they … often don't. The kids learn through really painful experience that if they want someone to save them, they have to save themselves. They rise to this challenge, and Julian's especially prone to doing that; while Julian is arrogant as hell, Julian is also a genuinely good person who will put himself through whatever he has to in order to save his friends both physically and morally. He's the one who will storm Limbo (read: HELL DIMENSION) to get his friends back, he'll infiltrate a lab in order to rescue one of his friends, and he's the one who continually pulls his friends back from killing people. Julian is not a killer. He has killed once (or at least tried to) and the consequences were that he was utterly shattered, psychologically speaking, and just kind of gave up on doing anything. In any situation, if someone is yelling "DON'T KILL THEM" it's Julian.
The upshot of all this is that the kids have learned that they need to save themselves! But … this is because everyone they think they can trust will abandon them. For a lot of the kids, their parents abandoned them when they manifested powers or some time afterward because of their powers. Julian falls into this category. It gets worse: the teachers are pretty terrible at protecting them against threats … and then after a crossover, the school gets destroyed, Charles Xavier is dead (he gets better!!) and the X-Men are disbanded.
What that means for the kids is that they're … basically turned out. Julian himself wakes up in a hospital room after getting impaled several times, and after getting an info dump (and justifiably freaking the hell out) he gets knocked out and then wakes up alone. There's money for him, and he has shelter but he doesn't have what he needs: namely adult support to work out who and what to do with his life from that point on. He's been abandoned by everyone, he's recovering from a a really horrible injury and he's psychologically messed up (though not as bad as he becomes later on!) - being left alone in a hotel room to dwell about his crappy life is pretty much the worst thing that anyone could have done for him. Julian decides to join Magneto's cause at this point, pretty much because he is so hurt and upset about what's happened to him that he wants to make the X-Men hurt as much as they hurt him. He'd honestly make a pretty terrible member of the Brotherhood - he's too much of a heroic person to actually succeed, and Magneto quite rightly turns him away.
Then more bad stuff happens, but I've made my point already.
The X-Kids have pretty much been taught since Decimation that the only people they can rely on if they get into trouble are themselves. The adults are never going to help them, and while the X-Men will say that they will help them, they won't. There is always a part of Julian that remembers the feeling when he woke up in that hotel room, all alone, still hooked up to an IV and realising that he was abandoned, yet again, by every adult figure he knew and trusted, with no plan for the future. He remembers the sheer isolation and misery at being utterly unwanted by anyone, and that's why he decides to try to join the Brotherhood - in part to make the X-Men hurt like they hurt him and in part to be wanted by someone, anyone. It's this mindset that affects a lot of what he does in camp.
Camp stuff
In camp, things are significantly different. He's able to roll with the different timelines, because the X-Kids still need him. They want him around. They mutually address their needs to be wanted by someone because in canon they sure aren't that wanted. They are the kids that no-one really knows what to do with or wants, but together they can want and need each other. It's them against the world and they'll take on anything for each other because they're all they have.
There's also been two trends in camp that are both different to things at home and … yet still reinforce the same message: the plans to rescue the X-Kids from their world and the younger X-Men coming to camp.
Rescuing the kids
First up, there isn't really a consensus about what the kids want to do, or how they want to do it. Julian isn't sure that he wants to leave his home world; sure it's horrible and miserable and everyone hates him and god it would be nice to be wanted somewhere. He's been in camp long enough to know that typically how it goes is that a person is invited to a new universe by someone, and if that person is an adult offering a place to a kid they make sure they have access to schooling, shelter, adult guidance - basically it's the adopted family thing. The adult making the offer takes personal responsibility for the child/teenager's welfare.
What he's also noticed is that the current plans as presented are not this. They are, essentially, grab kids, stick them on an alien planet in a safe house, the kids raise themselves and if they are lucky will have an adult check in on them every so often. There's no real undertaking to make sure that the kids have someone around regularly to get support from. There's no adult figure who can help them sort their stuff out. And there's no adult figure who will help them realise that not all adults will abandon them. In fact, benign abandonment is what these plans are about.
The thing is, Julian has experienced benign abandonment in the past. He knows how is not a good idea for them. He knows that it doesn't result in the kids getting the support they need to become functioning adults, and now that he's aware enough to know that his friends are seriously messed up (and when pushed, he'll note that he himself is also very messed up himself). He's aware that being dumped on a strange planet without the type of emotional support they need is just going to make things worse, because they're also isolated from everyone else and everything they have ever known. In fact, being dumped in a strange world without a lot of emotional support would be worse because they are forever isolated from anything they find familiar and comforting.
Basically, if he was to leave his home world (and even then that's unlikely because his friends are buried at home), what he would want is a family for not only him, but his friends. He doesn't want a safe house, though that is part of a family. He wants somewhere safe, where his friends are safe, where they belong and are wanted, not for their powers but for themselves. And none of these plans are addressing any of them, and he knows it. He knows that it's about horror at their situation and not … any real interest in them personally. No-one wants to adopt the kids into their family. Basically, they're good enough to get brought into the universe, but not good enough to belong anywhere. So basically the plans, when Julian hears about them, are reinforcing to him that no-one wants them in their family.
Younger X-Men in camp
Talking about family! Thematically the X-Men are about adoptive families: the X-Men are where you go when you manifest mutations and your family and friends are afraid of you, and you'll have a place to call home. In actual fact, this hasn't been the case for a while. Since Decimation, the school hasn't been that safe at all and the students have learned that the adults in their home world are pretty much never going to look after them. It's not a malicious negligence, it's more that they can't really be bothered investing the time and effort outside of "oh that's sad" when one of them dies. It's uh … kind of horrible.
Anyway, in their home universe, the adults have become hardened and kind of indifferent to the kids' suffering because there's been so much of it going around that the adults have gone into survival mode. The kids are, for the fraction left, alive and their respective sanities and stabilities are not important. But when the younger adults started arriving in camp, Julian held out some hope that maybe, maybe these guys will be different.
They are. But not in the way he anticipated.
What Julian expected was that they would be younger (obviously), more idealistic, and hopeful for a better future. He honestly expected that upon meeting the kids and … how messed up they are, that they would go "what is this" and after that moment, roll their sleeves up and try to help. Despite them being from different universes, they are still the leaders of the mutant world, by choice, and the kids in camp are their people! That it didn't matter that they were fundamentally damaged in horrible ways, they mattered and that their leaders valued them.
He didn't expect them to basically go "oh god" and then not talk to them about anything significant for lengthy periods of time. They do water cooler conversations off screen but that's about it. He didn't expect them to go "you're too hard we don't know where to start" and he didn't expect them to … basically leave them to their own devices, focusing instead on their own goals that don't include the kids at all. It was meant with all good intentions, of course, but it is the benign abandonment issue again.
Julian's come up with two reasons as to why this is the case: the kids are a disappointment to the adults; or the adults just don't care about their species. He clings very firmly to the first reason, wilfully blinding himself to the second possibility, because the idea that the leaders of the mutant world don't care about them is something so horrific that considering it would pretty much destroy him. Julian has sacrificed a lot by being a mutant (the rather obvious being that a very tactile person now is actually unable to touch people with his hands because they're … gone). He needs to think that the adults are invested in his life and just find him disappointing, to make it worthwhile.
When Julian says that the adults believe they're a disappointment, he's not being melodramatic. He's not being a stupid teenager. He genuinely believes this. This is his explanation to himself about why the leaders of their species only occasionally speak to them at any length.
That said! Julian still wants to believe. He wants to hope that maybe the adults are just dumb. That maybe it's not that they don't care, that maybe it's not that they are disappointed, but that they are just dumb. So that's why he set them a challenge two weeks ago. He basically told Scott "here. You work on building a rapport with Josh Foley". He found out yesterday that nothing has progressed on that front. He is angry at himself for believing yet again that maybe things will be different. He's angry at the adults, sure, for failing them again and having no interest in them, but he's also angry at himself for being stupid. For believing that maybe someone would want them, would care about them and would work to try and make things better for them. Instead, it was just hollow rhetoric and he hates that he believed it. He hates that he wanted to believe it. He hates that whenever he tries to tell someone this, they actually ignore it, and he hates that he is still trying because his friends deserve a place where they belong. He is so profoundly miserable at this state of affairs, and he gets really angry when people tell him that of course camp is better you can have a family!
Not if you're a mutant.
Conclusion
Julian has learned that it doesn't matter where you go, who you meet, they'll never want mutants around. At best they're good enough to be charity cases but not good enough to be accepted as belonging anywhere. They're a disappointment at best. No-one will ever want them. No-one will ever consider them good enough to invite them into their group. Their leaders of their people don't really … care that much. Any rescue plan involves dumping them in a safe house and abandoning them. Everything about their lives is benign abandonment, when all they want is a place to belong and people who love them.
Basically, they're Vanya only they have been told "yes, kids, you don't belong anywhere, you will never have a family, and adults are inherently untrustworthy forever".
GOOD TIMES also plurk timeline I am sure that this was totally worth the wait.
Background
Trying to describe current continuity for the Marvel mutants pretty much involves me waving my hands vaguely and making noises in the hope that someone else understands what I mean. But in essence, the mutant population is under some pretty dire threats. It really all begins and comes back to Decimation, that day where over 90% of the mutant population woke up without powers. This was devastating to the mutants, with people dying as a direct result of losing their powers, being put on life support, dying trying to get back their powers … it was a really horrible, miserable day. Further, there weren't any more new mutants being born or manifesting powers: the students left in the school were, likely, the last mutants to exist.
The intervening weeks made it very clear the mutant kids that they are both extremely vulnerable and that no-one could save them. One of the tensions that goes on throughout the latter half of NXM is that while the staff of the school say they want to save the kids they … often don't. The kids learn through really painful experience that if they want someone to save them, they have to save themselves. They rise to this challenge, and Julian's especially prone to doing that; while Julian is arrogant as hell, Julian is also a genuinely good person who will put himself through whatever he has to in order to save his friends both physically and morally. He's the one who will storm Limbo (read: HELL DIMENSION) to get his friends back, he'll infiltrate a lab in order to rescue one of his friends, and he's the one who continually pulls his friends back from killing people. Julian is not a killer. He has killed once (or at least tried to) and the consequences were that he was utterly shattered, psychologically speaking, and just kind of gave up on doing anything. In any situation, if someone is yelling "DON'T KILL THEM" it's Julian.
The upshot of all this is that the kids have learned that they need to save themselves! But … this is because everyone they think they can trust will abandon them. For a lot of the kids, their parents abandoned them when they manifested powers or some time afterward because of their powers. Julian falls into this category. It gets worse: the teachers are pretty terrible at protecting them against threats … and then after a crossover, the school gets destroyed, Charles Xavier is dead (he gets better!!) and the X-Men are disbanded.
What that means for the kids is that they're … basically turned out. Julian himself wakes up in a hospital room after getting impaled several times, and after getting an info dump (and justifiably freaking the hell out) he gets knocked out and then wakes up alone. There's money for him, and he has shelter but he doesn't have what he needs: namely adult support to work out who and what to do with his life from that point on. He's been abandoned by everyone, he's recovering from a a really horrible injury and he's psychologically messed up (though not as bad as he becomes later on!) - being left alone in a hotel room to dwell about his crappy life is pretty much the worst thing that anyone could have done for him. Julian decides to join Magneto's cause at this point, pretty much because he is so hurt and upset about what's happened to him that he wants to make the X-Men hurt as much as they hurt him. He'd honestly make a pretty terrible member of the Brotherhood - he's too much of a heroic person to actually succeed, and Magneto quite rightly turns him away.
Then more bad stuff happens, but I've made my point already.
The X-Kids have pretty much been taught since Decimation that the only people they can rely on if they get into trouble are themselves. The adults are never going to help them, and while the X-Men will say that they will help them, they won't. There is always a part of Julian that remembers the feeling when he woke up in that hotel room, all alone, still hooked up to an IV and realising that he was abandoned, yet again, by every adult figure he knew and trusted, with no plan for the future. He remembers the sheer isolation and misery at being utterly unwanted by anyone, and that's why he decides to try to join the Brotherhood - in part to make the X-Men hurt like they hurt him and in part to be wanted by someone, anyone. It's this mindset that affects a lot of what he does in camp.
Camp stuff
In camp, things are significantly different. He's able to roll with the different timelines, because the X-Kids still need him. They want him around. They mutually address their needs to be wanted by someone because in canon they sure aren't that wanted. They are the kids that no-one really knows what to do with or wants, but together they can want and need each other. It's them against the world and they'll take on anything for each other because they're all they have.
There's also been two trends in camp that are both different to things at home and … yet still reinforce the same message: the plans to rescue the X-Kids from their world and the younger X-Men coming to camp.
Rescuing the kids
First up, there isn't really a consensus about what the kids want to do, or how they want to do it. Julian isn't sure that he wants to leave his home world; sure it's horrible and miserable and everyone hates him and god it would be nice to be wanted somewhere. He's been in camp long enough to know that typically how it goes is that a person is invited to a new universe by someone, and if that person is an adult offering a place to a kid they make sure they have access to schooling, shelter, adult guidance - basically it's the adopted family thing. The adult making the offer takes personal responsibility for the child/teenager's welfare.
What he's also noticed is that the current plans as presented are not this. They are, essentially, grab kids, stick them on an alien planet in a safe house, the kids raise themselves and if they are lucky will have an adult check in on them every so often. There's no real undertaking to make sure that the kids have someone around regularly to get support from. There's no adult figure who can help them sort their stuff out. And there's no adult figure who will help them realise that not all adults will abandon them. In fact, benign abandonment is what these plans are about.
The thing is, Julian has experienced benign abandonment in the past. He knows how is not a good idea for them. He knows that it doesn't result in the kids getting the support they need to become functioning adults, and now that he's aware enough to know that his friends are seriously messed up (and when pushed, he'll note that he himself is also very messed up himself). He's aware that being dumped on a strange planet without the type of emotional support they need is just going to make things worse, because they're also isolated from everyone else and everything they have ever known. In fact, being dumped in a strange world without a lot of emotional support would be worse because they are forever isolated from anything they find familiar and comforting.
Basically, if he was to leave his home world (and even then that's unlikely because his friends are buried at home), what he would want is a family for not only him, but his friends. He doesn't want a safe house, though that is part of a family. He wants somewhere safe, where his friends are safe, where they belong and are wanted, not for their powers but for themselves. And none of these plans are addressing any of them, and he knows it. He knows that it's about horror at their situation and not … any real interest in them personally. No-one wants to adopt the kids into their family. Basically, they're good enough to get brought into the universe, but not good enough to belong anywhere. So basically the plans, when Julian hears about them, are reinforcing to him that no-one wants them in their family.
Younger X-Men in camp
Talking about family! Thematically the X-Men are about adoptive families: the X-Men are where you go when you manifest mutations and your family and friends are afraid of you, and you'll have a place to call home. In actual fact, this hasn't been the case for a while. Since Decimation, the school hasn't been that safe at all and the students have learned that the adults in their home world are pretty much never going to look after them. It's not a malicious negligence, it's more that they can't really be bothered investing the time and effort outside of "oh that's sad" when one of them dies. It's uh … kind of horrible.
Anyway, in their home universe, the adults have become hardened and kind of indifferent to the kids' suffering because there's been so much of it going around that the adults have gone into survival mode. The kids are, for the fraction left, alive and their respective sanities and stabilities are not important. But when the younger adults started arriving in camp, Julian held out some hope that maybe, maybe these guys will be different.
They are. But not in the way he anticipated.
What Julian expected was that they would be younger (obviously), more idealistic, and hopeful for a better future. He honestly expected that upon meeting the kids and … how messed up they are, that they would go "what is this" and after that moment, roll their sleeves up and try to help. Despite them being from different universes, they are still the leaders of the mutant world, by choice, and the kids in camp are their people! That it didn't matter that they were fundamentally damaged in horrible ways, they mattered and that their leaders valued them.
He didn't expect them to basically go "oh god" and then not talk to them about anything significant for lengthy periods of time. They do water cooler conversations off screen but that's about it. He didn't expect them to go "you're too hard we don't know where to start" and he didn't expect them to … basically leave them to their own devices, focusing instead on their own goals that don't include the kids at all. It was meant with all good intentions, of course, but it is the benign abandonment issue again.
Julian's come up with two reasons as to why this is the case: the kids are a disappointment to the adults; or the adults just don't care about their species. He clings very firmly to the first reason, wilfully blinding himself to the second possibility, because the idea that the leaders of the mutant world don't care about them is something so horrific that considering it would pretty much destroy him. Julian has sacrificed a lot by being a mutant (the rather obvious being that a very tactile person now is actually unable to touch people with his hands because they're … gone). He needs to think that the adults are invested in his life and just find him disappointing, to make it worthwhile.
When Julian says that the adults believe they're a disappointment, he's not being melodramatic. He's not being a stupid teenager. He genuinely believes this. This is his explanation to himself about why the leaders of their species only occasionally speak to them at any length.
That said! Julian still wants to believe. He wants to hope that maybe the adults are just dumb. That maybe it's not that they don't care, that maybe it's not that they are disappointed, but that they are just dumb. So that's why he set them a challenge two weeks ago. He basically told Scott "here. You work on building a rapport with Josh Foley". He found out yesterday that nothing has progressed on that front. He is angry at himself for believing yet again that maybe things will be different. He's angry at the adults, sure, for failing them again and having no interest in them, but he's also angry at himself for being stupid. For believing that maybe someone would want them, would care about them and would work to try and make things better for them. Instead, it was just hollow rhetoric and he hates that he believed it. He hates that he wanted to believe it. He hates that whenever he tries to tell someone this, they actually ignore it, and he hates that he is still trying because his friends deserve a place where they belong. He is so profoundly miserable at this state of affairs, and he gets really angry when people tell him that of course camp is better you can have a family!
Not if you're a mutant.
Conclusion
Julian has learned that it doesn't matter where you go, who you meet, they'll never want mutants around. At best they're good enough to be charity cases but not good enough to be accepted as belonging anywhere. They're a disappointment at best. No-one will ever want them. No-one will ever consider them good enough to invite them into their group. Their leaders of their people don't really … care that much. Any rescue plan involves dumping them in a safe house and abandoning them. Everything about their lives is benign abandonment, when all they want is a place to belong and people who love them.
Basically, they're Vanya only they have been told "yes, kids, you don't belong anywhere, you will never have a family, and adults are inherently untrustworthy forever".
GOOD TIMES also plurk timeline I am sure that this was totally worth the wait.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-04-30 11:32 pm (UTC)