AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS
CIRCLE ONE, LIMBO: REDHEADSIDENT EVIL?
(NB1: This is based somewhat on events that would come after X-Men: The End (if that's even possible); however, you DON'T have to have read The End in order to "get" this story. In the first few paragraphs here, I pretty much break down what happened in The End, at the close of it at least, to explain more or less what happened. As one note for those who did read it: I know that there's something about how Jean and Madelyne are one and the same and all at the end of it…but this story is a variation, in which Madelyne is still her own person. I just wanted to make her as separate and distinct from Jean as possible, even though, of course, she is officially Jean's clone).
(NB2: I will explain my stance on Teen Jean and Hope (as I kind of did in my last, "Illin'" Illyana story) immediately after this chapter. I am not the most flattering to either Teen Jean or Hope here...but I am taking a stand here nonetheless, as unpopular as it might be, regarding the way I feel about them. Again, in any case, I will explain afterward if you'd like to stick around and stuff).
(NB3: The Nine Circles here are based on those from the narrative poem Dante's Inferno (not to be confused with Marvel's crossover Inferno, although we do have Scott and Madelyne here, of course, right from that series)).
It was the end of The End, once the fiery threat of the Phoenix-seizing sibling of Xavier, Cassandra Nova, was extinguished for the final time. All those ascending into the hereafter or thereafter—wherever it was—they were all aligned up and ready to ascend, a host of heroes most hallowed who fought most fervently, and passed most tragically, for the sake of the Dream. A veritable montage of said mutant martyrs had graced the minds of all still on Earth who elegized them, individuals such as Emma and Hank and Logan who pondered during the pertinent memorial services on how powerful, how wonderful these warriors were, how it would be so exhilarating to encounter them once more, once they who were left back on the planet would also escalate to their lofty heights, and be reunited with them again.
Among those already en route to the afterlife, Scott Summers stood in line next to his first and most loved of spouses—most loved of women as well—the soulful pilot turned shocking phantasm known as Madelyne Pryor. As he always ruefully remembered throughout his long, tortured life, Madelyne was a woman who graced Scott's existence so magnificently…then largely because of one heartless Mid-Eighties maneuver, an orchestration of abandonment on Cyclops's part, went from angelic to demonic in the course of a mere few years. Maddy raged at her husband's leaving her and her child Nathan Christopher, who would come to be Cable in time, and on the basis of such wrath she served as the perfect pawn for unholy entities which would fuel their prospective entry upon the Earth based on the fuel of her furor. The only one to be really burned at the end of that Infernal agony, however, was Madelyne herself, as the aggregate of her anger occasioned her own annihilation, by her own hand, in the end.
She reappeared inexplicably a number of times in the future, only to dissipate as quickly as she appeared. For the next couple of decades she was at most a ghost with some scraps of dignity; at worst, she was split into six separate selves and sold to those who would read of her exploits, during the fracas of the Phoenix Five, as little more than a mindless fembot flunky. Beyond these travesties of her person, Madelyne managed miraculously to appear one more time in The End, as a self who most closely approached her initial Eighties iteration. Through this person, Maddy pursued Scott, originally with the intent of assassinating him. The woman found, though, that she could not bring herself to do so, especially upon hearing her once-husband's out-loud laments of loss regarding his first and most tender marital moment. Consequently, Madelyne then took to safeguarding the man rather than stalking him, and when her son Nathan Christopher Cable was under attack at the close of this saga, Scott confronted his first wife, revealed his awareness of her presence, and together they tried in vain to save their son. Cyclops soon found to his deadly dismay that he could not save even himself, and as he too lay in state, alongside his first, but arguably worse love Jean Grey, Madelyne pooled her own life force with the latter so that, at least for a fleeting instant, she and Jean could become one.
In the abovementioned aligning, however, Madelyne was back to her own self again, and much closer in proximity to Scott now than was her crimson counterpart in Jean. She looked off to the side coyly, away from Scott, saw the world she once knew falling from her as she started to transcend; then she looked over to the man she loved more than anything—as she knew full well in her heart had felt the exact same.
Scott himself cast his gaze over in her direction as well, acknowledged the woman he had remembered and regretted, started to smile…
…then awoke, once again in the seemingly eternal abode in Anchorage, he asphyxiating in this accursed aloneness, unable to interact with that woman whom he wanted once again all this time.
He sat fully up in his bed with the utmost of the energy in his reserves, such as it was. Scott felt so depleted in this preternatural prison, this unholy house arrest he now occupied.
His son Nathan Christopher served as the Virgil, the spirit who broke down the terms of his sentence.
You signed up for this of your own volition, Scott, the ethereal essence of Cable explained again and again in many of Cyke's dreams here. This is your chance to prove yourself. To redeem yourself. To have such a fuller, more fulfilling afterlife than the one you could have otherwise, by yourself or with any other woman…even any iteration of Jean, if it could be imagined.
You know damn well that Madelyne was always a better match for you than the ladies you courted and cavorted with. Well…here, it's a much more major M who you have to mind for a time…one worse than Magneto, or Master Mold.
That M…yes, none other than Mephisto…he's the one who's taking you through your own private Hell now. Nine Circles for you to traverse, to make it through in order to elevate your soul to where it needs to be with Maddy's. And believe me, for some of the things she's done, Mom's gotta go through her own trials as well.
For right now, for the Circles in which you will be frequenting at present…you mainly hafta worry about yourself, and getting yourself fixed.
Keep me and Mom in sight, though…we're the ones you're fighting for as well.
And then Scott would awaken to the lonely one-liness that was this place in Anchorage…this house which he once called home with Maddy and Nathan Christopher.
For this Circle, you will mostly have to feel what she felt…feel the solitude she went through, when you left her…left us, Dad. Feel the goneness of it all, of the one whom you love most, of everything that that person did and said, and represented in your life.
And this Scott felt indeed, as he would look around, at a bedroom staid and cold, with no warmth to gather from a wife. He hugged the sheets as close as he could to his body, but he just couldn't generate the heat he made with her. Spooning the pillow, as he did probably ten hours out of every "day" here, didn't make it much better.
All the man could do was stare at the ceiling, try to make out small plastery patterns in them to distract himself, futilely, from the dreary penitentiary of compunction that his old home had become. So many mornings, so many decades ago, he would gape blankly at that ceiling in the dark, envisioning a scape of stars, wondering where his Jean had gone. And this while he was lying, ironically, next to the one lady who in time would be the one he regretted the most.
Then Scott would spend all that time in the kitchen, with pans with which he would make steak and eggs—his favorite, but he could never cook it the magnificent way Maddy did. In time the guilt prompted him to make enough for two; he figured he might as well, as the refrigerator constantly, spiritually restocked the stuff for him. So he made his fave for him and an imaginary Mads, simulated the conversations he used to have with her.
"I'm thinking of going out and making for more firewood."
"Oh, stay in today…you go out too much. We have enough wood as it is."
"Nah…I gotta get out and feel the air a bit."
And then Scott would stare at the back of the chair in which she used to sit, musing to himself. He really wanted to get out of the house to think to himself of Jean, of the Jean whom he believed he lost on the Blue part of the Moon. Now he just recited the last line of the conversation to taste again the sentence he formulated to the woman who really mattered, the one with whom he should have spent the remainder of his existence and energy.
Some mornings the anguish was enough to make him drop to the kitchen tile and hug the other chair's legs, as if it could somehow get her pajama pant legs and slippers to materialize.
The empty crib was also a crucible all its own. Kids never knew or appreciated the cuteness, the wonder, the miracle of a newborn infant child. The radiance of it all came from the resplendence of the baby's innocence and purity per se; but in another way, perhaps a more selfish way, that baby was beautiful because it was the bond, the fusion between oneself and one's soulmate. The son Scott had wasn't just Nathan Christopher; he was Madelyne Scott also, the product of the coming together of him and his lover, and his first and most beautiful and wondrous wife, of their intimacy so innocent in that huge warm bed, which he earned from so many missions off on mutant mashups. In any other profession involving such danger, he would have earned his retirement at least ten times over. Why couldn't he have just hung it all up then, and stayed with his family? His addiction to adventure ruined his life, like any other such compulsion.
It showed when he wasn't there to change the baby's diaper.
It showed when he wasn't always in the family huddle, with him standing meters away from Madelyne as she held the baby close to her chest.
It showed when he wasn't fucking there for the very birth of Nathan Christopher, the baby's beleaguered mother having to shoulder the burden of labor all on her own.
Scott would ruminate and ruminate on all of this, ruminate on how sincerely sorry he was for all of this, ruminate on how if he ever had the chance to see Madelyne again, in this so-far-bleak afterlife, that he would serve her gladly on hands and knees to no end, the man getting little sleep sometimes in the midst of all this thinking and ruing. Lack of rest didn't matter here, though, for two reasons. For one, he had nowhere to go; looking out the windows yielded only a white void, as if the place were snowed entirely in, though the "reality" of this afterlife was that there was but a vacuum beyond the homestead here. The front door was only a decoration; for the record, it didn't budge if Scott would try it, but it wouldn't lead to anywhere anyway.
Secondly…some of the nocturnal overtures he would experience…encounters worse than the Elmstreetiest of nightmares. The most horrible didn't have any clawed characters, no Freddies or even Logans…something worse, something somewhat indeterminate, but still definitively horrific.
Scott saw himself from the back, a blurry figure, walking deliberately down a hallway of his house in Anchorage at a sort of slanted, Dutch angle. Chilling curls of dreadful music welled up, just a few notes but enough to strike fear in the heart…
[euhhh]
[Euhhhhh]
[EUHHHHHHHHHH]
It made the man think of the introduction to some video game he believed he saw in the mid-to-late 1990s…something that the neighbors' kid played when he would visit with Jean.
When he would visit with Jean…God, how that entire marital experience paled so, in comparison to the time he had with Maddy.
Then Scott saw himself turn of a sudden, then start to cry out, culminating it all in a scream of utter consternation:
"Ahh…AHH…AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"
In the midst of this yell, some red substance spurted out his way, and the view of himself then cut to one of his ruby-quartzed eye sockets. Whenever he would wake the next morning, he figured to himself that the nightmare really was like the start of that video game…but he recalled that there, the red substance was blood.
He could swear in the repeating sequence he experienced that there, it was hair instead.
Scott knew that even if it were the locks of a lady he once loved, though…they didn't belong to Madelyne.
Because he knew in his heart that she forgave him, that she blessed him with peace in a special, tender part of his psyche…and this was what kept him going, day after day here. He knew this was going to end at some point. It was just a question of when.
The question of who, as in To whom did those follicles pertain…well, that also stuck out in the Summers's mind.
So it would be that in another couple of days in that remnant of an enlivening Earthen household, the man would have both inquiries answered.
He was sitting on the couch one afternoon, watching the television; ordinarily, what he saw was nothing but snow—static onscreen to match the seeming "snow" of the white void outside. Scott would watch and watch away, while away all this time as a break from the bedroom and the kitchen and the crib encounter catastrophes, allow himself to stare into a state of stasis where the nightmares wouldn't reach him.
But now images emerged on the idiot box, foreclosing even that escape.
On the screen appeared Jean. It was her, his Jean, the one from so long ago, dressed in those original auric and obsidian duds that the overseeing X who was Charles had dressed her and the entire team. The camera closed up on her face, though…
…and what emerged from her porcelain countenance was the snarkiest of sneers.
From the productions of Brian Bendis and fellow former Machine collaborator Brian Overton…the productions known as NOWBendOver…
Teeeeeeaaannn Jeeeeeeaaannn…the one you've remembered so fondly all these decades…
Then the beauteous face froze in the most ghastly of grits.
…is now being marketed as…
…DIET HOPE!
A war-torn wasteland: the climax of some Battle-Atomic conflict.
"Kick her ass.
"Kick it extra hard…just for me."
And then all the other O5ers scattered around as they, together with this…forced farce of his first love, all assaulted some figure bound up in chains and a futuristic skull mask.
As they all fought, the features of the woman Scott thought he knew to be Jean Grey contorted, creased into an expression of attitude, of rage, of even hate like he never remembered. He must have forced himself to forget this semblance of her all this time.
For those of you who have found the taste of Hope Classic to be too strong or too heavy…here's something, a new ingénue to cut the sour with the sweetness you've savored all this time!
"I can't stand all these love triangles…hexagons…dodecahedrons forming all around me! RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
"I'm going to FLY UP INTO THE AIR…oh, Angel, catch me!"
The image froze, of this warped Jean with the white costume with green around the fringes, as she remained suspended in the air, literally in the arms of an Angel.
Diet Hope…bringing unbecoming belligerence…to your Ginger Goddess!
"I'm the Governor of Bendiana, and I approve this advertisement."
It seemed to be the Commercial from Hell…well, one of the commercials in Hell, one would suppose, given where Summers was right now.
"Nope…they just couldn't hack the Classic, the most of them…"
Scott whirled around in his seat.
"…could they."
Upon turning the man beheld the Classic herself, looming above with the longest, most threatening of laser rifles.
"Hhh…"
Just as Scott started to say the name of his pseudogranddaughter, Hope Summers turned the gun on the man, aiming right at his head.
Although all this time in his own personal Limbo slowed his reflexes, Scott still managed to leap out of the way of the ensuing blast.
"Never got the chance to part your scalp quite the way I would have liked." She continued firing at Cyke as he tumbled all about his rec room, doing all he could to avoid being done in, even if it was after his official death.
"Why are you doing this…?"
"Because, 'Grampa'…
"I've been sent to retrieve your resignation."
"…What?"
"There's no way for you to win this, Scott." She paused to reload. Scott saw his chance, and started a sprint towards the girl…then stopped midway as she trained her weapon on him once more.
"Postmillennial programming says so, Slimmy my little faggoty fuckup…"
Scott had already leapt behind the couch once more, for cover, as "Classic" Hope continued her harangue. "Can't have any more redheads, Summers! You KNOW you had more than any one man's allotted quota in the Premillennial Era! Tended a harem that would make a eunuch like Mr. Bendiana himself blush!
"Speaking of eunuchs…"
Hope started aiming her rifle lower, making the blasts run across the floor, tried to flush the man out from behind the couch. All these seconds, she thought to herself heretofore, could have just run on over to where he was, but she was well aware that he could open fire himself at any second. He was holding back, though, for some reason.
The fact was that all this time in the house made the man afraid. He didn't want to do anything wrong by anyone, especially anything wrong by redheads…he was just so conditioned as of now.
Sensing eventually that Scotty wouldn't attack, Hope just went ahead over to his position…
…then was tripped up by the man, who stumbled out by chance at that very instant. Scott was desperate in trying to get away, all these years here dulling any kind of physical ability he had. Cyclops was clumsy as Hell now.
Clumsy in Hell, really.
The two tangled up, and Hope of course came out on top. She reigned over Scott, running his rifle across his throat, pushing it down in an effort to strangle the man. The redness he always perceived started to go pink, leading to the white he didn't want.
Hope Summers again: "I'm…going…to fuck you up…in a way I never did during your own Dark Phoenix days…"
And underneath her and her weapon, Scott looked all around while his vermilion vision continued to fade, the man looking for something now, anything. The weakness within him faded out of instinct to survive, now.
"THAT'S IT!"
His head suddenly shifted towards the television.
"KICK HIS ASS!"
Shifted towards the frightening porcelain face gritting again, now filling the screen. Hope didn't even bother to notice the voice, just kept pressing down with her pulverizing peashooter.
"KICK IT EXTRA FUCKING HARD…JUST FOR MY OWN IRRESISTIBLE, QUITE COPPERY ASS…"
This was when Scott noted the small log near his left hand.
"YOU'RE NEVER LEAVING HERE, SCOTT," the Diet Dame's voice kept going from the television. He ignored it as best he could as he kept reaching for the log, the fragment of his past with Madelyne…
"YOU'LL NEVER GET TO EVEN THE SECOND CIRCLE…"
His hand was almost there…
"YOU WILL NEVER REACH YOUR FIRST, MOST LOVED WIFE…"
He could feel it at the tips of his fingers now…
"WHO DOESN'T GIVE A FUCKING SHIT ABOUT YOU ANYHOW…
"THE JEAN GREY TEST TUBE BABY FAIL THAT SHE IS."
That was it.
Any inner inhibitions now expired within him, Scott hauled with the log in his hand and shucked it into the side of the Classic. As she reeled, dropping her rifle, the man reached over and placed her softly in a submission hold that knocked her unconscious.
"You don't fuck with me in my own house," Scott said over Hope's now-still-though-still-"alive" (as "alive" as anyone could be in the afterlife) form. The television crackled behind him.
"Oh-hooooo, Scotty, my man!" cackled the formerly fair and Teen Jean. Her face now screwed up into the worst scowl imaginable, although the brunt of her voice was somewhat diminished in Hope Classic's defeat. "You think that'll do you any good? You think that will begin to get you out of here?
"I've got Hope Xorn comin' right over to your position! Yeah, me and the O5ers kicked her ass indeed, but good…nevertheless, her spirit's…spiriting itself right over to where you are anyway.
"Yep, we done skull-fucked the skullface…but you've got a date with her annnyyyyy sec…"
[CRASSSHHHHHH…]
The log from a moment ago now protruded from the television screen, its hurler unable to take anymore from these titian-tressed tormentors.
A whoosh sounded from behind Scott. He spun around again, ready to face the terrifying Xorn brand of the murderously-mass-appealing Hope.
Scott beheld instead a large, gaping black void…what appeared to be a gate, a portal. Across the top of the apparent exit to this part of Hell read the words:
ABANDON ALL HOPE(S)* YE WHO ENTER HERE
(*To account for the varieties of the Jeans whose attitudinous essences aped that of the miserable Mutant Messiah, of course)
"Thank freaking GOD for that!" Scott shouted, starting for the portal. If he had the energy to do so, he would have kicked up his fucking heels in midair.
TO BE CONTINUED
INTERWORD (I may have invented that term; I've used it before...anyway...)
(You can go on to the second chapter if you'd like; just putting in some commentary on this first chapter here)
Okay, so here's my thing on Hope and Teen Jean. I am very sensitive to gender relations in writing my stories. I believe that people of BOTH genders should be empowered...men as well as women. I am all for the empowerment of women and female characters in general, do not get me wrong.
That said, I feel that there is anymore an imbalance between the genders in terms of where the power lies, and that things could and should be more balanced. Right off the bat I can give a very technical example, in terms of actually being able to crunch the numbers on it: If you look at AVX in terms of the Versus series, there are many matchups, of course; a few of them are intergender. Of the ones that are intergender (and there are, I believe, four of them total), two of them-Emma Frost versus Thor, and then Domino versus Red Hulk (which is to be taken as somewhat humorous) result in the female character winning. Okay, fair enough. Then we have the other two: Daredevil versus Psylocke and Storm versus Black Panther. Rather than balance matters out, and have the guys win a couple, what happens instead are copout "washes": Devil and Psy officially ends in a draw (which, to be honest, I didn't entirely mind as I like both characters equally)...but then Storm and Panther ends in some bullshit "No Contest" here. I feel that this is a sign of the times: What we are experiencing, especially in the X-books these days, is the wussification of so many male characters in stories. Look, again, I'm totally okay with it being the case that, if there's a fight between a guy and a girl, the girl wins, that's fine. My problem is that that seems to be the ONLY outcome anymore-really, it feels like it's always been that way. At the risk of sounding petulant, and self-referential, why does it have to be so head-explodingly inconceivable and abhorrently unacceptable (again, self-referential from my "Chiasmus" story, as I used those descriptors at the end of that entry) for a guy to win for a change? I am NOT saying "brutalize"; I am saying "win." With as little violence as possible, if people are sensitive to the subtext of abuse against women in real life (because many of these stories can serve to be escapes or empowerment-sources for those who God forbid have been a victim of such abuse, which I too abhor). I know the fight between Hope and Scott just now might have seemed a bit rough, but for those of you who took umbrage at his striking her in the side with a log, let me remind you that she was strangling him nearly to death with the length of a rifle. He then softly did a submission hold, which did not kill her (though we're in the afterlife anyway) but rendered her unconscious. He didn't snap her neck or punch her in the face or anything like that. But again, I raise the question: Why is it so outlandish an idea for a male character to have a victory against a female character anymore...or ever?
Also again, I completely understand the concepts and subtexts of the battle against abuse or oppression in real life, which goes on in the empowerment of these characters. I return to my thesis, though, that what is happening now is that certain writers (read: Bendis...others as well) are so fixated on boosting up certain characters (read: Hope, Teen Jean...Kitty as well) that the latter end up becoming twisted out of control and bereft of everything that makes them likeable. Hear me out on this.
Take Teen Jean. I know I exaggerated her toughness, to the point that she was almost monstrous, in the above chapter. I was basically arguing by hyperbole through that. I know she is not that aggressive. What makes me mad is that she is depicted as being aggressive at all. Now, listen; I believe I said this before, in my Afterword to the "Illin'" story I did in October. I do not need Teen Jean to be the fawning sweetheart that she was in the Sixties, and which you can most recently see represented in the second, Stan Lee story in X-Men Gold. However, I do not see why she either has to be a fawning sweetheart, or the balls-stomping steamroller of a character as Bendis makes her out to be. Not to grasp at straws, but having Teen Jean have something to prove, as anally as hell, in EVERY issue (most recently in All-New #19, in which all the heroes other than her flex their stuff per se with powers...but she necessarily has to have her issuely-allocated two-page "HOW DARE YOU?!" spread of telekinesis authority), makes the character just grating after a time. To contrast with the past (and I know I've douchily harped on the Eighties and stuff before, ad nauseam; please bear with me)...in the Nineties, Jean was tough, but also tender, even mothering at times. In the Eighties and Seventies, it was the same way with her. In the Sixties, she DID have strength, and as far as I'm concerned, there was nothing horribly traumatic that happened to her in the Sixties which justifies this douchily-overaggressive makeover which Bendis has given her. The point is, back in times like the Nineties, characters were much more balanced between tough and tender. I've tried my best to do this in my own stuff: in what I believe to be has been my most successful story on here, the Honeymars one, Jean has it out, very assertively with Scott...but then she becomes tender and jumps his bones, and it's a happy ending. Same thing with my Madelyne stories, like Borealis and Settlements, in which she can be tough when she needs to be...but she can be very tender (and like Jean in the abovementioned story I did, Madelyne can also be funny and all around fun) when she needs to be. In contrast, Teen Jean...she has very minimal tenderness to her, very minimal sensitivity, and NO effing sense of humor. At risk of sounding like even more of an ass: she's like Al Gore and Robert Patrick (as Terminator Two) combined. I feel the one issue, maybe #15 it was, of All New in which she kissed Beast was just some kind of lip-service-paying to people who wanted to see a softer side of her. But God forbid should we have that from her any more than once ever-and even then, it was tepid (and not just because it was Hank and not Scott involved). I know that it depends on the writer, as to how characters are represented; it just really bugs me that in endeavoring so fervently to craft a character who is to be empowered, Bendis has deprived Teen Jean of so much of the sensitivity and tenderness and sense of humor that made her likeable in the first place. Yes, I know that she (and Hope also) are going through a lot. I still maintain that her character's empowerment can be mixed with a bit of humor and sensitivity to make her all the more likeable-and the absence of those latter factors makes her character suffer. Why does tenderness in particular, especially in a female character, have to be seen as weakness? Why the FUCK is it a capital crime anymore for a character, male or especially female, to say "I love you"? Why does Bendis think it uncool to have that?
What drives me nuts about Bendis also is that he comes off to me as what I call a Prick Charming. What this is is someone (and I'm sure you've known someone like this, in high school or college or whatever) who is a guy who kisses all the girls' asses...and he treats other guys like shit, or he can't be civil to them at least. This is Bendis in his writing. I'm not saying like Bendis should be like homoerotic with his guy characters (insert Seinfeld disclaimer "not that there's anything wrong with that" etc etc etc); what I'm saying is, Bendis should at least give the guy characters a bit more power and make them a bit less the absolute bullheaded, arrogant fuckups that they are in his stories. What we end up having in this decade now is not a balanced gender-power story like "The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix"...no; now we have nothing but "The Ongoing Godmode of Kitty and Teen Jean" and then in turn "The Ongoing Fuckups of Logan and Adult Scott." Just LOOK at the end of Battle of the Atom and try to tell me that is not the case. Kitty comes out of it thumbing her nose at the Jean Grey School, Teen Jean is in control with her telepathy telling everyone the news of who's going where...meanwhile, Bobby's left being the douche who fucked up the relationship with Kitty, and Logan and Adult Scott are sneering at each other pettily as to who gets who to go with them in their respective schools. Also, of course, moments later in ANXM 18, Teens Scott and Hank are pettily whining in their minds as to how Teen Jean should choose him over the other. It's bullshit. (Not as in, untrue, but as in "objectionable").
For one last time, I do not have any problem with female empowerment per se; if someone (Brian Wood), for example, wants to do an all-female X-Men series, then have the fuck at it, that's fine. It just irks the fuck out of me when it becomes that, rather than having assertive, strong males and assertive, strong females, we have aggressive-as-fuck females and absolute-fuckup males. Because that's what the X-books are anymore-at least a few of them. I have noticed in my traffic here that most people reading my story have stopped at the first chapter; now, it's a free country, of course, and this is all just free entertainment, you do what you want. If people haven't read on because of the way I treated Teen Jean, well...this Interword just tries to defend it. Again, not to cop out myself, or grasp at straws, but my parody of her through the "Diet Hope" commercial was just to point out how overly aggressive, and somewhat ugly, she has become. I do NOT want her to be a perfect Mary Sue; the point is that there is a balance between, again, obsequiousness and Terminator-aggressiveness devoid of any sensitivity, and she has been going to the latter end far too much IMO. I hope you can stick around for some more of this story; really I am writing it for myself, as I always wanted Scott and Madelyne to get back together and kiss and make up. That will happen here by the end. I am trying all I can to make things balanced out as possible, as for example if there are faults shown in one character (see Alien Clone Phoenix in Chapter Three with "Gluttony"), then I draw out that same "Gluttony" in Scott; or in "Heresy," it is not just Storm, but also Xavier who has that vice. Hoping everyone out there is well.