What do you think about the Marauders line up?

[Anchorsify]

Kitty (and Colossus) has been thrown under the bus by Whedon and Guggs because they wanted to reset to a pre-1985 status quo. Storm still hasn't recovered from NOT being written as her pre-1991 status quo.

There was nothing really resetting about Kitty’s return to the x-men under Whedon and it was very obviously meant to be a coming of age arc for her where she faced her past and came to terms with her childhood, now a grown adult. I’m aware you have no love for the ship but Kiotr is hardly thrown under the bus by either one, with the sole exception of Gold 30, which invalidated the entire arc and was literally hyped up as the wedding of the century just to be editorially mandates to not go through without any logical build up to the moment at all. But seeing as how it’s well known to be marvel editorial (yet again) fucking with kitty and Piotr, I don’t put the blame on any specific writer for that.

You can’t quote The End and point to it as Kitty’ logical end by Claremont unless you also want to acknowledge Days of future past, also written by Claremont which shows kitty and Piotr married. Ultimately future alternate timelines are never canon and shouldn’t be used to point out ultimate writer intent or what is inevitable.

Claremont wrote almost everyone as some sort of bisexual but kitty and Illyana have been shown to be sisters, not lovers, ever since Kitty was literally reading Illyana bedtime stories, and Kitty’s bisexuality has been subtext for thirty years without it ever being made actual text while she dates literally every guy named peter.

[powerpax]

Kitty came of age long before Astonishing. It was Joss' failing (and I like a lot of his work, including on the book) that he chose to rehash it with Piotr years later.

[PsychoEFrost]

There was nothing really resetting about Kitty’s return to the x-men under Whedon and it was very obviously meant to be a coming of age arc for her where she faced her past and came to terms with her childhood, now a grown adult. I’m aware you have no love for the ship but Kiotr is hardly thrown under the bus by either one, with the sole exception of Gold 30, which invalidated the entire arc and was literally hyped up as the wedding of the century just to be editorially mandates to not go through without any logical build up to the moment at all. But seeing as how it’s well known to be marvel editorial (yet again) fucking with kitty and Piotr, I don’t put the blame on any specific writer for that.

You can’t quote The End and point to it as Kitty’ logical end by Claremont unless you also want to acknowledge Days of future past, also written by Claremont which shows kitty and Piotr married. Ultimately future alternate timelines are never canon and shouldn’t be used to point out ultimate writer intent or what is inevitable.

Claremont wrote almost everyone as some sort of bisexual but kitty and Illyana have been shown to be sisters, not lovers, ever since Kitty was literally reading Illyana bedtime stories, and Kitty’s bisexuality has been subtext for thirty years without it ever being made actual text while she dates literally every guy named peter.

Kitty's bisexuality was just subtext for so long because

1) Before very recently, being gay, lesbian, or bi was considered "morally harmful to children".

2) Most writers on X-books expressed at least some level of attraction to Kitty as they grew up with comics. Most X-writers are male.

[Anchorsify]

Kitty's bisexuality was just subtext for so long because

1) Before very recently, being gay, lesbian, or bi was considered "morally harmful to children".

2) Most writers on X-books expressed at least some level of attraction to Kitty as they grew up with comics. Most X-writers are male.

By was you mean still is? That’s all it ever has been.

I find #1 a very weird argument because the x-men and mutants as a whole have been about discrimination, segregation, and generally about being different. I don’t necessarily disagree of the sensitive nature of the subject matter, I just don’t think it holds up when you look at how people like mystique clearly had relationships with other women that wasn’t withheld because of the same problem you are describing. Logically, seems more likely she just wasn’t intended to ever have that be a focus of the character, given others have been shown LGBT over the years, and the only person to ever write her that way is also the one writer who tends to write almost all characters that way.

Aside from the two most obvious self-insert writers of Ellis with Wisdom and Bendis with Quill, I just don’t really agree with the general notion that a male couldn’t write a F/F pairing just as realistically as anybody else, and this is again fairly proven with mystique and destiny (and the inverse is certainly proven by AO3’s statistics as a whole, as it contains a majority of slash fan fiction predominantly written by women). Liking a character certainly doesn’t mean you are predisposed to making them attracted to your own gender for the sake of fantasy fulfillment. That just isn’t and never has been what comics and character sexuality has been about.

But I will agree that past writers have clearly used her that way in the past, imo to the detriment of the character, but YMMV. Some people find even those self-inserts to be some of their favorites, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

[PsychoEFrost]

By was you mean still is? That’s all it ever has been.

I find #1 a very weird argument because the x-men and mutants as a whole have been about discrimination, segregation, and generally about being different. I don’t necessarily disagree of the sensitive nature of the subject matter, I just don’t think it holds up when you look at how people like mystique clearly had relationships with other women that wasn’t withheld because of the same problem you are describing. Logically, seems more likely she just wasn’t intended to ever have that be a focus of the character, given others have been shown LGBT over the years, and the only person to ever write her that way is also the one writer who tends to write almost all characters that way.

Aside from the two most obvious self-insert writers of Ellis with Wisdom and Bendis with Quill, I just don’t really agree with the general notion that a male couldn’t write a F/F pairing just as realistically as anybody else, and this is again fairly proven with mystique and destiny (and the inverse is certainly proven by AO3’s statistics as a whole, as it contains a majority of slash fan fiction predominantly written by women). Liking a character certainly doesn’t mean you are predisposed to making them attracted to your own gender for the sake of fantasy fulfillment. That just isn’t and never has been what comics and character sexuality has been about.

But I will agree that past writers have clearly used her that way in the past, imo to the detriment of the character, but YMMV. Some people find even those self-inserts to be some of their favorites, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

You'll notice that the only major relationship for LGBT characters for a long time was Mystique/Destiny, and even that was heavy subtext, plus they were villains (holding with the comics code that LGBT characters must be shown as being evil).

[spirit2011]

They should finally reveal Kitty as being Bisexual. Not more self inserts as BF, not more peters

It's funni how much male writers self insert theirselves

[PsychoEFrost]

They should finally reveal Kitty as being Bisexual. Not more self inserts as BF, not more peters

It's funni how much male writers self insert theirselves

Just solve the issues:

Kitty: Bi
Rachel: Bi
Ilyana: Asexual

[TOTALITY]

The whole question of what was permissible in the 80’s is somewhat moot where Kitty is concerned because I honestly don’t think Claremont would have ever depicted her in a same sex relationship even if he’d been allowed. He’s basically said as much. But that doesn’t change that he wrote her extremely subtextually bisexual (occasionally pretty much ‘text with plausible deniability’) in ways both intentional and probably also unintentional. But like I keep saying, authors’ intentions aren’t the stories. The stories are the stories.

Mystique and Destiny were a lot less subtle, but even that maintained a level of plausible deniability. And I think it’s super possible that it went over many editors’ and readers’ heads. I think Claremont was more comfortable writing them in a committed relationship because any readers who might be put off by any of the heroes not being straight (something Claremont does care about, which obviously I disagree with) would probably be less so where villains are concerned, and since they weren’t main characters he wasn’t worried about keeping their romantic prospects open (another thing Claremont definitely thought a lot about. He only had Scott marry Maddy because that’s how he was going to write him out of the series, until editorial brainstormed X-Factor!) There’s also a long history of villains being coded as gay (especially male ones) so the skewed cultural acceptance is definitely there.

But thankfully Mystique and Destiny as committed wives are on the page and nothing can take that away, and fandom has largely not opted to go the ‘plausible deniability’ route. And queer Kitty is there too, for those of us who relate to her in that way.

[sensormellow]

Looking forward to Bobby and John being a couple.

Really excited to see Kitty as the leader here since I think she's not the obvious choice given the line-up. Would like to see how she handles Storm *and* Frost.

[The tall man]

My boy Bishop is getting no love here. All this talk about Storm, Kitty and Emma's role in the book but Bishop seems like he will be an afterthought. There is always one character on a team book who gets the shaft snd I suspect that will be Bishop. At best he probably will be reduced to standing in the background and occasionally shooting something. I hope I'm wrong and he has a significant role in this book, not just a deckhand on the ship blindly following Capt Kitty's orders like Gilligan, let him have a storyline. Sadly I think Storm, Kitty and Emma are the three leads of this book with Bobby, Pyro and Bishop as the secondary characters.

[Havok83]

Speaking of Bishop, I cant recall but this may be the first time he's ever been on a team with Kitty

[Harpsikord]

My boy Bishop is getting no love here. All this talk about Storm, Kitty and Emma's role in the book but Bishop seems like he will be an afterthought. There is always one character on a team book who gets the shaft snd I suspect that will be Bishop. At best he probably will be reduced to standing in the background and occasionally shooting something. I hope I'm wrong and he has a significant role in this book, not just a deckhand on the ship blindly following Capt Kitty's orders like Gilligan, let him have a storyline. Sadly I think Storm, Kitty and Emma are the three leads of this book with Bobby, Pyro and Bishop as the secondary characters.

This is a big assumption when all that's really been seen is fans talking back and forth about the characters rather than the writer himself. We don't know what we're going to see in the actual narrative, just that the fans are taking particular interest in (in this order) Emma, Ororo, and Kitty with Bobby rounding it out at a semi-distant fourth. I'll be honest the lack of buzz about Bishop might just be because he's the character that has the most stable status quo right now, there's nothing that really needs to be done with him to make him palatable because the last few writers that have tackled him handled that and Duggan doesn't have to... whereas for the ladies (and somewhat Iceman), Duggan has his work cut out for him.

[Havok83]

This is a big assumption when all that's really been seen is fans talking back and forth about the characters rather than the writer himself. We don't know what we're going to see in the actual narrative, just that the fans are taking particular interest in (in this order) Emma, Ororo, and Kitty with Bobby rounding it out at a semi-distant fourth. I'll be honest the lack of buzz about Bishop might just be because he's the character that has the most stable status quo right now, there's nothing that really needs to be done with him to make him palatable because the last few writers that have tackled him handled that and Duggan doesn't have to... whereas for the ladies (and somewhat Iceman), Duggan has his work cut out for him.

I dont think so for Iceman. He's been n a fairly stable status for a while now and like Bishop, he isnt getting much discussion here. Its those 3 women that have dominated it

[Harpsikord]

I dont think so for Iceman. He's been n a fairly stable status for a while now and like Bishop, he isnt getting much discussion here. Its those 3 women that have dominated it

Bobby tends to get a lot of talk regardless because of the sexuality thing, which is for some reason all in flux. But I don't exactly disagree.

[houndsofluv]

I forgot Bishop was gonna be on this! kitty’s a bit out of her depth leading this one lol