Lord Ewing *Praise His name! Uplift Him in song!* Your divine works will be remembered and glorified in worship for all eternity. Amen!
Exactly. People fail to remember that the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix clone was a perfect replica of Jean by virtue of the fact that the clone had gone on to experience things Jean never had, which changed her. And we can't say, "Oh, but Jean would have acted in the same ways and done the same things had it really been her."
While her psyche was copied and a fragment of her essence was used to create the Phoenix clone, and the latter was used to animate and bring to life Madelyne, these were still copies of her. And copies are never the same as the original. Furthermore, as I mentioned above, both had gone through things the real Jean Grey never went through, and we can't act as if we know for sure Jean would've done the same things they ended up doing.
and thats where we differ in our interpretation bc i dont dismiss her as being a clone. That was Jean in Xmen 101- 137 the same way we all look at Jean from HOX #5 to now as Jean and not merely a cloned copy. Jean merged her soul with the Phoenix' essence and it gave her a new body while her original healed. It also gave her access to power far greater than she had in order to save her friends, which was her intent. The fact that her soul wasnt complete made her malleable to ultimately going dark and letting the PF take complete control until she was able to suppress it long enough to end things on the moon
Last edited by Havok83; 10-14-2021 at 11:26 AM.
This is my point, though. The way I see Phoenix's breakdown and disassociation into Dark Phoenix is as follows: Mastermind f**king with her for over a year led to the fragment of Jean's psyche being traumatized and angered, to which the Phoenix Force responded with its instinct to cleanse and burn away the deficient and impure. I said it better here:
I think it was in New X-Men when Jean began to show the Phoenix Force, she mentioned that she knew everyone was afraid after what happened before and that they think it could happen (now), but Jean said that it is HER, not just a part of her this time and that she is in total control. In that storyline, she did not lose control of the PF.
So maybe originally, besides Mastermind, White Queen and all of the power, it was because only a Very Small piece of Jean was in the clone to control it????
[Quote Originally Posted by Thor-El 10-15-2020 12:32 PM]
"Jason Aaron should know there is already a winner of the Phoenix Force and his name is Phoenixx9."
Like a Red Dragon, The Phoenix shall Soar in 2024!
I agree with this, for that very reason and context.
It was while reading NXM and seeing Jean use the PF (and not the other way around) that made me truly come to terms with and understand the retcon of the real Jean healing in a cocoon in Jamaica Bay while DP was out and about committing planetary genocide.
Thing is...I know Claremont never intended it to be that way and a lot (if not all) of what came after Jean sacrificed herself on the Moon was editorially mandated still...I'm greatly thankful for X-Factor Jean (as opposed to lobotomised Jean and or Criminal/Evil Jean)
Last edited by Devaishwarya; 10-14-2021 at 11:51 AM.
Lord Ewing *Praise His name! Uplift Him in song!* Your divine works will be remembered and glorified in worship for all eternity. Amen!
[Quote Originally Posted by Thor-El 10-15-2020 12:32 PM]
"Jason Aaron should know there is already a winner of the Phoenix Force and his name is Phoenixx9."
Like a Red Dragon, The Phoenix shall Soar in 2024!
This is still my take from my own patched together theories and headcanon as it relates to this particular differentiation between Phoenix/Jean and Maddie.
Phoenix/Jean was as true and completely a copy of Jean as could be. Beyond the body, beyond the memories, Jean's ESSENTIAL SELF was infused into the new Jean/Phoenix gestalt...for simplicity's sake let's call it Jean's core personality, forged from her unique life experiences up to this point, and that which informs and influences her life going forward(as would prove to be crucial on that fateful day on the moon in UXM 137, Jean's heroism and self-sacrificetriumphing over Dark Phoenix). As Emma once said "The Phoenix was Jean"(her life, her memories, her personality...her human and mortal perspective)..."Jean wasn't the Phoenix"(The Force's true natural state, cosmic scale awareness). Anyway, this is all stoked and ANIMATED by Jean's LIFE FORCE.
Maddie is a different story. She was physically created through artificial means, with incomplete jumbled memories with no prior (nyuk nyuk) life experiences to attach them to, which were further filtered and manipulated by Mr. Sinister. And the biggest difference, Maddie was not imbued with Jean's CORE PERSONALITY. What animated Maddie was the portion of JEAN'S LIFE FORCE that animated Jean/Phoenix. The life force is simply catalytic fuel...it starts Maddie's life...which is then shaped by her personality which is informed from manipulated memories combined with primal emotions (Jean's love for Scott, at the forefront of the dying moment that released Jean's life force)
So when Dark Phoenix died, what happened? It wasn't quite the end it thought it would be, instead it was a reset. The mortal shell ceased to be, but the "spirit" remained...Jean's LIFE FORCE was sent to Earth, rejected by Jean prime and infused into Maddie...but Jean's CORE PERSONALITY remained with the Phoenix. Phoenix soon encounters Rachel's Astral form and the extreme similarity to Jean begs further investigation. Anyway y'all know the details but I posit that this Phoenix, possessing Jean's personality, is why it acts so maternal and protective of Rachel. Also, Phoenix/Jean felt remorse over Dark Phoenix, and through Rachel, sought redemption. It inhabits Rachel, silently giving Rachel access to the Force, but hides it's true sentience(born of Jean's personality)
Eventually, after Rachel dies fighting Necrom, and Phoenix takes over fully while Rachel's psyche heals, she encounters Galactus and learns this hybrid existence turns her into a parasite, stealing from future life unborn to maintain itself on this plane of existence. It goes into existential crisis, meets with death AGAIN, and learns it must shed this human consciousness. After revealing all of this to a fully restored Rachel, it returns to its natural non-sentient state, leaving Rachel with reduced access to the Force
So where did the consciousness (from Jean's personality) go? I think it went back to Jean(and wouldn't be the last time we see Jean losing/gathering fragments of herself). Jean does go through a shift after that moment. When Jean first meets Rachel, Jean is confused and upset (for various reasons). After the Phoenix sheds its consciousness, Jean soon comes around to Rachel, formally apologizes, and let's Rachel be the first to know her plans to propose to Scott, knowing full well how meaningful that is to Rachel.
Jean had a maternal side, we saw this with Baby Nathan, but she still felt detached. Rachel was much more difficult as she was linked to a POWER that for Jean represented destruction and life stolen...and a FUTURE that if inevitable, makes all she is striving for, futile. However, I feel this reincorporated personality shard/fragment from the Phoenix, strengthened Jean's maternal connections, especially with Rachel, having been bonded to Rachel. This is also supported I feel by Claremont's UXM 140.5 issue.
Jean herself had had years to process things and had a far better understanding of her powers and the Phoenix Force by New X-men. I think there was quite a bit of confusion in the Giant Size era through Inferno with the characters not fully understanding things nad making things up as they went along to make sense of what was happening but the truth is most were clueless
Lord Ewing *Praise His name! Uplift Him in song!* Your divine works will be remembered and glorified in worship for all eternity. Amen!
[Quote Originally Posted by Thor-El 10-15-2020 12:32 PM]
"Jason Aaron should know there is already a winner of the Phoenix Force and his name is Phoenixx9."
Like a Red Dragon, The Phoenix shall Soar in 2024!
This thread really makes me think what a mess Jean's head must be.
She kinda died that one time, a mostly identical clone took over her place, then the clone kinda died, then another clone showed up, got married with Cyclops and had a kid, went evil and shit, now she has both of their memories, then her teenager year old self time traveled to the future, learned a bunch of shit like how she's gonna die a few times and everyone's gonna say her boyfriend is a terrorist, then the teenager self went back to her time and now adult Jean has her memories too.
So basically she suddenly got the memories from two versions of herself of a part of her life she didn't remember living (Phoenix clone and Jeen) and now she suddenly does, and another set of memories from a completely different person, and to make it weirder, she now has more than one first impressions of someone, like meeting a Kitty being older than her who's a badass ninja hacker who runs away from marriages, and also meeting the same Kitty who's younger than her and whines about Xavier being a jerk... I just hope she doesn't have Madelyne's memories from when she was trying to fuck with her son from an alternate universe.
I know I'm not saying anything new but, man, imagine having such memories on your head, makes me wonder if she can defeat a telepath by just letting them look at her memories, and then they have an aneurysm trying to understand this whole nonsense .
She's a telepath. Im sure she's able to make more sense of it and cope than the other O5 X-men
She doesnt have any memories of X-man's relationship with Maddie bc that was a different Maddie, one that he created. Her memories are of the orgiinal Maddie that died in Inferno