Episode 124: Amelia Voght (feat. Patrick Sullivan) — Part Two: Play Misty for Me

She wants to go to space. She doesn't want to go to space. Let this woman go to space. She doesn't want to choose a side. She doesn't want to get involved. She's like, let's start over, which is a queen I can relate to. Every Monday is a new day to start completely over and go to space. You don't have to choose a side. X-Men, X-Men. In the 21st century, people used to let by Magneto Angel destroy the world. I hope this. X-Men. Welcome back to Cerebro Episode 124, Amelia Vote featuring Patrick Sullivan already in progress. This is part two. If you're looking for part one, try again. If you'd like the full 7+ hour extended anti-me mix, it is available exclusively at patreon.com/rebrocast because the file is too big for my regular podcast host. Before we dissolve back into mist with our beloved anti-me, I do have a few corrections from part one. First and foremost, the scene with Conan and Grey Crowe where they talk about Grey Crowe doing bank robberies with Amelia Vote is actually from the McKay X-Men, not from the Silo Xolo, which makes a ton of sense when I think about it because as we'll get to in this part two, Amelia Vote is such a Jedmike character and that does give me more hope that she will be popping up again sometime soon. The Silo X-Men is great though and worth reading and does feature a memorable 90s character in a fun new context with Conan, which is Shinobi Shaw. And we'll get to that at some point whenever I get to that character. Second correction, the scene where Fabian complains about Amelia's transubstantiation being painful is actually the B story in on Cany 300, not part of the Peter David X-Factor issue. I just was looking at my notes wrong when we were talking about it because I knew that. So what I was doing the edit, I was like, wait Conor, that's not correct. But it's funny because it means that Amelia's political and personality shift that I mentioned between those two first appearances happens actually within the same issue in the A story and the B story. So you know, a little wishy washy from the very beginning. God bless her. The other two corrections are not about X-Men comics, which is very in keeping with a meandering patch novelist journey. But they are both my fault to be fair to Patrick. Allison Maxx has been is a former neo-Nazi who is now a de-radicalization expert, but he is not who American history X was based on that apparently was misinformation that I believed on social media, my bad. And Sutton Foster's ex-husband apparently isn't gay, but you could have fooled me. X-Men X-Men This is the last we see of her for a little over a year of publication. She comes back in the very peculiar curio that is now bizarre to read. Magneto, one through four, a solo Magneto series from 1996 into 1997, except it's about Joseph. Yes. This book, which is the first time I think that Amelia is written by anyone who isn't the core three writers of Labdell, N.C.A.C. and Peter David at this time in the ex office. This is written by Peter Milligan and Jorge Gonzalez does the scripting. Milligan has been doing a bunch of stuff with the X-Men at this moment. He had just done further adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, which is the Mr. Sinister backstory time travel one. This book is about Joseph who is trying to figure out who he is. Joseph, for people who are not familiar, is Rogues boyfriend. Apparently, the Daged Amiziac Magneto. He's Daged. He's like 30. Okay. Same. I don't remember Joseph being Daged. I thought he was just like snatched. I thought it was like an urkel. No, he's a young he's a young Magneto. It's commented upon several times. Okay. And everyone just assumes that like whatever happened on Avalon, he's been rejuvenated or whatever. We talk about Joseph more in the Astra bonus episode of the cerebral appendix with Holly Raymond. Amazing. Now available on the public feed because Astra shockingly became a huge character in the current X-Men comics. Right. So we wanted to get that out to the public because prior to that, she had like nine appearances. But Joseph's dating Rogue in like main books at the time too, right? Yes. This is the time when he and Rogue are dating. We get that hot kiss in the snow. We do because he can touch her because he has Magneto's powers. The rules. She has left Gambit because she found out about Gambit's terrible secret. They kissed right before Age of Apocalypse because the world was going to end and then when the world comes back and Rogue and Magneto as a couple in Age of Apocalypse had been enormously popular. It's so still. I like it. I can't. I love it. Because reality didn't end, she absorbs all of Gambit's memories and she gets a glimpse of something. She doesn't know what it is. It's actually Gambit's complicity in the mutant massacre. But she doesn't know what it is. It will come to a head in the trial of Gambit's storyline. The real Magneto comes back in that storyline. Yes. Before that, she has this romance with Joseph because she can't look at Gambit anymore in Yadda Yadda. And it's like a love triangle. And this was a very, very popular storyline in particular with female readers in the 90s was the rogue gambit Joseph love triangle. Yeah, that's me. In this story, we see that Exodus has reassembled the acolytes and vote is with them again. He is planning to use the ruins of Avalon and other stuff from Magneto's various technology in Antarctica to launch a new Avalon into space. But he reveals doing it will cause a Fisher in the Arctic Circle that will create devastation around the entire globe and kill millions of people. Lastly, you want to be a Fisher in your Arctic Circle. Say that. Amelia certainly doesn't want one. Yeah. She's like, wait, that's crazy because she was excited about new Avalon. Yeah, let's get the fuck out of here. This planet sucks. I literally joined up so that I could escape Earth. So yes, I'm in to go back to space. Yeah, they're only they love it. They're like space. You want to live it? Yeah, they love space. She particularly loves space because it's not Earth. When she finds out that this plan, however, will kill millions of innocent humans, she's like, okay, I feel like I've been so clear about how I feel about this. I'm getting got again. So she's like, wow, you can't do that. And Exodus is like, all right, I've had about enough out of you with the lip. Yeah, truly. So he moves to just kill her right there. She is shocked when she is rescued from this fate by Fabian Cortez who was dead. Right. Fully was dead. It doesn't make any sense that he's back and they're all like, how are you not dead? And he's like, we'll get to it later. And then they never do Cortez says he has come to swear fealty to Exodus because he's had an epiphany in his resurrection and understands that Magnus way is the one true way. And he's here to be a loyal acolyte and also don't kill Amelia. We need her. Leave the baron. Given that Cortez has just saved her life and Amelia has no other allies at the moment. She's still being held by Exodus in isolation. She decides to tell Cortez about Joseph who she knows exists because she's been around spying on the X-man as a mist. Cortez is like, okay, if he's Magneto, we can snap him out of this and then we can stop working for Exodus who's a crazy person. So that would be cool. And Cortez dips out. Exodus is like what the fuck? That compels Exodus to torture Amelia with a parasitic worm that like essentially crawls over her body and electrify her. Let's put up an Olivia Nuzzi. Not no. One could say, it's a theory. That's a theory. That could explain stuff. Yeah. It's a lot. The sequence is a lot. I don't love this this whole scene really. But Cortez has this where he gets the X-man should meet Joseph and is like, this is not Magneto. Right. He doesn't remember any of it. It's a big problem because like if we're going to bring you back to Avalon. You can't come with us if we're not completely sure if you're honestly. Well, particularly if you can't remember because we're going to present you to the accolades. He's back. Don't listen to Exodus. You need to be able to tell them what to do. Right. In this current form of him, it looks like everything he told him to do is like, how to play the saxophone or like, tantric loves. Yeah, or like, how to get an incredible facelift. Oh, truly. Yeah. Deep plane. Yeah, that would gag me. Yeah. I think that might be a lot. I think that would be enough for me to not trust it because it worked. Magneto's not using the aging machine yet in the commerce. That only happened to him like once. Okay. And it was like a long time ago. That was actually so what happened there, the first time they de aged Magneto. It was when Moira brought him back from being a baby. Oh, it's coming over. I want to be a baby. That is what they later retconned. Moira also brainwashed him thing into. Sure. Okay. Is that right? In that moment. Yeah. Absolutely. That's the de aging of Magneto. This is the second de aging of Magneto, which was Joseph. So she de aged him to like 50 and Joseph de aged himself to 30. I guess she's going further the first though. I think she does the first time and they forgot. I don't fucking No, it doesn't super matter. If you don't like your Botanox, the first time at PG, they let you go back again twice for free. Isn't that cool? So. -Mier Island does not offer that. And maybe because Moira is sensitive about the idea of going back. -Got it. -You know, she's always forward. -Four, four, four, yeah. -Yeah. Anyway, Cortez is a con artist himself. So he starts thinking about like, "Okay, how can we spin this?" Because Amelia's right. This new Avalon plan is fucking crazy. I would like to unseat Exodus and rule myself through this puppet magneto because that would be great. So he starts like coaching Joseph on like, "Well, you have to pretend to be magneto then." Whether you are or not, we need you to put on a convincing show. -We need you to go full day. -Exactly. Joseph, when you hear about the millions of people that will die of Exodus, "Lonest and Space Station," it's like, "Well, okay, yeah, I guess." And I've always, I've always craved. I mentioned this a couple of episodes ago. I craved the story and I would like to write it. But either way, it'd be fun to just read it. The story where Jean calls Madeline and is like, "Hey, I need you to cover for me." -Yeah, I'm sorry. I can't believe they've never done that. -They've never done it. It's crazy. -It really is crazy. -It's never really been on the same side before. -Sure. There's gotta be some. -But now they are. But now they mostly are. Like, she's like evil, but not really. And she can like be a friend of ours at times, you know? -Really off, but it's my dream team up comic is lowest in mercy doing. [laughs] -That would be so fun. -That would be so fun. They both have to rescue Lexyn and Clark. -Clark, together. That would be really fun. Anyway, Cortez double crosses Joseph at the same time. This is really funny. He's basically like, "This Magneto, if he gets too good, is a threat to me and my ability to lead the acolytes because if like Una Shone thinks he's real, I'm not gonna be able to say shit, right?" -Right. -So Cortez privately tells Joseph when he's coaching him that vote and Magneto relovers. -Wow, okay. -This is why I pushed back when you were like, and she's fucking him. At the very least, Exodus doesn't think that she was. -Right. -Because when fake Magneto shows up on Avalon and gives Amelia a big kiss, Exodus is like, "This guy's a fake. What the fuck is this?" -That's pretty good. -It implies that certainly if they were fucking, they were discreet about it. -Sure. -More importantly, I think what it conveys is Exodus being so angry at the idea that Amelia vote was fucking Magneto and he wasn't. -Which is definitely how I read this. -Yeah. -A completely. -Cortez is like, "I won't kill you if you become my concubine." And she's like, "Fuck you, dude." -Haha. -Fuck you. Unbelievable. Men. -It's easy. -It's easy. -Believeable. -Everwhere she turns. Like, she just, he says, "I wanted to assure you by Deer Amelia that after I've rested control from whoever survives this conflict, I will make life very unpleasant for you. Unless, of course, you consent to be my paramour." Not as a queen per se, but more like the first wife of the haram I intend to form once things quiet down. So that's the pleasant version of what could happen to me? Right, Exodus will just kill you. Yeah, that might be the pleasant option in this comparison. The very idea is disgusting, Cortez. I'd rather consort with the parasitic creature Exodus used to torture me than become your concubine. Oh, not the worm again. Amelia does a really cool power moment that she really gets to do. Yeah. While this fighting isn't going on, there are also anti-mutant people attacking. This is a group called Humanities Last Stand. Don't worry about it. There's always one of these, right? You're like, "You promised this time." Or is there going to be another last? Like, are you going to try again? Really? You made these eighth stands. Joseph, at this point, has, like, kind of had a mild psychotic break and has started kind of remembering being Magneto and convincing himself that he is Magneto. Because I do believe that in the context of this story when it was written, he was supposed to actually be Magneto. I think Joseph gets Madeline priored, actually. Like, he got-- Oh, he's not the same thing, yeah. It's a retcon where they're actually you're a clone. It gives you a personality disorder in this context, usually. Absolutely. Yes. Anyway, she's worried that if he kills one of the anti-mutant pilots that are attacking, it will snap him fully into, like, this delusional Magneto personality that he's building. So she decides to turn herself into mist and jump up into one of the planes as it's pulling apart. In an effort to, like, stop this and rescue the pilot, it's a cool, like, superhero moment for a million vote. Hell yeah. The plane explodes and Joseph screams, Amelia knows things that she's died, and that snaps him out of it. Yeah. Later, though, after everything has quieted down in the day new mall of the story, Amelia missed herself back up in front of him. Amelia, you started with me. I'm glad you're here. I can't tell you how relieved I was to hear that you managed to dematerialize and reform elsewhere before that plane crashed into New Avalon. Didn't do the pilot much good. I was unable to save him. I know. I'm sorry. Can I help you with anything? You look like there's something on your mind. There is. She holds out a photograph. I wanted to show you this, Joseph. Do you recognize it? You should. It's a photo of Eric Magnus Lenzell and his family before tragedy struck. I'm not sure how much you know about it, but the Lenzell family history is a pretty sad one. When he was young, Megida was imprisoned at a Nazi work camp at Auschwitz, along with his parents and sister. Of the four of them, he alone survived the Ordeal and lived to see the liberation of the camp in 1945. Along the way, he fell in love with a woman named Magda. They were married. And shortly afterward, they moved to the Ukrainian city of Vinitsa, where Magda gave birth to a baby girl named Anja. I suppose those must have been the happiest days of Magnus' life. Unfortunately, they were also the most fleeting. Anja was burned to death in an arsonist's fire while she was still very young. When Magnus took out his rage and the villagers who had refused to save her, his latent abilities were brought to the surface. Joseph Lissons slowly, his attitude towards Magneto, changing from disgust and hatred to pity and sorrow. This is again them reiterating for newer readers, this backstory, which you would have gotten from earlier comics. People aren't reading earlier comics, right? Right. In a primal display of fear, he lashed out at the gathered mob and killed them all. His wife was witness to the slaughter, terrified by what her husband had become, Magda fled the scene, and he never saw her again. For a man who had already suffered through the horrible death of his first family, this was a devastating loss. Joseph thanks, Amelia, because he thinks he can finally start to understand the burden of having been Magneto when he gets a better idea of who Magneto was as a person. He says, "I owe it to the man who was Magnus before his life was shattered by a tragic set of circumstances to be true to myself, to be Joseph and not Magneto." And she says, "Actually, I'm afraid you're going to have to be Magneto for just a little while longer. You see, there's still the small matter of what to do with new Avalon." So she coaches him to give a big speech, the acolytes about how new Avalon's not going to take off, actually, because I'm disbanding the acolytes. You all need to go on a pilgrimage around the world to embrace the future and look within yourselves for salvation, find the spirit of new Avalon in your own hearts and the hearts of others out in the wider world doing good works. In your house and Mills house. Exactly. Your acolyte jarred here in Mills house. It is a wonderful life. It is. Exodus thinks to himself, while he like frowns glumly in Amelia Claps, that he's sure it's not the real Magneto speaking at the moment, but he does believe after what he saw during the whole conflict that Joseph is the real Magneto with Amnesia. Right. So again, this mini series is completely outmoded by pretty much the next story. What does it mean really? Yeah. Right. No, he does carry over this point. The elements feel silly now. That was like-- It's an experience system, Eric's emotions. Right. No. Exactly. Cortez escapes before they can punish him. Amelia and Joseph debrief while they go to confront Cortez in the cell where they've left him. I should have known better than to believe that a scheming treacherous dog like Fabian Cortez could ever change his ways. His soul is corrupt and twisted by evil. At least we've got to confine so we can keep an eye on him until we decide what to-- Oh, no. He's gone. Cortez escaped. Should I gather the others in former search party? Why bother, since Joseph, in this weather, to be a wasted effort, they're the Arctic. Besides, I doubt even Cortez can survive out there in that frigid climate for very long. What about you, Amelia? What will you do now? Surely you've burned your bridges with the acolytes? Don't you think it's high time you saw it another way of life? Perhaps even with the X-Men. I could never go back to the way things were with the acolytes. You're right about that. But I'm not anywhere near ready to choose Xavier's path as my own. It's too big a step. And again, she leaves. She has a real-- once they start to accumulate, that this is what-- kind of what she does. And also kind of way lower better, both how she functions in their area, and also just her personalities. It really does start to be like, let's have a-- And maybe she's right, but it's everybody else's fault. She loves to leave. She loves to leave, and she loves to not take responsibility for her own life. She said that to Peter. She says, I do what I'm told. Yeah. Because I don't trust myself to make the right decision. But what we see is that, as Peter put it out, that's a choice. Yeah. And here she's choosing again, again, again, again, again, to run away and not even though she does, whenever push comes to sub, step up to the plate and prove that she is a heroic person with a fundamentally good moral compass. She's always like, but I can't be a superhero. That's too scary. And just like, I have to leave. Kind of a period. Or she might be one of the more rational characters who have been franchise. Honestly, yeah. You're there or hell, but I don't know if I'm going to leave. But I don't know if I'm going to like really-- And Liz. Really? I really just wanted to go to space. I really just wanted to go live in space. And again, I don't want to kill everyone else. I just want to go to space. If you can give me a plan that's go to space, less kill everyone. Not kill everyone. I'm into the life I'm saying it a lot. I feel an ignore of hearing me. Like, come on. Five months later, line wide, they do an event called minus one, where every X-Men comic, I forgot it was Marvel line wide. But certainly every X-Men comic, the cover date is July 97. But I forget when they were actually probably three months earlier. It's a flashback issue that's adding new retcon information. So the X-Factor one is about Havoc's adoptive family, from what was adopted out of the orphanage. The X-Force one is about the proud stars on the reservation and a story that happens there where Destiny tells their fortune at a carnival and all kinds of stuff. So each one was setting up plot points potentially for later. The X-Men minus one issue, which is by Scott Labdell, is a flashback story all about Charles and Amelia. Oh my god. Yeah, it's a flashback to their life together and at the same time, to Magneto recruiting Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, who he doesn't know her his children. Right. Yeah. He doesn't know that they're not his yet either. Right. So he knows there are two teenagers that he rescued from a mob. Wait until Magneto minus two. Yeah, that's called Magneto Testament, it's a doozy. [LAUGHTER] But this story-- I don't think I know this. I don't think I've read this at least. This one's really good. You should read it. That a ton happens. It's mostly just about Charles and Magneto in parallel, each starting to ramp up. They're like, I'm going to start my brotherhood. I'm going to start my X-Men thing. Because if it's minus one, it's like to set up-- It's X-Men one, right? But Emilia is here because it's set in the period where Scott has been recruited, but no one else has yet, I guess. Or not quite yet, because she leaves that night. So it's right before Scott is recruited. He's floating in the swimming pool. It was here in his own home that he came to the realization he couldn't do it alone. Ostensibly, that's one of the reasons why she joined him when he returned to the States. That, and because Emilia vote genuinely loves this man. Charles, we should be leaving soon. Loves him, beers him. She isn't once inspired by his strength of will and confounded by the singularity of his vision. Though they were determined to live this part of their lives together, she's known. From the moment she laid eyes on him in a hospital bed in India, that there were parts of his life that she would never fully understand. He's still in the water floating around. And she sits down on the edge of the pool, puts her feet in. She's in a little nighty. She's in like lingerie. It's exactly-- Incredible. OK, last try. Charles, can you hear me? I'm probably the most powerful telebath on the face of the planet, Emilia. Of course, I can hear you. Oh, she reaches out with her towel and starts tracing a shape in the water. You're in one of those moods again. Oh, and what kind of mood would that be? This is not great. It's very 1997. She says, me big chief-- me know everything. Me can't be bothered with you. Me too busy saving world, which is like-- [LAUGHS] Jesus turns around and glances. That's racist. You got to go. Is she's quoting classic Old Hollywood movies? Oh, of course, yeah. That are racist, to be clear about. So really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we do go back to the notion that this is 1960, we can say that she didn't know that that was not OK. At least he has led any personally-led any Native Americans die yet. Not yet. That's soon, but not yet. Give him time. That makes him lean up and say, is that how I seem to you, Amy? And this is the first time that she's calling me. This is a broad racist, Audrey Kager. Sometimes. And then in her lingerie, she climbs down into the pool. Work. She has a filming teddy over it that becomes kind of like a mist floats out around her in the pool. It's really cool. Oh, that's beautiful. That's cool. But I know you don't mean to come across that way. I know your hearts in the right place, Charles. I never would have left my job at the hospital overseas. That's still the Amelia vote, Red Cross nurse, instead of lounging by the pool here in your Westchester mansion. And that's an interesting detail that she was overseas because she was with the Red Cross. That is interesting. And it's also an interesting detail that I didn't realize until now, until then, visualizing her lack of corporality, I guess, as her default say. But they are technically also both somewhat disabled. Disabled? Yeah. And that's really cool. Her doing physical therapy with him to make his muscles work is pretty the same kind of shit she does with herself all the time. Exactly. Make sure she doesn't float away. Right. So she's like, she's a kinesiologist because she has to be or she'll to incorporate. It's amazing. Yeah. I like the Red Cross detail though, because that's again, a larger organization that she signed herself up with and went away somewhere. That's what she does, clearly. It's like, join a movement. She loves the beginnings of things. She does. But sometimes you scare me, Charles. I came home with you partially because I love you. And partially because I was hoping to convince you to give up this nonsense, you're planning. Trying to prevent the approaching conflict between humans and mutants like ourselves is not nonsense. You're right. It's insane. Completely certifiably insane. I disagree, Amy. Insane would be if you and I stayed here in the relative safety of my father's estate and just said to blazes with the rest of the world. If we just waited, waited for what? Him. This issue is what made me really crystallize in my belief that she was invented by Labdell as kind of a replacement for Gabby Haller because you want that character to be a mutant who can be torn between them and don't want her to be temporarily locked to the Holocaust also. But Amelia pleading with Charles and Eric at Auschwitz makes a lot more sense if it was a scene with Gabrielle Haller, also a Holocaust survivor. I bet this scene has already been visualized in this brain. Yeah, it was easier swapped. Well, for the timeline also, Gabby and Charles aren't together by this point. Right. He never sees Gabby again after that time together in Israel when she goes pregnant with Legion. Yeah. That's actually the real problem with the sliding times going, Gabby Haller is that Legion is supposed to be the same age as cannonball and moon star. Sure. But his mother is a Holocaust survivor who like met Charles in the 50s. But it's like, okay, whatever. We can't overthink this. Amelia is really perturbed by Auschwitz as one might be. She's like, why did you have you teleport us here? Charles says, I need to speak to Eric. He is going to be here. You told me you haven't spoken to him in years. How can you be sure? Because I know him. In my own way, I know him almost as well as I know myself. This place, this day, hold profound significance for him. In so many ways, Eric never truly escaped the death camps, which claimed his family during World War II. Yes, he ultimately fled. But the fact that the conditions here retarded the natural maturation of his mutant powers meant he was unable to prevent the deaths of those. He held dear. That's actually the explanation. This is a detail that it doesn't come up that often. But the reason Magneto's powers did not manifest when he was young is because he had polio as a young. Yes. Yeah. And he got that because they were in the camps. It's sort of like an Anne Frank with Typhus. Kind of story. It's what prevented him from saving his family because he didn't have powers. His powers don't emerge. He's like 30 with Magda out in the wider world when he can't save their daughter. And then his powers manifest so he can kill all of the men who have burned his daughter to death. Right. Anyway, Eric quite reasonably says, "This is neither the time nor the place for this discussion." Because Charles, why didn't you show up to my Auschwitz anniversary? This is impolite. You ruined my Auschwitz party. Amelia is awed by the sight of Magneto. She says, "My God, Charles, his body virtually radiates with energy. How powerful is he?" As powerful as he needs to be. Stay here. He wheels over. Hello, Eric. Nice helmet. Don't change the subject, Xavier. These queens, they're very funny. When he tries to weave Amelia tries to stop him. He says, "Are you so foolish that you dare to block my path, Amelia?" "You know who I am. But how?" Let me just say that both Charles and I have kept a close eye on each other over the years misvote. Just another example of how much I like the two of you are. Just one more reason why this is madness. You're the two most powerful mutants on the planet. You have to figure out a way to work together. Please, for all of us. You will probably never believe me, but I am sorry. Truly deeply, profoundly sorry. But there can only be one conclusion to this conflict. And to the victor go to spoils. He zooms away with the scarlet witching quicksilver. And Amelia says, "I don't get it. Why was he here? What was he after?" His past, Amy. His past. That's the end of that story. It's just a really good story, but shows Amelia's first meeting with Magneto. It shows that even then she was saying to the two of them. And this is interesting because this is Moira X's position that Hickman reckons together. Right? Yes. Is it the only way for mutants to survive is for the two of you to get it together. We gotta keep trying this until you guys can figure out how to do it. Until you guys can figure out your relationship. Yeah. Because truly, with one or the other of you, we are fucked. Yeah. It adds a color to it because she left Xavier behind and then eventually tried Magneto, but it does feel like what she was doing with Piotr perhaps that whole time on Avalan was trying to build a coalition to be like can't we convince both these guys to run the phone? We love the phone. Yeah, so retroactively this is love Dell I think tightening up the vote arc a little bit by explaining her motivations a little bit more. It's just a fun story for her. It's nice to see more of her and Charles together. Yeah, it's amazing to run that. I can further a little bit. And she appears next. It's in the Quicksilver solo during the siege of one decor, which I simply refuse to talk about. Go back to the Quicksilver episode if you want to hear about the siege of one to go again involves the high evolutionary and that skip for me. Almost always. You can see your own one with a board. We're moving on. Yeah, the point is that she helps Quicksilver and it continues to establish a dynamic where Amelia, even though she is once again, back with Exodus and Sackelites is the duplicated one who will help Quicksilver with stuff. Exactly. That is set up for Magneto Rex in which the United Nations is convinced to seed the island of Genocia to Magneto to serve as its ruler and Magneto as we discussed at the top of the episode. Transforms Genocia formerly an anti mutant apartheid state into an anti human apartheid state. Sure. But Exodus is not in the picture. The Exodus edition that like Acolytes 3 was part of the Quicksilver story. But now after the Magneto war where Magneto fought Joseph and the real Magneto is back, Amelia has managed to get all of the remaining Acolytes back together with Magneto in Antarctica to like scheme and plot. And now the Genocia thing is happening. He wants her to be keeping tabs on Pietro and Wanda because ideally he would like to bring his children back into the fold. And to see if he wants her to the cabinet to here? Not quite here, but yeah, actually around here. It's Magneto war. It's not clear yet, but we come to see pretty quickly that the cabinet is Cortez, obviously, Alda Huxley, the human Genocia who negotiated the deal. Yes. Who's an expert on mutants. The character who is like just Valkyrie but not Valkyrie. It's exactly right. It's very confusing in this story. With Joanna Cargill as the, she's not on the cabinet, but she's like a cabinet level. She's the ambassador to the United Nations from Georgia. But the like council that is often there, it's Amelia, Alda, Fabian and Pipeline who was one of the Genocean press gang guys. Right. The like race straighters who worked with the humans. Yes. Pietro catches vote spying on him. She explains like, so your father's the king of Genocean now. You want to check that out? He's like, yes, actually. So they teleport to Genocean so that he can go check in on this insane new development in his life. Sure. Sure with the hell why not? Yeah, why not? And there's a huge mess happening on Genocean because of course the humans are not just going to tolerate that and they've gone and open revolt against the new mutant leadership. The conversation between Amelia and Pietro before she takes in Genocean actually is interesting. She thinks you've inherited more of your father than you know Pietro, his poise, his confidence, his strength. The story it does feel like they're fucking. So maybe they start fucking on Genocean. I would imagine so. That would make sense to me because she definitely bimes like a consort in the Genocean stuff. Have you inherited his weaknesses as well? Put in the wrong situation. Would you too give into darkness? I pray not Pietro. You are and always have been your own man. I've got to say, I admire you for that. I spent your entire life trying to escape the shadow of your father's legacy. And what am I doing here if not trying to lure you right back into it? I've freely made my choices. Shouldn't you be given the same opportunity? Why have you been watching me of Amelia vote? Does Magneto have you on some fools errand? How sad your life has become when you are at the back and call of a mad man. If you didn't sicken me, I might even pity you. You don't understand. You are the one who is ignorant. My father is not some messiah put on this earth to save the mutant race. He's a homicidal tyrant who will do anything or sacrifice anyone to achieve his desires. I tire of this never ending carousel of insanity. I ignore his actions far too long. I will never be truly at peace until I put an end to this reoccurring nightmare. It is time I confronted him face to face. Man to man. Pietro, it would be foolish of you to oppose Magneto alone. You can't win. We may be beyond the point where he can be defeated. It is not open for discussion. Use your teleportational powers to take me to him Amelia vote. Now. So she takes him to Genocha and then she explains the whole Genocha deal because he hasn't heard about Genocha yet. Like Magneto's taken it over. You're gonna want to sit down. He is horrified. The last time he was on Genocha was during the Civil War that Fabian Cortez launched when his daughter Luna was kidnapped. Don't super worry about it. Again, go back to the quicksler episode. It's an Avengers story and we're not here for that. But what he's shocked by is how much worse the conditions on Genocha are now than they were the last time he was there during the Civil War. He's like, this is really bad. Everything's been shattered and destroyed. All of the humans are in hiding. When he zooms back to Amelia, she says, did you see what you wanted? Was it worth the chance you took by venturing off alone? The conditions are repulsive. How could a so-called civilized society do this to itself? This is exactly why Magneto is needed here. You may not agree with his methods, but you can't ignore his results. He may not be the best man to lead butons out from under the heels of oppression, but he's the best chance we have. Because Xavier, by the way, it's post onslaught now. Xavier is off the table. Oh, right, yeah. Do you want to know what sincerely frightens me in this vote? The possibilities that you are right. She helps Pietro fight a here-to-for unknown child of the Jean-Geneer, Philip Maraud, called Zellett. The scarf would never appear again. But she ends up having to do a team-up with Rogue and Quick Silver. So this is like a fun little, a new, huge, real moment. Again, Quick Silver is captured by Zellett and Rogue is going to rescue him. And she has to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, we have to wait for the right moment. Rogue, trust me here. Oh, the other members of the cabinet, that's right. Our David Maraud, Philip Sun, the one who had fallen in love with Jenny Ransom, the mutant back in the original Claremont story. And some of him and her. They make up the rest of the cabinet. There's a very confusing bit during this video's video period where it's clearly drawn as Jenny, but it's colored as Amelia and someone calls her Amelia. Yeah. But it doesn't make any sense. It has to be Jenny. It's like there's a clear editorial mistake at some point. Or like no one will notice we need Amelia to be here in the scene, but we are using on it as Jenny Ransom or something like that. Anyway, when all of this wraps up and Zellett is defeated, Amelia decides to show Pietro one more thing to try and convince him to stay and take a position in the cabinet. She takes him to the leper colony on Genoja that Magneto has established for the former mutate slaves who have now contracted the legacy virus. Damn. Now do you see why you're needed here Pietro? Yes. My God. Yes, I do. This is a newly constructed camp to attain mutates infected with the legacy virus. The hope is that by isolating them from the general population, the spread of the disease will be tempered into a curious found. The conditions are hard to say the least. Staff will be discovered in time to help these unfortunate souls. This isn't the worst of it. There's more. I know the plans. The grand design that Magneto has in store for Genoja. Plans which involve expansion by force if necessary and domination. Genoja is just the beginning. I'm not sure if there is an end. I'm really just like again. But this is what I was saying about how the late 90s Genoja stuff feels very much like it is critical of Israel in a way I find very interesting. It's very interesting and it's new. I had an entirely weird yeah, like I said before, I had an entirely different full perspective on it. This is written by Joe Pruitt who does a good job. It's not a writer. I have a ton of opinions about but I like Magneto Rack. So I think it's a pretty good mini series. Yeah. She continues. He's changed since I first joined his accolades. The events of the recent past from his ill-fated confrontation with Charles Xavier to onslaught to Operation Zero Tolerance. I've left him convinced that only pure force will affect a change and more than ever before that only he has the vision to make it happen. I sometimes wonder if he's really doing all this for the sake of homo superior or for himself. I see. I just don't know if I believe in him enough anymore to continue the charade. Thank you for opening my eyes, Ms. Vote. I finally realized that my path has been chosen for me and I can deny it no longer. Amelia teleports up to Magneto. You've done well. The mutated isolation camp had to have been the final nail in the coffin. I knew his self-righteous arrogance would force his hand. Now he is at my side as I have long planned. Magneto told her to shut Peter this. Absolutely. Yeah. But he doesn't believe in your dream. His sole purpose in remaining is to combat you. Why are you even bothering? Do you truly care that your son is at your side? Or is it merely about dominating when you've never been able to control? For now that is enough, I will mold him into the son he should have always been. Loyal, proud, worthy of his birthright. That is what is crucial at this stage. And if he doesn't see the light of your vision, I've buried one child, Amelia Vote. You could do so again. Is that what you're trying to say? I'm saying I know the meaning of sacrifice from bitter experience, and I can allow nothing to stand in my way. way. Not now, when my dream is on the verge of becoming reality, with Genocia under my control, mankind will no longer treat mutants as objects of scorn. From this day forth, we control our own destiny. Do you see Amelia, your Charles Xavier, was wrong all those years. The age of ascension is upon us. The time has come from mutant kind to assume it's rightful place in the evolutionary cycle. It is my burden to bear." "The Amelia puts her hand behind her head and says quietly with Magneto is ruler of us all. God help us." "Come on, Megan. Come on, Megan." "Punk me again, Eric." "Come on, Amelia." "But I think she's playing both sides here." "She is." "Because she didn't have to say all that shit that she said to him." "No, she really went and convinced him." "She showed him the camp and then told him, by the way, I know what your father's planning and life there will be settlements." "Exactly." "The UN is going to be really pissed at us soon." "Yeah." "He's not going to stick to the plan." "No." "That they said he could do." "If you can believe it." "He wants more than that. He's going to annex and expand and grow and conquer." "I'm going to fuck him one more time." "I get that though. I do." "You know?" "Maybe space. Still on the table." "So for a while, you just see Amelia as a member of the cabinet. Sometimes like she was with Piotr when Piotr was with the accolades. She's Pietro's confidant, but then Polaris shows up and she and Pietro are much more." "Because this is by the way, back when they thought Polaris was not Magneto's daughter." "Curse." "You're never going to learn that." "Every story about these people, every story about these people is impossible to go." "Every 90's comic about Polaris, Quicksilver, Magneto and the Scarlet Witch is insane to read. Now that Brett Con said made it so Polaris is and they are not his children." "It's really confusing. It's also their most important. "Demite their most sprinter." "It's also Lorna at her most astoundingly evil looking, which I do enjoy. Which is the smoke hair of the big, like skull motif." "Cool." "Anyway, there is an X-Wars story repeat wisdom has X-Wars taken to Genosea to recover some stuff during the Civil War, like to take advantage of the chaos. This is where Amelia goes to talk to him, but it's very clearly drawn as Jenny Ransom. So I have to imagine that they just rewrote the dialogue and colored it as Amelia. It's Jenny's outfit, but in acolyte colors and she's a redhead." "Oh, okay." "And Pietro calls for Amelia. But it's very clearly like they drew the pages and then decided this should be Amelia instead when they were doing the lettering pass." "We can't go back." "We can't go back." "Oh, actually, it's even crazier. Let me read this dialogue because it's fully crazy. I read this like five times because I was trying to find where Amelia was in this issue and it was this page where it's Jenny Ransom. So here's the exchange. It's odd to find you standing still Quicksilver, usually in motion. I never realized how much you resemble your father. My life has always been in Magneto's shadow, Jenny Ransom. Even before I learned the truth of my lineage. And now, once again, I've been drawn into another of my father's grand schemes. No matter the odds against succeeding. You question Magneto's ability to transform Genocean to a haven for mutants of all nationalities? My father is undeniably powerful, but he has chosen to make an enemy of the world. I question whether it's possible to build Utopia and one is at war." Between the Genocean mutates who are rallying under him in the mutant in Mee Grey, as he did, if answered his call, Magneto is building a unique power base. Soon no one will dare oppose us. That's the difference between you and me, Amelia. You believe in my father. So you just say, "Is Jenny in one panel and then as Amelia in the next panel?" Does her hair change? No, it's red, but it's Jenny's haircut. But it's her short little. Yeah. Okay, cool. It's bizarre. There's another fun cabinet scene where Cortez pisses Magneto off and he just says, "I mean, I vote and she trans-instagents him somewhere." And he goes, "No!" Because he knows it's going to hurt. Cortez like mowed off to him. And Magneto is like, "At this point gone full Netanyahu." I'm just going to. Let's just say. This is pre-that, but he's giving that. Well, he's actually going back to Claremont's inspiration for Magneto, which was Minachem Began. I mean, the idea of Magneto as a Zionist extremist is not new to Exyncomics. You know, it's just a very literal take on it. And I do feel the need to stress for all the people who continue to say, "Crocola was almost like mutant Zionism." No, because the whole point of Crocola was, "No one was living there." Exactly. Yeah. I can't stress enough how he's not completely replaced. 100% different that makes it from Israel. That's not the same thing. It simply isn't. Genosa, which is a riff on South Africa and on Israel, people were there. The problem here with Genosa is that he is oppressing and expeling the people who lived there before he started moving all the mutants in. Well, that was out. Yeah. While also letting the indigenous mutants who were enslaved and now have the legacy virus suffer in this leprechaulity. Because the more important mutants are the ones who are coming in from other countries. Yeah. Exactly. The ever-wrestling. Yes. No, but that's literally, that's why I'm saying this is so scathing. Yeah. I mean, I just, I don't know if it's the intention, but it's in 2025. It's very different from me to read this and not be like, "Wow, this is a really scathing critique of Zionism. It just is." And it's an exciting one more than I did, obviously, when I read this the first time every time I read this. Well, right, me too. Me too growing up in fucking Westchester, please. Sure. Yeah. You took I knew about the fucking knockbow when I read this comic because of Zion. I assure you I did not. Anyway, there's a fun bit where she and Peter go to like smoke a sig. They don't because this is already what Marvel's like stop doing that. Damn. But they go to basically like go smoke a sig on the patio and he goes, you teleported to us where the Amazon. He's definitely allergic to rain forest. Brilliant. I just liked that as just like a fun. First of all, she could send you all the way to Brazil, which I like. I guess, I guess, maybe she has to have been there. We don't know. They've never said girl sent me to Brazil. She was with the Red Cross. Maybe she has a lot of exotic locations that are memory bank. That's true. Why my father tolerates that conniving slug is beyond me. Every devil gets his due in time, click silver. You shouldn't waste yours worrying over it. As hard as it is to imagine him ever having bit a threat to anyone but himself, Fabian Cortez is by far the least of our worries now. They watch Magneto as he looms and flies around. She says too badly back. This leads into mega-dark seduction by Fabian D. C. Asa, which is a midi series I love. This is a great Polaris story. It's a great quick silver story. It's a good Wanda story, honestly, and you know how I feel about Wanda. Yeah. Pals most of the time. We're fine these days. We've worked out. But she can stay over there. I don't need to engage in sort of how I feel with her. There's a history between us. We can be civil. I just don't need to chat. Your Wanda vision is near-sighted. Yeah. I did love that show until the last episode was so fucking stupid at M.C. One of the dumbest worst that last of minutes. So good. Did you watch Agatha? I thought that was great. So it was funny because you gave the same showrunner like an opportunity. Just make a weird TV show like you wanted to. You don't have to make it M.C. with you. There's that bit almost at the end where Aubrey Plaza starts making like energy blasks. She's going to start doing it. And they're all like no, no, no, we're not doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like that's funny. That's a good choice. No, we're going to talk because this is a good show with no budget. Anyway, Dark Seduction is about the ongoing Civil War, the backstory here and the reason my Polaris is on Genoia is that after Magneto wore when he killed Joseph or when Joseph sacrificed himself to stop Magneto from doing something truly insane to the Earth's like magnetic field. Magneto has been like half power. He's been like heavily deep powered. So he's ruling this nation and he has the acolytes who can be his muscle, but he's not as strong unless Lorna is with him serving as like the opposing that get it pole. Yeah, kind of like juicing him up. This is something they learned they could do during the 12 crossover. Do not worry about it. It is part of why my argument is that Lorna should also be in Omega level mutant because they should be the two. Yeah, but you know, I get that the point was to cut the list down. So it's whatever you got to go to the list and also he just he has this less sensical like Joker Batman thing with I like like I like the lack of symmetry there. They're like he's to me is equal opposite on a power level is Xavier. So like adding another one just the mad. Right. No, I just like the idea that she has the potential at least. I think that Lorna the issue that she has it's like how Bobby couldn't be Omega level until or so. It's like I'm gay. Yeah, I think that Lorna it's like give it a shot. She's so mentally ill is I think what it is. Yeah, that she puts kind of limitations on herself. Yeah, because she knows that it would be dangerous if she let herself. Stock dick. No, no, we know she does that and does very well. She'll tell you all about it. Anyway, there's this one outpost in Genoja carrying cover the humans have refused to surrender. Everyone's like why? Because they're getting fucking slaughter. It doesn't really make a ton of sense. Vote ends up going in because she can fucking teleport so like you can't keep her out. She's a mist. She's like I'm going in your windows like deal with it. Yeah, she discovers the secret of carrying code, which is that it houses the technology the engineer used to create the mutates and whatnot. And therefore the technology that Magneto could use to take himself back to full power now that he is decided. that he must annex the region. - Yeah. - Votes like, okay, he absolutely can't I get his hands on this. And makes officially her final decision like, I'm outta here. - Mm-hmm. - She goes to P.I. Show and it's like, "Hey, so real quick, wanna know what's in there "because it's bad fucking news." - And there's a guy who calls himself the Jean Genier. We gotta get out of this. - Oh, he killed him a long time ago. - Okay, okay, okay. - He was the grandpa of the apartheid. The grand wizard, so to speak, of Jean Genier, he was the one who enslaved the mutants and put skin suits on them and it's bad. It's a bad, well, it's good. It's one of Claremont's best stories, but it's extremely upsetting. - Yeah. - So Votes decides to start helping the rebellion on the low, which I think is cool. She's making a really affirmative choice to do something. - Yeah. - To finally stop being like, well, maybe I can reason with him. It's like, at this point, you have failed to reason with him. - She's a little as foggy. She's holding her whole self and decision is one thing. - She's really keeping it together. One might say, they team up with the Avengers because Wanda has shown up because she's been summoned as well, like Pietro to come see the island and whatnot. The Avengers fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. There's a lot of kinds of stuff, but none of the accolades see Amelia do anything like treasonous though. She's being sneaky. She's helping Pietro by teleporting around and doing various things. Pietro and Polaris are able to destroy the technology, but not until after Magneto has used it to restore all his full powers because that's really the point of this story that you need. Pietro and Lorna are like, well, now that he's declared his evil plans and is it full power, we can't continue to stay here and try to be a good influence on him. That's failed. We need to go with the Avengers. - We're in second term. - Yeah, exactly. It's second term Magneto now. - Yeah. We've given up on the idea that we can get him to amend his platform, but this is really funny. During the final battle before they bounce, Pietro goes up to Amelia. - 'Cause he's going to go destroy the machinery. Amelia says, do this and Magneto will kill you. The fact that your son will mean nothing. I know Amelia. And since an inside presence is needed, I apologize in advance for what? Giving you deniability and with a big crack, he punches her across the face and knocks her out cold. - Incredible. - Leaving her behind what he had Polaris exit, but with the appearance that she did fight him and that she stole loyal accolade. She is left behind therefore on Genosa in time for Eve of destruction. The big finale to the Lobdel era of X-Men. This is the story where the X-Men are not available. So Gene assembles the most rag tag fucking crew of X-Men you've ever seen, including Northstar, Dazzler, Polly Provenzano, aka Omerta, the homophobic X-Men who is notable only for being a homophob who hates that Northstar is there. - And he's the first, Mark, in my recollection, he's the only one that ever like says it out loud to him that that's what they don't like about him. - That's disgusting that you're getting. - Yeah. - Yeah, like it's like, it's really like, we so rarely get the, you know, the subtextes text and for obviously a lot of us in Northstar being openly game is so interesting, but how does someone just say, like, plus I don't like, they don't trust baggots. - Yeah. - He is from a mob family and he's unfortunately the only Italian-American member of the X-Men in its history up through like the 20th century. - He's not gonna like those, that he's a little meatball shirt so they're taking off lately. - Probably not. He actually had a very funny cameo on Cracowah where he and Stinger from the Alliance of Evil have gotten married on Cracowah and their child is one of the ones abducted by strife and turned into like a strife. - Sure. - And I'm just like, sure. - Couldn't have happened when a nicer guy was-- - But that's the thing, it was just such a funny pull to be like, who should this be? Oh, how about Paulie fucking Provenzano? Fuck that guy. - Absolutely fuck Paulie. - The rest of the team is Layu Yoshita, Sunfire's sister we've never heard of before, Sunpire, who cannot exist based on any of the original Sunfire stories and also cannot be named Layu because the letter L does not exist in the Japanese language. - Perfect. - That character gets her throat slit by Mystique and the X-Core R, remember that? And she can dead ever since. - That's my girl, get her. - Clean up that continuity, Raven. We really appreciate it. The last member of the team, there's someone else too who I can't even remember right now so truly don't worry about it. But Jean mind rapes Frenzy. - Yeah. - Amelia Votes style. It's actually a very interesting call back to what Charles did for just the briefest of seconds to Amelia. Jean does it to Joanna for the entire event. - I mean, we get outing Bobby. We get a lot of, she's a little bit more free wielding with this. - I like the outing Bobby. - Me too. - I will defend her on that. She outs Bobby to Bobby, which I think is okay. She doesn't tell anybody else. - And she's a teenager. - But she also doesn't tell anybody else. She says it in front of the whole team. It's just like to him, like Bobby, you're gay though. - It's always great, it's just very real. I mean, it just reminds me of all. - I've talked about this many times in this show. Most gay millennials needed a girl in high school to be like, but you're gay though. - But you're gay though. - And then you're like, yeah, I am. Fuck. - Don't tell Bolly. - Right. This moment though, where she violates Joanna Cargill and forces her to join the X-Men and spends the entire event, puppeting her brain around is absolutely crazy. And you can call that as crazy in the story. Like Magnet is like, wow, Jean Grey, you're so moral, huh? She's like, I'm doing what I have to do. Fuck you. - Absolutely. - Literally torturing people and crucifying them in Magna Square. Like I don't care. - Yeah. - At this point, quite honestly, this story is pretty bad, but Jean is great in it. And Amelia is also great in it. - Yeah. - We know this about me. I love when Jean Grey does do absolutely a moral disgusting shit, but is like, I don't give a fuck. - She, that is my Jean, and that's mostly my experience. - Yeah. - The Jean I love is the Jean who's a fucking bitch who will be sanctimonious about how she needs to do this 'cause it's the right thing to do, but will do something foul and disgusting. - Oh yeah. - That's what Morrison really nails with the character. - He's like, I was about to say, that's where I, that's my era, that's where I feel most strongly about her. - I think that's the best Jean is Morrison. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, I mean, I love the original Claremont Jean up through Dark Phoenix, but other than that, in terms of like issue to issue writing of her personality, Louise Simon, since Jean and X-Factor is excellent, in terms of like the broader themes because Louise can't use the Phoenix stuff. Everything that Grant does with Jean is like, those are like the top two for me, or Simon's son and Morrison, for sure. - Same. - This story involves Xavier being captured by Magneto, because the legacy virus has been cured, via the death of Colossus. - Yeah. - Which Eric takes some time to shame Charles War II, because it's like-- - That's what I mean, I love that he states, I love that he states out of Colossus. - Wow, he went back to you and now he's dead. - Yeah. - Wow. - Yeah. - Wow, interesting that that keeps happening, that they go back to you and they die. Now that the legacy virus is cured though, all of the mutates and lepre colonies could be let out, and now Magneto has a huge standing army of people with mutant powers. So he decides to launch the Genotian War of Conquest that has always been his goal, because he's not content to take the land that was given to him, he's going to take as much land as he wants and crush all of humanity under his boot. Amelia is like, okay, so yeah, check, please. - Yeah, yeah, she's had it officially. - She's officially had it. I mean, she had had it earlier than this with Quicksilver, but she's been hanging out like, okay, I can make the situation better. And we have achieved my actual goal, which was a separatist mutant state where I am safe from humans. That's all I've ever wanted by entire life. So I have it here. This is the story where she's now walking around in a very sexy version of the Acolyte costume with like cleavage. - Yeah, we've hemmed it down a little bit. - It's like very down, and she has kind of like a purple Magneto cape on, and like a headpiece, she looks very much like she is his queen. - Queen. - In this story, in a way that she hasn't previously. And I do think that by this point, they are fucking. - Oh yeah, come on. - If for no other reason, then she's like distracting him from the fact that she's conspiring with the resistance. - Oh, I hope so, yeah. - You know? I mean, that's again, we never get to read the story really about her. All I want to the 90s is the comic that's about Emilia Vote, and not a comic that's about a man where Emilia Vote is like the confidant who has interesting conversations with him, and we just never get it. - She's a foil conversationally for a lot of the big men. - Right, like including Quicksilver, who in the 90s is a big male X-Men character, and she's the sounding board for Colossus, for Pietro, for Magneto, for Charles, but it's never really her story. And I wish we got that. - I agree. - You get it kind of here just in the narration, which is very funny. E of destruction part two opens with her in that queen outfit, looking out on Magda Square, where Xavier has been strung up on a cross, and Magneto is rallying the crowd, like watch me torture Charles Xavier. - Crucify him, crucify him. - Yeah, it's bold imagery. I'll say that. - Yeah. - I mean, we're still at this point, Marble Comics claiming that Magneto wasn't actually Jewish after all. - Oh my gosh. - It's an arresting image, I will say. Magneto Testament is actually what affirmatively undid that was like, no, he was Jewish. That was a really crazy retcon. That was a super crazy retcon. It also unfortunately gives him the real name Max Eisenhart and to me he just always is Eric. He's just his name is Eric and it's stupid that they keep trying to make Max happen. I'm sorry. I thought Alliweng did his best to make it work, but it's very clearly an IP thing or whatever where they're like this is his name. And it just, I don't, I think it's bad. - I reject it. - His name is Eric. I rejected entirely. - It's in the Lucifer bin for me. I reject it. - It's definitely in a place of Lucifer for me also. But so the narration as she watches Charles Tortured in Magda Square from up on the balcony. Her name is Amelia Vote and once upon a time she was in love. His name was Charles Xavier and while he professed to love her in return, in truth his heart belonged to another, his heart belonged to a dream and the avatars of that dream, his X-Men. Long before he began to work towards his goal of helping forge a world where humans and mutants could live in peace, long before he thought to create a school for mutants, before he'd even imagined a cerebral or thought to call his charges the X-Men. Amelia tried desperately to dissuade her lover from pursuing his hopeless quest. Mutants need to hide to try to blend in, she told him. We'll never be accepted by humanity. Please don't call attention to us, Charles. Don't make yourself a target. He didn't listen clearly. - Well, because that's when you turn the picture and he's being tortured. - Yeah. - That's when you see the giant mob around him as he's being tortured. Magneto is screaming to war, to war. - It's just like, well, can you not hear me? - This really hasn't worked out. - Yeah. - At the time she had no way of knowing how right she'd be. He knew, of course. Charles confided in her his genuine fear of Magneto, his old friend who had his own agenda for the mutant movement. She left him because she didn't want to get involved. She didn't want to have to choose sides. She didn't want there to even be sides. But now, today, Amelia vote realizes the war has come to her doorstep. Today is the day she must make a choice. She can only pray. She is not too late. Toward the end of the event when Magneto is shaving Charles about the death of Colossus, and he has Charles, like, chained up also with, like, a neuro-block thing on that Professor of Abusing his powers. - The calendar. - And also, like, kind of now is slowing down his brain entirely. He says, all I could do is stem the flow of eye onto your precious brains so that you are powerless to do anything but bear silent witness to the war that your inaction has wrought. Enjoy the view, Charles. You've earned it. Magneto swoops away with a swish of his cape. - Nothing of fire in your blood. - Amelia vote, one time beloved of Charles Xavier, formerly Magneto's most trusted acolyte. She comes out of the shadows. How did it come to this, she thinks. A world poised on the eve of destruction. She gets the title drop, which I really do like. It's the titular line. - And do I have the strength to do something about it? We cut away, but in the big confrontation between Jean's ex-Magneto, Charles saves the day and it is revealed that Amelia and Jean have been in communication the whole time because events been going on. - It's so fun. - And that Amelia set him free. It's really, really cool. - No, it's a great, it's peak me. - This is the part where Dasler pretends to die. - Yeah. - Add makes herself explode with her lasers or whatever. I went Magneto shot her, but she's actually casting an illusion, which is something Dasler can do with her. - Yeah, she's creating a marauded, a laser light. She's doing one of these holograms. It's torture everybody, Coachella, we're gonna have the fake two holograms. - Very that, yes, exactly. - Of Dasler. - She's the first one to do it. - Or the fake Stanley hologram that was at LA Comic Con. This was so dark-sighted. And it was programmed with an AI, a generative AI neural net to answer questions as Stanley. It was so pathetic. - Back to Geno-Shut. - Back to Geno-Shut, a much lighter tale, really. - No, I'm a grand scheme. - I'm back to Magneto being right. - She explains, it was their plan that she now has to came up with because they needed to distract everybody while Amelia set Xavier free. Eric is just like, "Fuckin' Hal Amelia, come." He doesn't even say anything because it's like, "Of course she did, of course she fucking did." - Yeah. - He's just like, "Well, all right." Eric says, "Once again, you were willing to do to me, which you would never do to our enemies." And once again, you're a fugitive to see that Hayton violence will never lead to peace and freedom for our people. I'm sorry it had to come to this, Eric. - No hard feelings, old friend. We both know that this is not the end. What I said to Wolverine is true. No matter how long you try to deny it, in this world we live in, it's either kill or be killed. You're unwilling to commit the former, and so you guarantee you will become a victim of the latter. And that's the last word on Xavier Magneto for some time because we knew X-Men, we have the big Genoja storyline where Genoja is destroyed. The accolades are all seemingly killed on Genoja, apart from a few that we see in other stories. And Magneto is believed killed until the big reveal at the end of Grant Morrison's New X-Men that he's been zoned the whole time under our name. - Right, yeah. - Then that gets reconned out into-- - Or not, yeah. - Xavier, don't, don't, it's very confusing. Point is, Amelia Vote is not seen again for seven years. She pops up in 2008 in X-Factor, 25 by Peter David. This is part of the Messiah Complex event. - Hell yeah. - I love Messiah Complex. I hate the decimation, but Messiah Complex whips. - I love it. I love, I'm part-talked to decimation too. It was tough, but I-- - You were reading it at the time. That was your era when you came in. I get that I was so mad about the premise that it just was hard for me. - I knew it wasn't forever, and I thought I'd like-- - It was forever. - It was forever. - That's true. - Which not for her, Amelia, Amelia. - She's one of the 198. That's the first time we learned that she did not die in Genotia is she was in the handbook, the 198 files that listed the 198 mutants that were left. And one of them is Amelia Vote. - Period. - Of course, they shouldn't have listed them all because then they start coming up with exceptions immediately. - I know. - The problem I have with the decimation is not pairing it back down from millions and millions and millions. My problem is that if you take it down to just 200, that is not a minority group. - You have told me that. And that what that does 100% makes sense. - That's just no longer a metaphor that's in any way useful. - Yeah. - That's a graduating class. That is not a class of people. - It feels like all starts to me in some way, and it really was so-- - But it wasn't because-- - Sam. - Moonstar and Jubilee and all these other characters got thrown out. - What was like this reverse also? It really felt, it impacted me emotionally in a way that I was suppressed by-- - It was emotionally impactful. I just think it fucked up. It broke the core promise of X-Men, which is-- - It does. - This is a minority group that is oppressed because if you're just 200 people, you still shouldn't oppress 200 people, but especially if more of them can never be born again, which was also part of the decimation. - Yeah. - Now the future of mutant kind, there is no future of mutant kind, so what's the point? I don't know. I just found it really nihilistic and I didn't enjoy it at all. I do love Mike Carey who was writing X-Men in this time. I think a lot of the writers in this time are great, great writers. Fraction, Gillin, Brubaker, although I don't love him on X-Men is one of the great comic book writers of our time. - Yeah, he's incredible. I also love when the mansion's a prison, or I love stuck it. It feels like-- - You like how the mansion's a prison now? You like that? - I don't. - Hmm, well-- - Everyone would wish for it. That's why I said are you happy now? - That's true. - Everything you said last time you were on this show has now come to pass. - I know. - And it's not fun to read. - Except Kitty, you ready for go? - I'm very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, - It's all in really well. - Let's see, we'll see. Maybe she's back in Chicago, you never know. Anyway, the decimation is in 2006 though, and we don't see Amelia until 2008, as I said, in Messiah Complex. This is a really funny bit where we cut to Sacred Heart Hospital in Santa Cruz. - Yes. - Where Amelia has taken on an entirely new life as a human nurse. - I love it. It's so good. - She's just nursing again because she really, after you have destruction, she truly was like, I'm out, and she left for a smooth decade and has just been back at her nursing career. - That's why I included this character a long time ago. I told you I wanted to do as many normal ladies as they knew, technically she's a very powerful ex-man. - But she chooses to be a normal lady as much as she can. And I do think that's interesting. - She's one of the most plebe friends, yeah. - This sequence is extremely funny. The paramedics wheel in this guy on a gurney, they're shouting like there's an accident victim, there's an accident victim and a red-headed nurse walks out and says, what do we got? Lutitic walked right in front of the ambulance. We ran right over him. A doctor says, Amelia, start him on, and we can see her now. And now you and I know this is Amelia vote. - Implicially. - But I think that many readers, the full seven years after her last appearance, did not know who this was. - It was seven years since the legacy, no legacy's after this. - The legacy's after this. - Seven years since the eve of destruction storyline when she freez Charles. - How old am I? - Right, no, I'm like, mm, mm. - That's, I remember being a young person reading both of those things that can't be true to the bowl. - Well, this was 2008. - Wow, it wasn't even boring yet. - Yeah, that is right, that's crazy, isn't it? - I was in the hospital room right next to this. Well, that's why they were giving birth to me next. And I was like, I'm pretty sure that's Amelia vote. - That's super fair. - So the doctor tells her, Amelia started on an, and the patient on the gurney looks up suddenly and says, Amelia, would that be Amelia vote? Because it's Wolverine. - Incredible. - Wait, that voice, hey vote, long time no see, he posed the oxygen mask off, Wolverine wanted to get in quick and let myself get run over seen the fastest way. Now, nurse vote lets you and me. What the says the doctor because Amelia has transubstantuated herself into mist and disappeared in front of all of these humans who thought she was just a human who's worked with them for years now. Wolverine taps a communicator and says, "Yo, Elf, she's running. Missed yourself into the vent." They're on it. Storm and night crawler catch up with her and Storm is able to use her wind powers to stop Amelia. This, honestly, if you're Amelia vote, the last person you wanna run into is Storm. - I would imagine she's the natural proud. I've always been trying to think of what is the natural evolutionary predator to mist? What is her, would it be a Joker situation where someone who's like would trap her in? Can she be serious? - Right, is it someone who makes a jar? Like she making like a telekinetic box would be a way. - Yeah, that would probably be a problem for her, but, or is it ice or is it like temper? - Sure, if you freeze her, does the mist freeze? These are all things that because she rarely fights, she mostly runs away. We don't see this kind of thing. - What do I like her so much? (laughing) - I do think that she and Storm, they don't have like a real fight here because she's just running and Storm is like, stop that. But if they did have a real fight, I do think Amelia could kind of hold her own because we see several times that she can create vacuums, like she can suck the air out of the space. And I think that would fuck with Storm if Storm was trying to manipulate the air. But Storm is obviously way more powerful than most people. So, I think she would win. - I don't make a level. - Yeah, so I think Amelia would, you know, she might get a couple hits in. - If it was, man. - I think if Jarman shows up, both of them are cooked. I mean, no one would want to be in that jar less than a row. - Well, true, because the claustrophobia, that's how she and Amelia could bond, is they both really hate being trapped in the psychic jar. - God, I bet you would also hate to be in a psychic jar, huh? We have more in common than you think, Aurora. - Exactly. - But so they grab her and Storm spins her basically into like a tiny tornado and like, - Mr. - Into the ground. - She goes, "Ah, we simply wish to talk with you, Amelia. We seek the marauders." And since your former allies, the acolytes, had close ties with them, perhaps you should let her down, Storm. I think she'd be going, "No fair, anytime soon. You should not have ran, Amelia. You cannot protect them." - Amelia looks up at her and this is a great Amelia vote. This is Peter David and he was in that 90s moment as the writer and ex-hander. So he does this character. - You don't need it. - You need that snappy. - She's laying low at a hospital, she can give her right back to her. She's seen it all and the ex-man, like she's kind of rolling around. - This is a very PAD moment because yeah, she's rolling her eyes at all this superhero bullshit. - She's like, "Oh my God, you guys again." - She says, "I wasn't you idiots. I was protecting you from them." - Work. - But you know what? Fine, I'll tell you the best place to find them and my conscience will be clear. You'll have brought it on yourself. Pack something thermal, ex-men. You're going to hell and it's frozen over. - Bring us the water. - She tells them where to go, which is Antarctica, where Mr. Sittistor and the Marauders and the Acolytes are all hanging out as part of Messiah Complex. Don't super worry about it because Amelia's not in the rest of the event. But Messiah Complex is about baby hope, hope summers, as she will later be called. The first mutant baby born after the decimation, something that was believed to be impossible by both geneticists like Hank McCoy and also magical people like spiral. Like everyone was like, "It's over. It's done." The scarlet which fucked it up. - Yeah. Her full name is Hope McGuffin Summers. - Period, yeah. - I love her. I was a stay, I was ready for her to be anything that they wanted her to be. I know people were like, I know that people were mixed up hope at the time, but I was like. - I was mixed, but I love Messiah Complex. I was mixed when she came back, partly because I love Rachel and it really just looks like Rachel's done. Once this character is done. - She does, it just clips the Rachel exactly. But we'll get to it. And I want you to confirm for me what Hope's whole deal has settled into Canada. - Sure. - Anyway. - It was resolved finally by Keir and Gillen at the end of Krakow. - It is at the end of Krakow, right? I feel like that's where I'm missing. - Yes, oh, you actually should go read this. 'Cause so the follow-up stuff is shaky. They were told you have like three months to finish this. And it's just like, they did their best. - They did their best. - Yeah, I mean, you could tell. There's a moment where Polaris turns directly at the reader and says, "No, this wasn't the plan, but we've moved up the schedule." So like, you know, they gave it to you. - Wow, okay, incredible. Okay. - There's another one where Emma's like, "We have to move quicker than we thought, "but everybody needs to be in their places right now." Or like, you know, those are both Jerry Duggan, Vitz, or he's just like, wink to the audience. - That's funny. - Yeah, okay. - They're doing a summer relaunch, so we have to wrap up way earlier than we thought we did. We're doing our best. In the run-up to all of that, though, Al Ewing does the absolutely incredible resurrection of Magneto, which is like one of the best Magneto stories ever. And you should read that. - Okay. - If you haven't. And then Kirin, he was my guest for the Hope Summers episode, actually, which you should listen to. - Oh, I absolutely will. - Kirin, who was, I think, the best writer of Hope, and really the one who pushed her the most as he did Generation Hope and all of that other stuff. - Love it. - He wrote Rise of the Powers of Ten, which was this whole bookend series. Jerry got stuck dealing with all the Orcas characters, which I think was a lift that was tough. - Yeah, everyone say their names at work. - Correct, right? Kirin got to do the more fun part, which is like, let's deal with Moira and the Dominions and all of that stuff. - Rules, let's have rules. - And the way that it ultimately is resolved, and this I really like, 'cause my big fear was that Hope was going to be revealed at some point to be like biologically a Grey Summers child. And I think that it's important. - I think it's heavily implied that she would back in the day. - I think back in the day, the implication was that she was gene re-incarnated. - Straight up was just gene, and that's fun. - That's pretty biologically related. - It's called Messiah, right, no. But after they didn't go there, when she was the adopted Summers, who turned out to be the most important one, I thought that that was a nice rebuke to the very 90s eugenicsy stuff about the Summers Grace. - Yeah, and the chosen one general shit. - Right, the idea that the reason the Summers Grace family was important is because like Rachel saves cable and cable raises Hope, and Hope is actually a really important one. I liked that because she was adopted. It's sort of like how the last Jedi, I think is a really good choice for the Jedi bloodline stuff and then they fucked it up. - Exactly, yeah. - And the next one by saying, "Oh, she's a palpatine," or whatever. I'm like, "This is stupid." So I was really worried that that was where it was going to go. And it kind of does a little, but not actually. The reveal is that when gene reborn as the Phoenix is dueling the dominion sinister through the time stream. - Say that. - As one might be forced to do. - Yeah. - Karen said in that episode that that was supposed to be like two whole issues, but it ended up being like two pages unfortunately. So, for two pages, it's a great two pages. We get a moment where gene, because the Phoenix is a temporal and exists in all times at once, goes to the past to meet with Louise Spalding, hopes mother who's burned to death in the town in Messiah complex, and tells her what's going to happen, and says, "I need you to do this for me." - Wow. - Because sinister has already, first sinister goes back and makes himself hopes father by seducing Louise Spalding so that he can alter the time. It's a very, it's funny. It's very Thalcoopers husband, Mr. sinister. - I do love you, I love you. - I have a Thalcoopers husband, yeah. But then, Jean manages to jump back to before that, and she gets to Louise Spalding, and she's like, "Here's what's gonna happen, you're gonna die, it's gonna be awful." And I can't save you, but if you let me be God and trigger this virgin birth in you, your daughter will save the universe. And Louise is like, "All right, I'm in." It's a cool moment where that woman, who's very much a plot device in the original story, gets to have some agency in the process of being like this mutant virgin Mary, right? - Yeah. - It also establishes firmly that hope is a piece of Jean, like a fragment of the Phoenix that Jean allowed to transform into its own person. Like she is Louise Spalding's daughter, she's not really Jean's child, but metaphysically it's Phoenix stuff. - Holy ghost stuff. - Exactly. - What is their relationship to each other though? Do they, is she like your me or is she like? - Hope sacrifices herself as part of this story. - Oh, hope's dead. - Oh, hope's super dead, my love. - Because they had to get rid of resurrection, editorial that was an instruction. So hope had to go. - I can't believe I'm finding out about this live. - Yeah, sorry to break it to you. - Won't react to Hope's death. (laughing) Outrageous. - This was one of the best deaths I've ever read in a comic book though, honestly. - Oh wait, I gotta read this, I'm so excited. - She pulls a huge gun out, acts as if it's like what are you doing? And she says, Messiah shit. (gasping) Goes to like sacrifice her life for the sins of humanity and dies and in her death creates the Phoenix Force retroactively and she and Jean like birth the Phoenix together and she becomes part of Jean. - Hell yeah. - It's fucking cool. - It's fucking cool. - That's really cool. And a nice book end to my favorite. - Yeah, it's one of the greatest squaring the circle. on like a 20 year plot that I've ever seen. - You know I love it. Like I love the continuity mess. I love when it gets too complicated. I love the challenge. It first, like you know I love RIP whatever 'cause they're more wanted in the first place. But you know I'm on record. It's like I love all that extra mess because watching them untie the knot and the ripples of it. And now we're, you know, we're making the curtains of podcast 40 years later about her daughter and her daughter's daughter. It's so much fun. I love it. Bring it on. - Yeah, well, I mean, I've said many times that I think the true genius of Chris Claremont above all else was his ability to roll with editorial directives that fucked up his story. Like Madeline Prior existed because they told him he had to kill Jean. And then Madeline Prior turns out to be a clone of Jean who has to turn evil because they said we're bringing back Jean against your wishes. You have to kill off Madeline. It became like a whole endless thing. - It's an assaper for the writer. - But in Fernow is I think the pinnacle of his stuff on X-Men. - Yeah. - Yeah, that's true. - And that's the product of years and years of his story getting fucked up by his boss. - I just think like the editorial, that's part of the magic of comics is that it's not just one person's thing, you know? - Yeah, the office is like so impressive too. They can thread together. I think we'd remember, obviously remember, but like that's the thing, - Well, look. - This is what I think was so great about Cracota. I mean, there were many things that were great, but that office was made up of editors and writers who really love this stuff and who really understood - Yeah. - This stuff and who really did their homework and the writers on the current stuff clearly do love the X-Men. I don't mean to impute them at all, but I do think that there is less interest in the continuity in this current era. - There's a need to make new, to make, to obviously to make some new stuff and to make some new characters. - Yeah, but we just spent five years making new stuff and then this is just throwing it all in the trash because it's not from the 90s. And that, to me, is less compelling because like, I don't know, my issue with a lot of the stuff that's coming out now is it feels like it looked at the five most innovative years of X-Men's storytelling since Morrison and said, "I don't like this, so we're gonna pretend "most of it never happened." And I just think that that's bad continuity. You know? - Yeah, no, I don't connect with, I don't, it's a femoral, but I just don't believe what's happening right now. - Me neither, I just don't buy it. I don't buy most of the character turns. I don't buy. - Well, I'm sure she's fun. We'll find out. - I just don't buy it. I don't buy Grey Malkin Prison. I don't buy anything Rogue does. - It doesn't pass to that thing you do test, which is when you introduce like a fake new song and you convince everybody, it has to be good. The song has to be a bot, but if you're telling me in a movie that this new song is great. - Yes, it has to be good. It has to be good. - It has to be good. - And if you're telling me, this is the bold new era of X-Men that's bringing back the core of X-Men when actually in my opinion, the Krakow era nailed the core of X-Men, even if the setting was weird and outside the box. - And you know, I struggle with this setting in Iowa. - I know, I know. This is why it's kind of fun for us to get a post moment because I know you had difficulties with like the high concept sci-fi setting stuff. It's just not like you want. - Get the hell out of those woods. - Right. - Yeah, but I loved it. It's so good in compelling. The spirit was so real. - The ethos of it and the attention to detail and the way that it really embodied what X-Men is about was just so there and I. - And I believed everything everyone did. - Yeah, me too. Even things I didn't agree with. Even when I was like, oh, I wouldn't have written that. I was like, but I get it. You know what I mean? - I believe that. - This is worth the thing you don't, era. - And just. - And a lot of this stuff I just don't believe. A lot of this is action figures banging together. And I, and that's what I don't like about the 90s stuff, frankly, the post-Claramont stuff. I think a lot of that feels like action figures banging together. And I get that X-Men 97 was a big deal. And we all want to bring that energy back. But my issue is this stuff doesn't feel like it's really in conversation with older X-Men stories. - Yeah. - Of any era in particular. It just feels like it's, we're making wickets because this is worldwide wickets. And we make wickets here. - Right. - Yeah. - And again, I think a lot of these writers are enormously talented, but it does remind me of the era we're talking about right now, actually, with decimation, where a lot of very talented writers were given a very restrictive status quo that I think did not lend itself to X-Men storytelling. - Yeah. - While some of them were able to spin gold out of that, I think Mike Carrey, in particular with legacy that we're about to get into, does brilliant work. Probably the best work with Charles Xavier that anyone's ever done. - I remember being very excited to get such a heavy Xavier book. - That is happening here too. I really love evuing stuff in this era. I've been enjoying some of what I talked about this in the quattend episode. I have a couple issues with like the plot of the Judmockay stuff, but I think that his writing of the characters is very good. - Yeah. - And what me not liking a plot is not like a, doesn't have a condomation of the plot. - Right, right. - No, exactly. And he's created some new characters I like. So like there's a lot going on that I am enjoying. It's just, it does feel, and part of this is, we really just shouldn't get as much of a look behind the curtain as we sometimes get now on the internet with like interaction between fans and-- - I avoid as much of this possible. - Yeah, I mean, I do too now because I'm just like-- - Yeah, we have. - But I just think that what I think X-Men is about and what the new office thinks X-Men is about are different. - Sure. - And that's just an issue that I have as a reader at this point. - Yeah. - Leaving that aside, let's go back to another era where I felt like the office didn't align with what I thought X-Men was about, which is, the destination Messiah Complex is very, very good. This is one of the best X-Men events I think of all time. Like I don't like the destination, but this book kills from start to finish. - It's so good. And it's beautiful art too. Do you know what is it? - Messiah Complex cuts between different artists. A lot of it is Humberto Ramos who's more cartoony. - That's what I'm talking about. - That stuff, I'm not crazy about, but that's just on X-Men I don't like the cartoonyer style. That's just a dissstatic thing for me. - I think illustrating quite beautifully, even though it was actually extremely bracing to me, it's Humberto Ramos's, his name. - Yeah. - He's been between him and Scott Eaton and John Remeter Jr. and Mark Silvestri. Like it bounces between a number of people and there are more traditional house style people. And then Ramos' style is very cartoony, which I find disarming, but. - But it's so layered and strange and like, it just, it helped me remember this era. I remember being feeling confronted by it in a way that I found bracing and interesting. And I just wanted to shut him out and I thought he was extremely talented, but it was not what I wanted. I like someone giving me not what I want, and I'm happy, which I also think is related to what we're talking about a little bit. And like, his big mitts and the bangs and those, in that little waist, I was like, I was just never standing like it or sense. And I was so sneated with an era. And I think that's so impressive. - He very much follows in the footsteps of Chris Bachelot, who I think is a brilliant artist. - Yes. - But who also is not to my taste with X-Men comics. - Hey. - Because it's more cartoony in a way that I don't quite respond to. But. - Therapa Shelley is my favorite in like, in a long time. - Sure. - That's where I want it ultimately. Like I love that first couple, this first couple of issues of the young ones coming back. - Mm-hmm. - He's like peak what I want. I don't think I should be given what I want at every time. And he gave me so, umber, he gave me so far from what I want. - Yeah, no, it's definitely, I mean, it's definitely memorable, like that fight between Laura and Lady Dust Strike is very memorable. - Exactly what I'm looking at. - Yeah. - There's a big, sentinel one too, with the shield agent at the time that they're dealing with. - Well, it's Val, isn't it? - It is different. - No. - Wait, which shield is this? - Yes. - It's Val. - It is Val. - Yeah, we did a whole episode about this Patrick. - Of course, but a picture in her in that style is so. - It's bizarre. - Right, because Val Cooper should not be drawn that way. Yeah. - She'd know exactly. So like that's, even that shows you the kind of distance right now we try to remember. Yeah, there's an amazing sentinel fight in that too, the enscale of it and the texture happening very seriously. - Messiah complex continues without Amelia because she is conspicuously not part of the accolades who return under Exodus and Messiah complex. - Yeah. - To replace her is Tempo of the mutant liberation front who is sort of their travel person now because she can speed things up and make people fly and whatnot. So they can't-- - Australia? - That's Tempus, who's the white Australian girl who doesn't exist yet. Tempo is the Black lesbian from the 90s, with the gold-- - And they brought her-- - She's the gold bulletout. - She dies in the carry run later in this era and then they brought her back on Krakow and she became a bigger character than she has been before. - I don't think you remember her being a retro character. I thought she was new, that's interesting. - Okay. - She's from the life-held export stuff like Waybath. And Nessie Asa had been building her up in the 90s to join X-Force, but then he got fired off the book before it happens so she had just kind of been-- - Period. - Bold that Australian girl too. - Yeah, and very white Australian to be like, I'm gonna take this coat. - Yeah, oh, exactly right. - Exactly right. (laughing) - Anyway, here Heather Tucker Tempo is with the accolade. She's still in her gold costume with the bullet helmet, which I do love. - Yeah. - I like it more than the gear helmet that she got on Krakow. which I do think is also cool, but I just, I don't know, they think the big stupid bullet is really fun because she shoots herself like a bullet at people and I think having a bullet on your head when you do that is cool. - It's cool. - Yeah. - That's a character I would love to see more of. I think that she's now been double screwed by them changing Oya's code name to Tempor. - That's great. - Which I think is a problem for a lot of reasons, but in particular because Tempo, one of the other Black female mutants had just had a big push on Krakowah, and now there's a brand confusion. That is awesome. - Good job, guys. - Anyway, I bring her up because she becomes important to how this event ends. This event ends with Bishop betraying the X-Men and sets off his long, truly insane arc in the Auts that I haven't gotten into on the show yet 'cause he's the biggest character I haven't covered yet. But I will get to that. - Oh. - Soon, there's been some logistical problems with guests I wanted to have and stuff. - Sure. - But we will get to-- - You gotta get it. You gotta get an ill-dead guest, obviously. - Yes. - He and I always gonna con to do it, but then they had a house fire and it was like a halt. So just like, I will figure out what makes sense with that episode soon. 'Cause it is conspicuous. I would say like the three that I haven't covered yet, that it's weird that I haven't covered yet are Bishop, Domino, and Warpath. Those are like the three. - Wow. Well, okay. - Yeah. - Otherwise, it's like a lot of Amelia, it's votes all the way down. We're in the weeds. Otherwise, in a way that I'm enjoying. - Oh no, that's my being. - A lot. I'm enjoying the more seeless and delus characters because I think we really get to dig in in a way that's fun. Whereas if you're talking about a character like Bishop or Domino who's been in a million comics, it's just hard to-- - Mostly characters file. - Well, Bishop, part of why I've been putting Bishop off again and again is because that character file is gonna make me wanna kill myself because time travel-- - I can't imagine. I'm gonna say the list of that one, they cleared it up for my ex, I don't know. I think where I left off is what we're about to talk about, which is his like features and stuff. - The worst character files to do because I do it in publication order and not in story order is-- - The time travelers. Like cable was really bad. - That's what the change was. - The other one that was really bad, like the worst besides cable was Monet because of all the retcons because again, I'm doing publication orders so I'm not gonna tell you what the story turned out to be. I'm trying to tell you what it was as it was being written. - Yeah. - Bishop is a time traveler who intersects with Monet's story. So it's a real headache. - Incredible. - Anyway, here-- - He embarks on features and stuff or is that not canon? - Here is where he tries to kill baby Hote because it turns out that his future, the dystopia where mutants were put into camps was caused by this mutant Messiah baby in his timeline. - Absolutely. - So he's trying to kill this baby before it can-- - I love this book, by the way though. - It's not that it's a bad book. It's that I think Bishop spending 10 years or so being the black man hunting the white Messiah baby through time was insane. And he like commits genocide. I'm like a planetary scale. - He commits genocide. - Yeah. - It's like a lot. There's a lot that's crazy 'cause he's like, well, I'm gonna overt this timeline. So it doesn't matter how many people I kill in it. And that it's a lot of character assassination is all. - It's a lot of character assassination. It's also funny when like a narrative beat becomes or a challenge becomes part of your MO to be like typecast as like, oh, like running through time again as if that's like the own, like that's not really really, it's not like he's a time traveler by power by nature. - No, he came back the one time. - It's really funny to be like this like again. It's very much like, I always talk about the Clarice network show that they tried to do on CBS. Every single episode she engages in quid pro growth as if that's her super favorite. - That's what she does. - And I was like, I think that happened one time with like, because she was dealing with a intellectual peer and that flattered his vanity. And vice versa. - Right, the point of the dance of the land is not that Clarice Starling hangs out with serial killers. - Or that she's like, let's bargain with him. Like that, right. - Yeah, but she's especially fond of bargaining with him. - Yeah, the point is that this is something that she did the one time and it was not really complicated but they needed to save that girl. Like that's the point of the story. - She'll be at Wilcoe. Like, oh, Wilcoe, that's a band. Wake up. - Wilcoe. - Wake up. - She'll be at a wake up thing and she'd be like, well, did your brother ever do anything crazy in the attic and I'll tell you something about me. It's like, you don't have to do this. Did they actually make this one? - Oh, I am telling 100% of your story. - No, okay, so I know that this is why Brian Fuller couldn't use Clarice on Hannibal, right? Because the rights to the Clarice Starling character were tied up with this other show. - And she'd be caught on her berths of evil. If you're not watching evil stream evil and it should be caught on her berths, she should've done it. - Oh, she'd be good. - So good, right? - She'd be really good. - I thought about this in thousands of years. - I mean, all the cast are on Hannibal was pretty great for those characters. - Oh, yeah, they would have nailed it. It'd be a perfect third season. But yeah, the-- - Christina Wesley as what's her name, the blind woman who's in love with the Red Dragon. That was such good unexpected casting. And I was like, man, but this is not a Hannibal podcast and we are way off script. I agree with you though, that making it so like, bishops whole thing is traveling through time and changing timelines is not really the vitality. It's more cables vibe and the point here was to make him cables nemesis, but I just, I do think the racial optics of this whole storyline are demented. - That's fair, they often are. - And also, bishops was the most successful post-Clarmon X-Men character and it's weird to me to turn him into like a mustache twirling villain in the way that they did. Even if you're like, okay, well, he has a good reason for it. It's like, right, but then you push it so, so, so, like in Messiah complex itself, I think it works. - Yeah. - The real problem I have with it, and I'll get into this more when I do get to the Bishop episode, is that bishops whole thing when he came back was he was trying to root out the traitor who killed the X-Men. - Yes. - Which he believed to be Gambit. - Yes. - That was the whole mystery in the 90s was who is the traitor. - Yeah. - And then the reveal here in Messiah complex is that Bishop is the traitor. - Yes. - But that is never really addressed or brought up. Like they don't tie it back to his original plot. If he realized that the prophecy was that I would betray the X-Men after I went back in time to prevent it, that would be cool. - Yeah. - But that isn't what happens. - I guess then we won other Recon. - But like, it just like, it just, it just, or just crying, that's what I mean. - That's what you mean, crying, but like tie it up, because then you just story about him, and not just a story in which the black man is now a threat to this precious white girl who must be protected at all costs. - Not to speak for them, I do feel like it's a, it's a, I feel like it's near sighted to treat him that way. I think the optics you're talking about are completely fair back. - It's not in Messiah complex that I feel this way about it. It's the stuff after when he's like hunting me out. - Intuitively. - Yeah. - And over and over and over for years, the year and over again. I would imagine they're approaching him as like, no, like he's just no nonsense. And he's gonna get the job no matter what these silly X-Men are gonna like, navel gazing at him. - Well, he was the cop. - So the idea is he's gonna hunt them down 'cause he's a fucking cop. And I do get that, but it is just weird when it's like the precious white angel child who must be protected from this marauding black man is just wild to me. - I agree. That's fair, that's fair. - Leaving all that aside, the way he betrays them to try and get the baby is he tries to kill the baby with a gun and he ends up shooting Xavier in the head by accident. - Yes. - That is the end of Messiah complex because Scott has a real tantrum about the death of Charles Xavier, especially considering that they were on the house, but this is the way it is when you're on the house with your dad and he dies, right? As I imagine at the point. - Yeah, I was gagged. This was a big deal to me. - This was a really big deal. It's very well done. And Bishop is like, no fuck. I did not mean to do that, but I got a chase after that baby. So, goodbye. - I got a guy here, yeah. - Yeah. - The X-Men and the Academy X kids and the Marauders and the Acolytes are all just like standing there looking at Professor Xavier where the boat and his head on the ground and they're like, well, shit. - Yeah. - Scott is like, that's it. We're done here. Everybody go home, there's no more X-Men. This is like, this is becoming sane. This is just becoming sane. And this leads to the San Francisco era and all of that other stuff where obviously he's refusing the call and he has to realize, no, I am responsible still for this generation in Yadda Yadda and I have to carry on in Xavier's stead. What is revealed though, because they can never actually kill Charles Xavier even when they do, he's always gonna come back because they just can't help themselves. But this is a very quick, like he is actually dead. It turns out that Exodus had tempo, slow down time in the localized area, so dramatically that he had time to contact Amelia Vuh. - Yes. - And he was like, Amelia, look at this and shows Amelia telepathically what has happened and Amelia was like Charles and immediately went to him and teleports them all away with Charles' body, which we did see them take Charles' body in the, like the accolades took the body. - You see them, you see them leave with it. - Yeah. - My carry had been on X-Men, adjectiveless X-Men, the book that had been the NECASA book, the one that launched in 1991, that now gets retitled X-Men legacy in this new run after Messiah Complex and becomes a very different book that is really about Charles Xavier. What ends up happening is Exodus rebuilds Charles' mind, telekinetically and telepathically helps him re-experience his memories and stuff, but he has no emotional connection to any of them. It's like what happened to Carol Danvers when Rogue took her memories and then Charles gave them back to her in the '80s, but she doesn't feel anything. So like she sees her mother and doesn't feel anything and that's why Carol goes to space 'cause she's like, this is too fucked up. - I've always loosely kind of chalked up this era of him being particularly alien of remote in some ways to this happening. I don't know if that's narratively what they want me to believe. - No, that's what the story is about. - Okay. - Basically what Carrie was trying to do is Brew Baker had done Deadly Genesis two years earlier and that had really, I think, broken the character of Charles Xavier in a permanent way. - Yeah. - More than onslaught, more than anything else that they'd ever done. - Yeah, way more. - onslaught's a big crazy robot. It's like, what's the worst? - Oh, I'm so stupid. - Everyone turns to be like, "Crazy Robot once in a while." And it's stupid so you don't care. It's like, yeah, whatever. - Right, whereas like Deadly Genesis answered the big third summer's brother question in a way that I thought was bad. - But that asked. - That asked is great, but that's not, but the narrative was focused, please. Thank you. Every summer's boy has a great ask. That's like their number one, is like energy manipulation and an ask that won't quit. That is a thing about them. But I do think that the story is not good and it really retroactively assassinated Xavier's character 'cause it turns out the reason Scott and Alex didn't know they had a brother is because Xavier needed to cover up, having led a bunch of children to their death. - Yes. - In between 1969 and 1975. - Chuck's a good log game. - Yeah, like just fully let them die in a horrible, horrible way. - Yeah. - Moira's students, who he then erased from Moira's mind in the context of Deadly Genesis, Moira X went a long way to fixing Deadly Genesis for me because you have to assume that all of these tapes that Moira left that Banshee finds in Deadly Genesis are Moira like doing a bit. Now. - Yeah, of course she's just having a laugh. - Yeah, so it's like, okay fine. - Yeah. - Because my biggest issue with Deadly Genesis actually because at this point I was like fine, like get rid of Charles, if he's worn out his usefulness, it was my perspective on Charles at this point in the journey. - Yeah. - But I really didn't like the way it took Moira's agency away in the history of all of that. So what Mike Carey does is take Xavier and say, you're doing an Xavier book. Legacy was about Xavier Fruit a while and then becomes about Rogue and then becomes about Legion when Sysperier takes it over. - I remember that. - This very tight focus book on like one character and their relationship to complicated X-Men history. - Which I loved. - And Mike Carey, the vertigo writer of Lucifer and others just incredible work with Charles in particular here, the goal is to rebuild Charles Xavier. - But I like this probably like reflections to other characters too though, like part people in his life. - Yeah, and like the idea of Charles Xavier no longer able to feel any of the emotions of his memories and look really antiseptically at everything he's ever done and assess like what was it all for? Was this right? Was this wrong? Is just a really smart way of rehabilitating the character insofar as he could be rehabilitated at this point? If any story about Charles Xavier has been good after Deadly Genesis, it's because of the work that Carey does in legacy. And by the end of it, he has found the emotional connection to the memories again and this, that and the other thing. But it's a journey. - Yeah. - It's a going down to the underworld and coming back up sort of journey that's very classical. - Yeah, you're a good ease, right? - You're being arid ice. You're being arid itchy. - Or he is. - Or he is. - Or he is. - Or he is. - You're arid disease. - There I go. - Right, you were getting there. You were on. (laughing) - And I'm in publishing. - Yeah, but you're not in classics publishing. So it's fine. I don't think your imprint is putting out like a new fagals. - We do have a signature classics line that we're, but I'm frequently not involved. So we do have a-- - I would love to see you do some of that though actually. - Me too, but it's all, we have a series look. - No, it's like, there's a house style for this cover of the CIA. - Yeah. - Anyway, we reconnect with Amelia in this arc when Charles is on the table. - Yes. - Niptock. - This is, yes. This is nice because it's bringing together her acolyte thing and her nurse thing in a way that they never really had done before. And you can tell that Carrie has read all of the 90s vote stories. - Which again, on a meditational level is like, it's nice when, I like when she's presented as sometimes not being completely corporal and other times like merging for worlds and her identities. She seems to get character who is looking to do so and failing to do so. And I like when they're, - She's liminal. She's always crossing boundaries because she becomes missed and goes through a great or whatever. - And when you've a character billy shows up, when you have a patch level as character billy shows up I have a little times, you have the opportunity to reinforce those good narrative beats and it's juicy. And that's why I love this. Her arc here in the last couple years was so exciting. - Yeah, this, what, the last couple years I'm laughing, this was almost 20 years ago. - No, I know, in these stories, no, I know. - I know, I know. - I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, it's just, it's just funny. - That's true, and given we're on day three of recording, but-- - That time, I like, don't tell them how the sausage is made. - Oh, and now. - But it's okay. - Like they don't want to see the sausage. - Say that, but so, point is, this is where we get the reveal that he's alive and that Exodus had spirited him away by contacting Amelia. Amelia is back in full, acolyte, garb. - Oh yeah. - But doesn't seem super enthused. - It's with a nurse badge and like, and like Lee Tune's crops. - I wish she just had a little hat on. - Yeah. - But it's her and Exodus and Omega Sentinel who had been possessed by Malice and forced to join the Marauders. - Yeah, what can then, it can't be now. Don't understand what's going on with her. - That's another character that I will get to at some point. She's a winding road. The other person who's with them is Joanna Carcill, Frenzy. - Yeah. - A lot of these sequences are arguments between vote and Carcill because Carcill thinks that they should just kill Xavier. - Yeah. - Vote is like, I'm not gonna do that and you're crazy. And Joanna's like, weird sounds like you still are in love with Charles Xavier, the human collaborator who we hate. So. - Love it. It's so season one, friends. It's so, I love seeing them together. I love seeing them spar. - Season one, friends, as a description of the acolytes is killing me. But it is. - Exactly what this? - I gotta be real, I was never a friends head. So I don't. - I mean, huge friends head, but. - I love that for you. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So would you say that Amelia's the BB and Joanna's the Monica in this scenario? - There are definitely more like Ross and Ross's lesbian life. - Sure. Janice. - No, sorry. - No, Janice, Janice was the Bridgian tunnel, probably Jewish coded. - Very Jewish coded. Her name is Janice. - Vanler Foyle. - Yeah, right, no, that was Chandler. - And the issue was that she had a big nose and a high pitch. - Right, what's the lesbian's name? - Carol. - Sure. - As all lesbians her name, they're all lesbians. - All lesbians, and my grandmother, who was very not a lesbian. - Well, like I had, I had some news to talk to you. - She was a Freudian psychologist, but not a lesbian. - Honey, what's the thing? - I'm just saying, she was very, a divorce say PhD in the 60s, and she very much was about the boys. - She's dead, unfortunately, but. - Damn it, hasn't stopped me before. - Well, it has stopped you before. We talked all about you and Michele, and you were afraid to fucking all of us. - Oh, that's true. That's because he was almost dead. Almost dead is very different than regular dead. Is any Princess Pride family? - It's been so many years now and he's still kicking. - I know. - Looking pretty good too. - Yeah, and you should call him and fuck him, and then maybe get him on my show. - Oh my God, I don't actually do think he would do it. - Of course he would, you and my show. - I do think you would do it. - So take one for the fucking team. - Oh yeah, your show. I forgot my show wasn't in the beginning. - But like take one for the fucking team. You've got his number. - I will. I'll give one for the fucking team, and I'll let you know how it goes. - Thank you. - I like it being like, oh, this bitch. Like, I love Remem, I love them. I love Joanna and her teacher. - Yeah. - Which is unlikely. - And this is set up for what Carrie is going to do with Frenzy, where she ends up being the acolyte who flips in this era and becomes an X-man and starts to see the other side. - Frenzy, but it's the Frenzy logo with the handrail, the little dots. - Oh, that's crazy. - When can I start making Sarri Vroom merch? I want to cross the line. - I would let you do that any time. - Or we'll talk about that. - You got to look at the merch I already have though, 'cause there's like kind of a look. - I'm out of the game, but I'll get into it. - Yeah, we'll talk. - Yeah. - 'Cause I was doing a lot of merch with Valentine Smith, and she's a busy lady these days. So I would hate the idea of branching out. So I did some with Karen Charm, which was great. - Oh, this phone? - Yeah, we did a flat scan ally shirt that you would really like. Actually, it's Val and Stevie and Amanda and all of the Trish, all those characters. - Absolutely, that's me. That's me. - It was the merch for the straight listeners because I call them flat scouts. - Sure. - Yeah, sure. - Yeah. - But it's also an ode to candy, southern and all those human ally dames that I love so much. - Absolutely. - But anyway, Joanne is about to have her big heroic transformation over the next few years under this same writer. So first, we're gonna present her, again, it's a reintroduction to these characters from the '90s somewhat, and she's the hardline, Ackelite. She was so hardline that Jean Grey took over her mind to sneak up on Magneto because he would never suspect that frenzy would betray him. So here she's the voice of Ackelite extremism in the way that Una Shone more often was in the actual '90s stuff. The exchanges between her and Amelia are interesting. They're fun, as you said. It's like a good banter. - Classic vestige. - Yeah, but what I like is the insight that Amelia is able to provide for Exodus into the world. Charles. He can't break through Xavier's psychic shielding even though Xavier is unconscious and essentially brain-died at this point. It's just there's too much. He blocks my psychic probes as though he was already resigned to death. It's not that, says Amelia. It's because of the war. What war vote if you've any insights to of our speak plainly? He fought in Korea and it almost destroyed him. We get a flashback of Charles in the Korean War and I like that they didn't change the name of the war here which often they are vague. I love getting a specific war. I love when they stick to it and even if the time is like even it makes you like. I prefer when they just do that. Say it. Like I don't care if we have to accept that he's not 80 for some reason. It's so funny. Just so funny. He's in the psychic cocoon but it's probably desert island is more believable. Desert wherever. Desert storm. Yeah. No, it's like. There you go. It's like. Well, the big desert island. Watching survivor right now. I've talked about this the biggest problem is for characters like karma or colossus where they're tied so specifically to a historical conflict. If we are to accept now that colossus was born in the 90s that he'd never experienced communism. So what is the character about? Again, you'll find I'm sympathetic to this call. I just think that it's better when you just say no, he is from the 70s whether or not that makes sense. So my therapist tells me. Over the flashback, Amelia relates this to Exodus and it's a nice glimpse into the insight that she has because of their relationship that we've never really gotten a chance to see deeply beyond like the minus one issue and that one flashback issue. Can you imagine it? She says the world's most receptive telepath in a place where fear, suffering and death really only shows in town where every psychic wavelength was jam solid with the screams of the dying. He learned to put those shields up because the alternative was to go mad. It was his own personal danger room. The anvil on which he forged himself. Exodus therefore deduces that the only way to push forward is to break Xavier's mind completely and then rebuild it piece by piece by piece by piece. Like 50 Shades of Grey. Yes Patrick exactly like 50 Shades of Grey. He's got to break him down the building up. It's about as ethical as the arrangement of the Shades of Grey. I'll say that. What's the filming of it? Tinticoto. Oh, I don't think there's like teams that I love Dakota but I think that that was a situation where they were just both in a bad situation. I don't think she obviously won't now but don't you think she'd be so such a good ex-man character. I don't even know. I thought she was greatest Madam Webb. I did. Oh, of course. In the absolutely the the Cesar winning. I honestly I Joshua and I did a patron episode about it because we went to the premiere. You really? We went to the premiere. I mean, I love that. I talk about this movie. Yeah, so we have like a 90 minutes where we just got really stoned and talked about how we actually loved Madam Webb because we did. It's like, is it a good movie? No, but it's like All's Fair. I'm really enjoying myself. Oh, I love. Yeah, of course. It's that. Although I would argue by episode six, All's Fair, pretty good. Glenn Close is there. Of course, it's pretty good. I think I think Kim's even like in the slurring to do it. The second greatest living in actress Kim Kardashian. I just think that it's impossible probably to hang out with Glenn Close, Neesey Nash, Sarah Paulson and Naomi Watts like all day every day and not at least learn to act a little bit by. No, exactly right. But of course she has a hole in her brain. She got the hole in the brain. Just like Charles. Just like Charles in this moment and accolade sucked her up and then what happened? Amelia can't watch as Exodus is doing this because it's like too freaky to her. So she sort of storms out and she's followed by the Ovega Sentinel. And frenzy, frenzy says exasperers a collaborator he deserves to die. The decision is not yours to make Cargill. And Kremish Ponder says, I wouldn't allow you to make it. That's not why I came. Then why did you come Sentinel? You'll find no friends here. The professor was dying. I didn't feel like I just sit and watch that. After all, he did for me back when I first changed. But my memories of the past few weeks are clouded. The files are corrupted. The viral code. I didn't even know who you people are. Where the acolytes flat scan, the vanguard of the mutant race. Your core processing units were invaded by a digital entity named Malice, a sort of electronic possession until one of the X-Men freed you. That man on the platform is Exodus. He was a crusader once, many centuries ago. He is a crusader still. But now he follows a different banner. And we follow him. You see, there was, I suppose you might call it a war. A baby was the cause and the prize. The first mutant birth since the decimation, a spark of hope for our kind. Although there were other points of view on that score. The baby was taken out of the equation at last into the future or possibly the past. But then when it seemed that the battle must be at an end, it took its final casualty. Charles was lying on the floor of the cavern, bleeding out. The marauders were down and we were about to flee when suddenly Exodus spoke inside my head. So you love him still, Amelia. I wouldn't have guessed. I have no fear. I don't intend to let him die. One of our number has the ability to adjust the passage of time. We see tempo, do you know thing. We took the body and were gone before the X-Men had time to react. Presumably, Exodus spoke to you too, and enlisted your help in keeping Charles alive. But why, says frenzy, what's to be gained from all this? Not much perhaps, but there's always what the serpent gave to Eve, Joanna Cargill. Knowledge. Exodus. Is it done then? Is he alive? Vote. Strictly speaking, yes, he fulfills that definition. But of the man himself, I suspect, there's little left. Amelia charges right past him and goes to look at Charles as brain dead. Charles? I didn't use that word, vote. Then what? What is he? Catatonic, amnesiac, damaged on a level deep-ills and mere flesh. I took his memories from him for safekeeping because his damaged brain couldn't contain them. Now he won't accept them back. His mind is in doubt. Beyond a few rounds of memory traces, there's no brain activity at all. What will you do? It seems terrible for him to live on like that. Perhaps Cargill was right. Perhaps death would be kinder. I perhaps? Or perhaps it's merely a question of finding Zalret Stimulus. So they go to find Eric, who was depowered in the decimation famously. We'll wake him up with his prince. Right, you know exactly. Like I love that he's looking directly to Amelia vote and he's like, yeah, no, not you. No, no, someone he wants to fuck. Right, not you. Eric Lenzell. The difficulty for Exodus and for the acolytes is that because Magneto was depowered by his daughter Wanda at the end of House of M, they see him as basically an abomination because he's now a flat scan in the body of it's Exodus being crazy. But it's like, I can't remember. He was fully flat scan. I was he was he like moving a fork and was like, fuck, I can't do it anymore than that. Wasn't it that? Like with all the decimated mutants, there's always hints that maybe something was still there in case they ever wanted to undo it. They made him drag. Okay, to the kitchen. They're gonna be not blob, but the characters who they were, I mean, clearly with Charles and Eric, they weren't actually going to keep them decimating. But just I'm just saying, I think it's pretty mean to blob as long as I agree. I think the decimation was pretty mean in general. I like when they all lived in a ghetto together. I'm sure you did. It's realistic, Patrick said. It was not true. And it was also, I like the S.V. I obviously hate cat, but I like that S.V. But well, I like Mutantown. That's Grant Morrison. But the reason Mutantown works is because there were regular characters who were just people who were mutants when you decimate them and the only characters allowed to exist are ones with action figures. Mutantown doesn't work anymore. Well, I'm just saying they were mean to blob that you had to like haul ass to the kitchen. Like everyone else could acclimate. Well, chamber exploded. I mean, it was bad for a lot of people. That was pretty bad. That's pretty bad. Yeah, it was not great. Magma's boyfriend melted. Remember that? Well, only exciting page Magma's ever had. So, you know, extremely different random inclusion and ex-men legends video. Yes, you know your fly favorite characters in ex-men storm, psych labs, Jean Grey, magma. Her episode of this show is just a long episode that's a sequel to the Saline episode where Alex Abbotsod just and I mostly talk about Saline because the only good magma stories are about Saline. I couldn't tell you one. There aren't many. I only know her from that video game, which is which she's barely the same character in. She's just called magma. Let's call magma. There's just a extra character for some reason. Yeah, well, she's like, it's like because we need you to have an OC character. It's like Harry Potter Lego set that I saw in main ones that I sent out some tweet about because I was like, what the fuck is this? It's Harry, Ron, Hagrid, Snape, and let's say Dumbledore and Susan Bones. And I was like, I'm sorry. What? And I really? I was having a hysterical fit in the story. Not even like Parvati Patel or Lavender Brown. Does Susan Bones even ever get a line? I didn't remember her existing. I haven't revisited Susan Bones of because I don't revisit Joanne content these days. No and fuck her forever, but I was crying. - But I was laughing. - Lady Gaga's Joanne, which is distinct. - Oh, girl. - Girl, where do you think you're going? Is what I would have said to this Joanne, many a time. - Where is your bones, I couldn't, I was literally, he very driving, crying at the fact that it was Harry, Ron, Hermione, Geng's all year, Susan Bones. - To be fair, we are in like our seven of a podcast episode about Amelia Bell. - I tweeted about it and someone responded that Susan Bones' father was a big major producer on the movie, so Susan Bones got away, girl. - That's so funny. - Yeah, I know. - NEPO baby Susan Bones, I mean, her bones was the head of the Wizzing Gammont or whatever, I hate that I know that. - I don't know. - So she was a NEPO baby in Universal. - In Universal and out of Universal. They want the pair of respect. - Yeah, no, it's like Ben Platt. - For the corrective. - No comment. - I do think it's weird that the Evan Hansen's keep marrying each other. That freaks me out. - That's the only thing I think they've ever done this a lot. - That's kinky, that's weird. That's sexy. Be free to speak about that. - You know what, that's fair. That's fair. - It's a little Claremontian in its way. - Welcome to the window whenever, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so Exodus despite thinking that Eric is now a despicable abomination because he is the false magneto who is not amutant, goes and gets Eric because he's like, this will wake him up. Not your dusty pussy, Amelia. It's very Sarah Paulson taunting Naomi Watts about menopause on All Sphere. - Exactly right. - That was definitely written by a gay man and this is a gay man being me and two million vote in a very similar way. - Yeah. - Yeah. Random, a character who truly is random and why is he here? Who knows? - I love random, I love big guy or strong guy. I love them both. - You love big guy, pants okay. - Big, big, big guy pants okay. Strong guy, strong guy, spons, but strong guy pants okay. Random. - Love random. - Random is a character I've never quite understood but I love that for you. - Is it all for you? - Is it all for you? - Is it all for different guns? - I had the action figure. - We too. - You're so rough and big girl. - I love them. - He's black but has chalk white skin which I always thought was a weird choice. - But he's not all mine now, like tombstone. - It's just his mutation I think. - That's always confused me too. And I didn't know that-- - But it means that a lot of artists just draw him as a white guy. - It's white guy. - So it's messy. - It's a problem which is-- - It's a fact. - Which is a problem with tombstone too. There's literally one actor who can play this guy. - It's more understandable than like them doing it with Sunspot because here it's like you just saw a picture of this guy who looks like a white person in a comic book and drew him. It's not intentional whitewashing but I do think you kind of set him up by making him white. - Yeah, partly on he was not white was a shock to me in a reverse still-be situation. - He does wear a durag and turn his arms into guns. - Honey, so do I babe. Some of us are part of the Channing Tatum step up generation. - I'm just saying it was a very-- He was a very 90s character in his inception. - Yeah, I'm rock hard. I've met with my entire personality out of Bill. - Yeah, well, I love his moment here because he doesn't understand my ex-girlfriend is being such a crazy faggot essentially. - I'm on all of this. - He's like, this is really melodramatic and I don't get why you're being so melodramatic. - You're obsessed with it, yeah. - Specifically like why are you so mad that Magneto doesn't have powers anymore? And Emilia says, imagine if you were a Christian marshal and Christ was reborn only to declare they'd become a satanist. Magneto becoming human was like that for some of us. And I don't think she means for herself, but she's explaining why Exodus is so crazy. - I don't wanna drag you further away. Do you think Newton-Dum is a faith? - I think for the accolades it is. - But do you think that's a crazy thing they think or do you think that's a normal thing they think? - I think Exodus is crazy. I don't think it's crazy that Joanna has a religious faith in Magneto. I don't think that's crazy. - I agree. - Given that if we're taking the face value of what happens to these people and like the coming and goings and the resurrections and the timelines, it feels more logical to have a faith relationship with their subculture in a way that I relate to. - Well that's what the Crucible issue on Krakow is all about, right? - Yeah. - Kertz, I think I need to start a new religion. - Well then he, we in a mini series about that. And I don't understand what happened at the end of that. Do we have a mutant religion? - Babe, babe, no. - No, we don't understand what happened at the end of that. - Okay, all right. - I need to tell you what. - I'm curious what you're saying. - Yeah, here's what I'll say. - But he's important to acolytes as an idea. - Yeah, well, and I would have called that book "Accolites" first of all. - Me too. That's why I was confused. And none of these people feature in it. - It's like how I've always thought that private practice should have been called "Mont Gumries Ward." It was canceled many years ago and I never even watched "Grey's Anatomy" to begin with, but I was furious that they didn't call the spin-off about the OBGYN "Mont Gumries Ward." - Can you guess what? - I'm not serious about an investigation. I bet you can. - What's one thing I care about more than all this, alias, the television program alias. - Oh my God, yes. - So Sharon Dungey was, you know, "Francy Does Like a F*ck" - They recast "Marron Dungey" with "Gladra McDonald," right? - Yeah, and I love "Marron Dungey." "Francy Does Like a F*ck" - No, she doesn't. And it was a huge get for her to get super-moded. - No, and then she got fired between the "Back to her" and "Pyland" and "The Main Show" and replaced with "Audra McDonald," who, like, obviously, is alleges, but that was incredibly rude to "Marron Dungey." - Yes, who was the president of ABC at the time? - Her f*cking sister. - Her sister. - Talk about that. - Talk about that. - Shining. - Yeah, shining. - Yeah. - That's some summer's brother, shit. - That's so good. - I would say what that Thanksgiving must have been a little f*ck. - Better than mine. - I mean, they're close. They're clearly close. I've seen them together recently, at an event, but I would be pissed. - I would be pissed if I was a good-- - Oh, my sister and be like, "Excuse me." - I'm sorry. - I don't have a question. - Yeah, for as he doesn't need shit either, by the way. (laughing) - So, but I know, Andrews, I'll very terribly send you a kid wait to see what she does on a private practice show about abortion. - "Marron Dungey" actually would have killed his Joanna Cargo. - Well, that was also on my mind when I was talking about this. She was my head cast when I was reading this, which is at the time. - That makes total sense. - Jennifer has always been black widow to me. You know, that's a whole other thing. - That's a game-alignial thought. - It's a combo with Nonsense. It's that she styled that way in the pilot. I couldn't shake it. - Well, she wears that red wig, yeah, in the pilot. - No, I got it. - It's baked. - Listen, it's a better wig than any of the ones they put on Scarlett Johansson. - Oh, give me a break. The curly one? What is she on with the pr-- Junior Promet in 1997? What the hell is the curly one? - I thought the vitamin C Bob was worse. I'd like the vitamin C Bob more than, we should do a ranking sometime, but. - I just mean it was the lower quality wig to me. I'm not saying that the styling was worse, but I was like-- - It looks-- - It's party-sy-faker. - It's party-sy-faker. It's bust down, but it's not. The curls are just like, you know, black widow's famous curls. - Right, like who's that? - That's-- - She shows up looking like John Burns, Kitty Pride. You're like, what is this? - Literally, literally, that's like a blowout. And it's like, all burns. - I mean, red is like, for a can you just go there? - No, it's just go there. - Just go there. - Oh, what? - I don't know. But like also, well, like they were fucked from the jump on that casting. So like, what are you gonna do? This is not, we can't get into it. Under the skin is great. Ghost world is great. - She's great. I think she's an incredible actress. She's a wonky, wonky, wonky person. - Yeah, and I don't think she was fabulous as Natasha Romanov. I'll say that. - She's fine, but it's not my issue. - It's possible. - Mine. - Not my Natasha. - It was all left my mind at this point. - I'm still furious that Gulliver's travels wouldn't release Emily Blunt, who was supposed to be Black Widow in the MCU. - That's why I think about every day. - Yes, it's Gulliver's fucking travels. And then when she was-- - Push up and tomorrow never dies. - Or never it's gone. - Edge of tomorrow. - Thank you, what's up? - With therapy. - Yeah. - Yes, what's the drive in? When Joyce Carol Oates, Roasted Elon Musk on Twitter the other week. And she was like, he never even talks about like movies. He just talks about hating people. He has nothing. He crashed out about that so hard that he just posted about his favorite movies for like three days. The one that I saw him glowing about was Edge of tomorrow. - I was like, that is a good movie. - It is good. - But also it's exactly the movie that Elon Musk would plot to be like, I'm deep. - A big, big robot. I've heard that people, I hear smart people like-- - A manga adaptation starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, where big robots happen. - manga is manga. - Oh, Grimes, oh Grimes absolutely tells me about it. The key in terms of the mutant religion here is that Joanna challenges vote on this. The idea that oh, Magneto came back and he's a Satanist. Joanna says, but if that did happen, you'd still have the Bible, wouldn't you? And a bad preacher can still give a good sermon, which I think is the thesis of Mike Carrey's entire - Right. - Next man legacy, like that Charles is a bad preacher who can give a good sermon regardless. Even if he is a hypocrite, that doesn't mean he's wrong. - Which is probably, we're also, is a reflection of the evolution of our understanding of accolades in general. I remember reading a lot about like, it was news to me that we were complicating. Like, I'm okay, you's legacy, like obviously Clinton. Like that was the big one for a long time. Like there were a lot of people being retrospectively analyzed like what was good and what was bad. - Yeah, all that. - But at the time we were still in it. - I know exactly that that that follows obviously. But like, I liked the reflection of the political reality evolving from obviously previously puberty then racism and gay rights. And now this sort of like, we deserve a harder look at some of our biggest heroes. - Right, we need to look at our icons as people and assess them as human beings. And there is going to be a debate about whether the messenger lives up to the message. And that's, that's, that feels like a very contemporaneous political issue at the time for when this was happening. And I looked at X-Men to do that. Totally. Now we're into like the complicated middle of gray areas of liberalism. And it's interesting to bring him back to that moment here. Yeah. And because the decimation has made the minority allegory really pretty impossible to make the story about smart for Carrie to pivot it into this. And in particular here, I think it's significant. Like I think there's a reason it's frenzy and not unashown. It's because it's the black woman with braids who is challenging a milieu vote. Your message might lack specificity and power to meet the moment. And the person who's saying it. Yeah. I mean, what she says is Magneto's gospel was always clear on one point. You do what you need to do to ensure mutant survival, mutant dominance, nothing outweighs that. So why are we all playing Nersemey to the man who stopped Magneto from putting mutants on top back when he still had the power to do it. The man who aborted Magneto's dream before it could be born. Amelia looks at her and says in a very gene gray kind of way. That's all I could think of. But she looks a lot like Jean in this panel. If you didn't know it was Amelia. We've talked about this earlier. But the genes and in in a lot of ways. There's a family. There's a weird invisible family. And there is a family resemblance. Yeah. On purpose. A very much on purpose. There's a story. Lation of Charles thoughts about them, which is what comics and art can do is like the visualization of what he's thinking is implicit by how they're illustrated. But I also like that it's her who narrates the Messiah complex here. Yeah. Because it also bonds her narratively with hope. And if you think about it, she sort of hopes gray dance. If she's dead, right? Yeah. Right? So there is this thing there. And if she was going to be Jean, which I do think was the intent at this point in time when they were writing Messiah. I remember the flash and I. No, right. Come on now. Then I think that Carrie was very intentionally setting up the idea that Amelia has an investment in hope because we know that Amelia has an investment in Jean. Exactly. Amelia looks down to her in that very Jean-like way and says, these are new times. Perhaps we need new dreams, which is what she's been trying to say since the 90s, right? That's what Amelia's always been trying to find is the new dream, the thing that makes more sense. The thing that takes the best of Charles and the best of Eric and puts it into something actionable. What she's actually been looking for is Cricola and we'll get there in a moment. Her son's a bull of our tease. She wants to tease the world in a way to dream. Period. And you know what? She is ready for her close. She's Mr. Mr. Dan. To Mel. No, but who's time? Yeah, but who's writing right now? Who's writing? Is there a? Oh, Mr. Mr. McKay. She's ready for her close up. Mr. McKay. Anyway, so she delivers that big line that's very grand and Joanna just turns away and throws a hand up and says, new dreams. It feels more like I'm eating someone's cold leftovers. Joanna, leave it, vote. You throw one more platitude at me and I'm going to have to hurt you. Yeah. And that is I think the really key function that frenzy and vote play in this carry book. Frenzy is about that life in a way that Amelia never has been. And also not to harp on it and join a car girl, a heavy or muscle, right? In this era because it was Otz Comics. She's more feminine looking. She's a heavy, she's a heavy as far as the body. But she's a big punching physical super strong seven feet tall. Yeah, as corporal as Amelia frequently is not. And it is a meditextual relationship there that Joanna is a hardliner and Amelia is like challenged the message and messenger. And Joanna is also the one who styled like a black panther and is the one who's sent out as the acolyte foot soldier basically because in the agenda of leftism, black radicals have always been seeded as more disposable by the move. I think that's completely fair. I also happen to agree with Joanna in this moment. I do too. I think there's I think it's just a nice Amelia presents herself constantly frequently. I just think that I think it's a retroactive success. I don't think they meant us at the time when they debuted this character. I don't think they had the foresight to see how important her ephemeral, incorporal qualities would be to her actual politics or maybe the writers subsequently have have used that as leverage to discuss how she feels and how the reader and other political persuasions that have difficulty with Charles dream might feel. And I think Joanna is just this like hard rock to push her up against the I love that I love that dynamic. I really love it. I really love the dynamic. I think they're very interesting together. It's only the small handful of scenes here that we've ever gotten again. Yeah. And yet you know that their friends from back when you're like, oh, this bitch, like it's the one and they have scenes back in the 90s. It totally works. But that's those are test to be into like tiny minutia. Honestly, and that's why one that the highlight I'm working to because I feel like I don't talk about artists as much on this show, given that I'm ours myself. I do think the look, especially costuming, which I think we struggle with in my journey. I think like getting a character design right and what it what it communicates. I think we we both have the shared idea of who Amelia is. I think it's equal parts writing and equal parts how she's presented. She looks a little bit older, a little bit more. She's not trying to be sexy. She's not like showing off. She's a fucking nurse. She wants to do her job. She looks hot in both the accolade uniform and her nurses. But only because she's hot. She's not because she was cast on Grace Anatomy, not because she's in. Right. She's hot because Kate. Kate was actually would be a great Amelia hook sinker. That was her. But I know that's what she's giving though. And that's why I love it. But I do think it's a testament to how they've drawn her and rendered her that these tertiary characters carry so much like intrinsic weight and knowledge about themselves. I think also in great part because of the illustration style and the way they hold themselves and the way they they're looking at you and the way that Joanna is just like solid. The Scott Eaton art here that's very realistic. Yes. It really works for this story. Is this like oil painting legacy stuff? Yeah, the legacy stuff. It's not the for action. No, but it's good for the talk. It's really good for human stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Charles does get up because Exodus's treatment has worked in up green sand up. He comes down the stairs and interrupts this argument between Amelia and Joanna. She looks up and says Charles Amelia. She reaches up a hand to touch his face. It's good to see you recovered. I remember your name Amelia vote, but it has no resonance. If anything, I've a pass between us. I don't remember it. But at least you weren't in the tally of the people I hurt. I hope that means I made you happy and he walks away. Wow. That is awful. I mean, it's just awful, but that's what I really like about this book is it's a very unflinching look at Charles and it forces Charles to take a very unflinching look at Charles. And I do think given the insurmountable task, it seemed of rehabilitating Charles Xavier after deadly genesis, Carrie did incredible work and set up essentially the Charles that we get on Cricowa in a lot of ways. Absolutely. Yeah. Amelia doesn't appear again until legacy 225, 15 issues later the following year in 2009. This is after Charles's lengthy arc of finding himself again. This issue is about Charles coming back to stop the acolytes and shut down Exodus's whole operation. It opens with a really cool scene of Amelia on the job. It's a flashback to her time with the Red Cross. She looks at Charles, who's there also in a Red Cross uniform with her and says, I really don't remember this. Did it happen? Were we here together? You were here, Amelia. It's a field hospital near Tripoli. You passed through it briefly eight years ago. It's not with me. So this is a dream. Well, it's good to see you anyway. Xavier, Charles F, brings it all back. But to what do I owe the pleasure? I wanted to warn you. I'm coming to new Avalon. I'm on my way right now. You'll be welcome here. No, I really won't because I'm coming to tear it down. She screams herself awake. Random has rotted. Time to haul it, vote. You hear those sirens? Xavier has arrived. It's all becoming a big mess. And he has sent warnings to them all. We only see the warning that he sent to Amelia, which is important because A, it gives carried opportunity to be like, oh, have I read that issue? I'm going to quote her pet name for him. I'm going to give you the whole Shabang. And also to establish the really important thing between them for new er readers who don't know what the deal is. with these two characters. The moment that is just killer, he's walking through and just basically using his powers to shut everything down. You can't stop Charles Xavier when he doesn't want to be stopped unless you're Jean Grey, right? Like that you really have to be that tier or stairs. In this moment, he is walking. That's true. He's walking around. So suddenly, the mist around him coalesces into a woman's face. As it has so many times before. The way it's drawn is really cool. Nothing gets darker than like a thicker, like a thick mist. I bet he's been just, I bet he's been confused a number of times. He was like Amelia. I knew you'd come back to be, but he's just like in the cops. He's like, oh, it's just Scotland. Where should it be? Extra, nonsense. Yeah. And Moira is like, who are you talking about now? Who the fuck are you talking about? Who does Amy? I just like how it's drawn here. It's kind of like how in this era, a lot of the time they would draw a dust using her powers. Don't get me started on my queen on Mother. That's one of the best episodes of this show if you haven't heard it. It's with Colledinaz. I have and you know I have and I was counting the days. I knew I couldn't request it. No, it was like we reported that while Colledin was visiting family in Dubai. It was very much a like, I needed an expert on the materials. You don't want me to record that from North Florida? I just didn't. Unfortunately, I'm sorry, but no, but it's much like the way that Sirea is often drawn in this era. But with Sirea, it is often kind of prudent where it's like, here's a glimpse of a Bedithavale boy is, which I don't love. Yeah. Right. It's a problem. It's by cellover. I don't know. Oh, no, absolutely. That's what the episode is about. And I've talked about her a lot with Muslim fans. The consensus seems to be, no, I don't want to hear a word about my sister. Fucking you still fix your mouth. Yeah, exactly. Are there problems? Yes. But you better not say a fucking word. I don't want to apologize for the media. We're at large, but like, but we get, we love you. I'm gonna probably get characters. I love it. Absolutely. Scar. Let's start with the part. But like, truly, it doesn't like get out. I just love her. It's a stylistic choice that they often made with her. And I think in that case, it was slightly problematic to do that with her here. The sexy, mist woman moment with Amelia looks very, very cool and is totally appropriate for the character because it's not in rules. I started bringing her up so much this whole episode and been like, she's not mine to speak about really. She's not really present. I don't think I need that they met. But the visual of Tirea is very akin to the Amelia vote visuals from the 90s for sure. When we were talking about her artist Nemesis and we were talking about Jarman, I literally was like, considering bringing up, I was like, oh, what does it do to her ass? No, they would, they would have a cool fight. Yeah. She had a cool fight with Exodus instead because Amelia wasn't there from a side complex. Yeah. But that is the coolest fight that Tirea ever gets to have. So it worked out. Hell yeah. When she's like, oh, I've been filling your body with sand for the last 10 minutes. It's not in rules. She's the cool one. To Rob. But anyway, what I like though is they like, it is that sexy mist woman vibe to the art except that it's not sexy at all. She looks like really depressed and like, it's very Amelia to be like, here I am as the vision in the sky of a beautiful woman except like, I look like a gnarled goblin a little bit because I'm like so wretched in my heart right now. She has a gigantic machine gun that she has pointed directly at his chest. Amelia, Charles, what Judas Kiss did you plant in my mind? Because she assumes that the reason she hasn't shot him yet is that he's put something in there. And he says, none, I did that to you once and then forgot it. Now that I've remembered, I'd see the green earth burn before I hurt you again. And she just looks at him with the gun. And the next panel, she looks to the ground and lowers the gun. And the third panel, she lets him walk past her deeper into the base and just starts to cry because all Amelia vote has ever wanted for 50 years now. If we go back to it, the 1962 in that flashback is for Charles to apologize for doing that to her. Just say sorry, just to say sorry. Just to say he shouldn't have done that to her. And it's so, how many years he said it to ghost Eric in his dream, but he has never said it. How many of us his whole thing? Yes. He intellectualizes his crimes. He doesn't emotionalized his crimes. Were you going to ask how many years later is this? Yeah. Do you know? Yes, I do know. That was uncanny 309, which is 1994. And this is X-Men Legacy 225 in 2009. So it's fully 15 years later. Raggedy ball desk bitch. That's what I know. Well, and it was a flashback story. Charles then shuts down all of the other acolytes with his telepathy. But he very pointedly does not go into Amelia's mind at all. So was an ethical thing he did. It's funny when he like, well, it's very unethical thing he does, but he's not going to do it to her. It's funny. Because he's like, I'm not doing that to you again. I'm going to do it to all these people. Yeah. But that's kind of him putting his money where his fucking mouth is finally like, I agree. The big final scene that is the last we see of Amelia vote until Krakowah is after he is defeated Exodus and convinced them all being an acolyte after the decimation is fucking stupid. And you guys need to go find a life for yourselves and be productive members of society and like find purpose that isn't this because you're insane. I mean, he basically says the point I made about how the minority allegory of X-Men doesn't work anymore. Now they've done the decimation. And so Exodus is like, oh, good point. I know. I no longer have, we're no longer the like gods forgotten people. This is just a non-offent. There's nothing's happening. Yeah, it's like we lost. We lost. Yeah, we lost it. It's over and you are being crazy now. You're like those soldiers who are still fighting World War II over the reality show that forgot to tell that there was like four people that got stranded on the island. There's a scotch reality show where these four people send to an island and they forgot to tell them like, turn COVID or something and they just like gave up on them. Wow, I know. Crazy. It could happen to you. After things have quieted down, we see Charles playing chess with himself. Is it better remember? He loves to do it. Yeah, like with the computer, I guess, because he's sitting in front of a computer. The mist ghost of Amelia swirls around the room and she appears in a very cool little like poof. So do I. I just pray when we say that. I appear in a pretty little poof once a week. We got we got the fucking joke Patrick. Yes. Go on. Isn't this a foregone conclusion? I say. Amelia, no, not entirely, but white can't win. If he runs out of moves, he can force a stalemate to turn his weakness into a kind of strength. Have you decided? Exodus is leaving on what he calls a pilgrimage. And the rest of you, I'm going to San Francisco, random and Karima are coming with me, possibly tempo two, cargol and an ashonear angry. They don't understand what's changed. You've defeated the acolytes almost without a fight. I suppose I'm impressed. The part of me that hates you for it is relatively small. You brought me back to life once. That was Exodus, not then. After I lost the use of my legs in India all those years ago, you say a part of you hates me. I hate many parts of myself. I hate the Charles Xavier who squandered your trust and drove you away. I wish that he'd never lived. There was also an Amelia vote who was afraid to see the truth about herself. It wasn't all your fault. But I owed you so much and gave you such a poor return, Amelia. I'd like to, and she puts her finger to his lips, not today, with a little smile and walking away from him and dissolving into mist, she says, this is a day of endings. Exit Amelia vote. I think this scene's beautiful. I think it's like one of the best scenes in X-Men Legacy. I fucking love X-Men Legacy. I have qualms about that art for action, but I love it for what they're doing. For this, it's perfect. It's perfect. I love the writing. I love everyone involved. I love obviously. I love that. I was stoked to have Amelia back. And I love a Charles focus story. Tell me if you disagree. I just think so many of these, not to take their agency away and not take the agency of this character that was disgusting away in particular, but so many that everyone may be L'Aendra. I'm curious to hear a short episode. It was the top episode of 2025. I saw that. Josh Yu is done. Josh Yu is done. I cannot believe it wasn't Trish Chilvy. Trish did well. Don't worry. You did well. But they're all mostly reflections of Charles. I think this moment feels like it's it's it's it's edging me towards another resolution of him or a the they could get back together that like this actually could work. It could work, but the thing that would make them work is a thesis. is that they share which they don't currently. So it tees up further philosophical introspection for Charles, I guess, for her to leave and say, like, we're not over. 'Cause over with me, you want this and I want this. - Right, she says this is a day of endings, meaning not beginnings, but she says not today. - That's what you mean. - I'm not walking away from you forever. - This philosophy is also not walking away from him. - Right, and I do think it is an unfortunate side effect that is unavoidable of how important Moira was to Krakowah. - That's, yeah. - That there just wasn't really space for Amelia in the story. - Moira is a bravora editorial rabbit of a hat. Oh, I have this amazing idea. But it does shell the lot of other things, obviously. It deserves to. They fucking freaked it. - They freaked it, but because Amelia is sort of the other Moira in terms of Charles's past, right? - Yeah, of course. - It just made it, so there wasn't a ton of room. But I do love the way Al Ewing used her in sword, which we're about to get to. For now though, we leave her here, and she doesn't appear again for many years. It's actually 10 years between appearances. She appears in the fifth issue of Powers of Ten by Jonathan Hickman and Arby Silva. Maybe it's not entirely clear if it's her. It looks like the colors got messed up, and Una Showne and vote swapped hair colors. It's very much like the Jenny Ransom thing. - That's what it means, but what it means is fair thing to do. It's getting forgotten about by a colorist on the panel. - Yeah, when Charles is addressing all the villains though and telling them that there will be amnesty for them if they come to Cricot and agree to be productive members of society, there is a panel where he talks to Exodus because Exodus is going to be an important character to this era, and Exodus is flanked by Cortez, vote Una Showne, and two accolades who are in-distinct to man and a woman. And I think it's very clearly supposed to be Amelia because she has the anti-Amy Bob. - Yeah, exactly right. - She'll have a shoulder-length Bob that is just like, that's Amelia vote. - A yellow cab is waiting for her outside of a suburban house in Long Island. Bob, it only leaves it. - It's her, it's that woman. - Yep, it's her. - Yes. - It's that lady. - It's a very specific, it's kind of adjacent to the Rachel actually at times. - No, it is he's drawing it. - Listen to it. It's you're an anti-citant. - An antecedent. - An antecedent. - It's antecedent, right? No, that's after. Prodicent. - President. - President, yes. - Yes. - Press it over. - Well, okay. - Well, you keep something up. - Okay. - Okay, okay, no, okay. You know, it's president. - Yes, the president. - For this haircut is the Rachel. - He's absolutely, well, no, this is president of the Rachel. - I'm sorry, going back. The Rachel is a sex-step version of this 90s haircut. - And so you say it. - Antiseedant. - Antiseedant. - Also, ant-eseedant. It's very, it's your aunt. It's your great aunt-eseedant hairstyle to the Rachel. - But an antecedent is actually what you're thinking of also because an antecedent is a thing that precedes something else. - Why would that happen? - It means no before. - Conner, why would that be the case? - Because, like, think antebellum means before the war. - That's what this all is. And you better keep this in if you keep it in. That's what I thought first. I said, antecedent. - You were right. But you just, like, you kept going. - Because, because, because, because, uh, proceed. - A precedent, a proceed, right. But, but what's the opposite of proceed? - Follow. - There's a word, you know, like a fancy word. - Succeed. - Oh, right, damn it. - Antiseed even further? - What matters is what. - Antiseedant is what matters is what. - Antiseed is something that serves as a precedent. - That's nonsense. This is the worst language that exists in the world, by the way. - English is bad. It's not a good, it's a mess. It's like German mugged Latin in an alleyway and stole stuff. - I was right. And I second guess myself. - You were right. - It is. - And if you said it, antecedents. - An antecedent of the Rachel is this party of five guys. - This bus sound is one of the five 37 year old, playing a 42 year old guest star haircut. She gets a yellow cap in suburbs. And then we get the Rachel. 'Cause it's about you. - You're completely right. - Because we're inventing, 'cause Rachel is a big part of inventing what it means to be 30. From 1990 to 2010. The idea of being in your 30s was, we invent the teenager of Happy Days. We invent the humane teenager who gets older with the breakfast club and that over. And then we get, you should be older. You should get a job. You should not be under parents credit card. 30 scary, but it's doable. And that's Rachel. We invented 30 with Rachel. And right before that, you get an antecedent. - When was 30 something? 'Cause I think they might. - They tried and Ken Olin would disagree. You're right. My mom's beloved Ken Olin. Starved five something. - I'm like, that was what, 1987? - It sure is, but nobody watched that shit. - Oh, okay. It ran for four years. - 40 year olds watched that stuff. - 30 something did not connect. And you're asking me, who is a connoisseur of this stuff. 30 something. - Okay, all right, all right. - 30 something was a big deal, but it wasn't over as place, which is our closest bet that got us 28. - I was gonna say that's late 20. - Yes. - This is the "Malrose Place" vibe. - 30 something to hit with 40s and 50 year olds 'cause they were going to be leaning backwards. - What was about kids, too, right? Like whereas Rachel is like a yuppies. - Rachel's friends is yuppies. - Asperational 30? - Yes, no, it's good yuppies. That was different. That was the thing in the 90s. - That is not what Ken Olin and Co were doing on 30 something. - No, I agree, but also honey, honey, we're so off-dial. And this is our 12 of the Amelia vote. - You get me back, you get me back in. - Get me back in. - Get you back in, I'm getting you back in. Point is, what Xavier goes through by the act of light secret color Amelia is there. But the only thing we see is that non-speaking cameo where she has the wrong hair color. Two years later, she appears in another cameo in the first issue of sword by All Youing and Valerio Skeetty. Sword is the book about Abigail Brand's Space Force for Cracowah. - At least. - That's the first sword, book by Kieran Gillan back around the utopia. Or did you not read Cracowah's sword? - I don't love the space, and you know it. - I know, but Amelia does ironically. So it's interesting that you wouldn't-- - She's there. - Yeah, girl, this is her only appearance on Cracowah. - Oh, I thought we flashed her for a second on the island. - No. - Oh, you were about to tell me in real time, the most modern-- - She's a cast member in this book. - I don't know about that. You have to tell me to this. This is the first thing you told me. I don't know about Amelia. And you're gonna hear about it on Mike. - Exciting. - It is exciting because you're gonna love this, honestly. - Wait, I'm gagged, I'm so excited. I had no idea. - This is why I'm doing an Amelia vote episode. Like A, because I enjoy-- - I thought you was gonna know me. - No, it is because I enjoy hanging out with you and because I like Amelia vote. But there are a lot of newer-- She only appears in like two issues, but there are a lot of newer fans who really like Amelia vote because she has this conti appearance in the Cracowani. - And you can tell them that my DMs are open. - Patrick. - Continue. - I'm continuing. Sword is about Abigail Brand launching a Mutant Space Force operation. And the big thing that they do is they access the white hot room using a mutant circuit and retrieve the cosmic battle Mysterium that becomes a really important bartering chip for Cracowani on the Galactic stage where the medicines have been useful on Earth, but like the Badoon don't care about Cracowani Medicine or whatever. What do the Badoon care about? I couldn't possibly tell you this is not a fantastic for a podcast. - For a rock and you'd hit someone who could tell you all that what you just said. - We'll continue. - We first see vote as one of the people listed in the big org chart that Alton provides in this. She's part of the teleport team that manifold directs. Blink, Lila Cheney, Gateway, Vanisher, and Emilio vote. And that's pretty much all the big mutant teleporters who aren't Kurt or Ilyana. So nice to see them all gathered together. - 'Cause you're not a tagger. - They classify her as a teleporter. - That's her mutant power is the stepping discs. - Oh, interesting. - The chicken egg thing with magic is like. - Wait, magic power. - What is magic? - Her mutant power is to control the stepping discs of Limba. - That's not a mutant power, Connor. - It is. It's like Nightcrawler opens portals through another dimension to teleport. That's how his power works. - I look a little to the lust about that. That can be a power. Magic is not a mutant power. - It's not magic. She opens portals to a specific dimension. That is her-- - How we ever skip it. - Mutant power. - It's fine. - Well, you don't like this character anyway because you don't like when magic and science fiction stuff end up in X-mas or two-high-size-mas? - I don't think so. - I don't like it. - I love the character. I think her power is like making cookies stuff happen. Remember, it's nonsense. I excuse a bunch of things. - I'm not saying it's not nonsense, but the point is no. So the point is that this question is posed with this character. Would that always have been her power? It manifested when she was trapped in Limba. So the question is, is it her X-Gene having an evolutionary response to this is how you get out of here? And so that's how it manifests. - It's a separation that interests me to be like, you're in limba, which is separate than having your mutant nonsense. What can you do now? - But the mutant nonsense is what gets her out. - Exactly what I'm saying. - Absolutely, and that's incredible. - It is her mutant power is the ability to control the stepping disk, which no one else can do. - It's just funny that they're related to hell, which happens to her elsewhere. - It's again, the question of did your power, like did Cyclops manifest those eye beams because he would have been killed? was falling and needed to break the fall. Like that's a question. - Oh, that's a question. - Oh, that's the question about Cyclops. Is that why his energy power manifested that way because he was staring at the ground and needed to live? - I'm thinking about myself now. - It's a big question, right? - Question. - She had Amelia become missed because she wanted so badly to run away. Like that is the question about X-Men and how your power - Can I allow you to an off track better just to be an alien or am I just out of money? You know, is it like am I good at that or am I? - Yeah, you good at that or is it? - You're my engineer, you've now wound up in. Yeah, right, exactly. And now your innate mutant gift has to get you out. - Right. - Or perhaps the scenario has made you believe that this is part of you. - Period. - Period. - Winning back in, I love magic. - Okay, great, love that. I'm so thrilled that you do. - I love that. - I didn't care to a situation where it wasn't there before. - Shut the fuck up. - It was neat moments ago, but never with, hey, anyway. So she's around on the space station. She has a cool new, they all wear the same uniform. - What's she, I love. I love when they shoot up. - Yeah, and her is this orange 'cause she's on the teleport team. But we just see her basically in like non-speaking cameos. She's around, I like that Emilia wound up on sword for a couple reasons. One is because Magneto's in this book, two of the main characters in the book are frenzy and Fabian Cortez. So it's fun to have Emilia there. - I know it's a call back to my impression, but when Eric gets FaceTime with low level anyone, I'm thrilled. - It really feels like watching ahead of state. - There's a whole bit in this where he pretends that he doesn't remember who Fabian is. - This queen. - But makes a big show out of reminiscing with peeper. - It's a real, we love what you don't do with your hair. - It's very fun, me. All you ingrides are great Magneto. Like a truly like maybe by favorite Magneto that isn't Chris Claremont. It's actually funny because the part of this book you would enjoy the least is literally interrupted by Emilia vote. So it would have been a fun bit just for you. But in issue five, one of the plots that's been going on sort of in the background is this race of lizard people called the Zanarchs are having like a succession war. - Yeah, I'll give a shit. - You would be like, "Check please." - I'll give a shit. - Abigail Brandt has been trying to figure out how to swing it to Krakow's advantage and basically is doing her, let's decide which puppet leader to sit on the throne and CIA thing. And so we get this really funny like Shakespearean seed of drama between two lizard people royals, one of whom is about to kill his sister or whatever. It's funny. I'm telling you it's funny. Stop making a face of aliens. You'll live. You'll live. And you're gonna like where it goes. Suddenly the traitorous one who was going to cause a problem is impaled through the head with a huge knife and falls to the ground. The first Zanarch says, "Contour and a voice from off panel says he was going to kill you." Splash panel of Amelia vote, looking absolutely stunning. Her hair is now below her shoulders but she has a really intense bangs. - That's too long for her, FYI. - It is a little too long. - The bangs are accurate. The bangs are accurate. - The bangs are great. She's a little, she's a little affair if she's anything. - And this is a little bit more 2021 styling for like a sexy lady. - It's telling you it's not a lady. I don't know her. That's not who she is. She has a time scale character that is gonna get younger. Now that she's clearly in the editorial world, except I think he especially sense legacy, I'm worried that they had forgotten about her. Like see you really gagged me that she showed up. I do think she's going to be someone who gets aged down over and over and over again. And while a lot of them do and while they're okay with but some of them are supposed to be a little bit older than older than them. - I don't think she looks young here though. - Okay. - I mean the hair is a little longer but the hilarious Gidey's really good. I think she still looks like a hot 40 year old woman. - Well definitely but it bangs her to hide a bunch of stuff. - It's better than Botox, just have a strong fringe. - And if you have both tuned into the video version of this podcast, you know? - You know what, fair, fair, very fair. Amelia looks incredible in her orange and black and white jumpsuit with a big ax on it 'cause she's part of the sword teeth now. - I'm just nervous about aging down a lot of these people. Like I think I might need corrective information here but like where are we on Destiny? Is Destiny a 26 year old forever now? - No she's like 40s. - She is. - She and Mystique are like the same age, yeah. - And why do we think that? 'Cause the last unless you're nice, I'll assume it's quite young looking. - Well that was just an artist thing though. - 'Cause I think they didn't know. - That's okay, it was just an artist thing. Like on Birddo, like Elizabeth. - Yeah, she came back I would say distinctly older looking than like Gina Rora. - Okay. - But still young girl. - That's a lot more here. - She looks like she and Mystique should be wives. - Yeah, she's like in her 40s. - So that's fine. - I agree, it should be a Holland Taylor Sarah Paulson thing. - Always. - You know, I, we did I say this about guests. You know I've told them to their face about this. - About Mystique Inducity? - Yeah. - We made this comparison in the Mystique episode. - Yes. - But I didn't know that you spoke to them about it. - In case you're subsequently, I've been to a party with them and I brought it up to their face. - Thank you for your service. - So I know Sarah Paulson lightly from similar events we met at the King Lear premiere, what's her name did, King Lear. - Glenda Jackson. - Glenda Jackson, thank you very much. Glenda Jackson, Bervora Performance, not nominated. - I'm jealous you saw that. - Oh, incredible. And also, and I went to her opening night. - Talk about a Bob. - Truly, it was Bob's galore left to write. That same night, I spent a lot of time with Sarah Paulson and I discussed with her, unfortunately, Holland Taylor wasn't there, but I did talk to Sarah about Holland Taylor and I discussed my admiration for how cool and sexy I thought that relationship was and she was very fun and generative, I guess, in that conversation. - I've always heard she's really fun. - She was dishy and fun and cool and was really talk-- - Yeah. - It was very good to talk about her like hot, sexy, older boyfriend, Holland Taylor. It was cool. - Girlfriend. - Famous. - And I was like, you might, I was like, this might be a crazy thing for you to hear, but I don't know, you do a lot of this stuff, but I've always valued the queerness that lives outside of the acceptable queerness of your relationship. To phrase it in a certain way. And she was like, I actually love hearing that. That's really interesting. And I was like, and I know like, you guys hear this shit all the time, but I promise you it's coming from someone like really cares about the art of what we're talking about. I am so invested in this character, my seat, an ex-man, I do support a guest, and once in a while it's like, it's, it's, it's, it taught me to be the artist, it's why I'm here. Ultimately, it's absolutely why I'm talking to you right now. And I don't know if you know of this and she did. I said she famously has, and she was like, someone else just told me this. There's a, she has, she's an older. So there is a movement of Faggot's telling Sarah Pussin about Mystique and Destiny. I love that. And I was like, I was like, oh my God. If we have been some, I mean, you obviously have been a large part of it, but if I have been a small part of that in some way, let that be my legacy. It was amazing. That makes me so delighted. It was amazing. And she was like, I would love that. I'm worried for the call. The first Cricole welcomes Animatic as us making the Sarah Pussin, a talent Taylor joke about Mystique and Destiny. - I'm aware. - And she was like, I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting the call. And I took that as a, I know about this. I've heard about this. - Marvel if you listening. - Yeah. It also maybe move on. So we, then we moved on to gospel that I can't repeat. But it was, it was a moment. And I'm glad I got it in there. - Point is Amelia looking fantastic steps in to explain what has happened to the surviving alien. He was going to kill you. You must have seen that coming, surely. Somebody doesn't believe in honor. He all but confessed it. He was my brother. And until now his word was good. Who are you stranger? Why would an earther sneak in here to save my life? And we got a close up on her. And here's where I really would say, I do think she still looks like 40-ish. She says, Amelia vote. I'm just the transport. So I didn't save your life like of the Gailar clan. I didn't save it at all. Turn the page and we just hear Amelia saying, I'm sorry, as a hand picks up the knife again and charges toward this other alien. No, wait. Cora of the Burning Heart, a new character introduced in this issue from Araco, is the assassin that Abigail Brand has dispatched to kill all of the claimants to the throne who would not be advantageous to Cricoa. Amelia is the transport for this Black Ops mission. And also the one with bedside banner who distracts this Empress while the killer comes in. You use your nurse's wiles to get this move in. Yeah, I was gagged by this. I was so thrilled to see her. I thought it was so cool that she was serving the Cricoa in state in some way because Cricoa is so much her dream, right? But what I love and it's so Amelia, the more that we've been talking about this, the more it became so obvious to me, it is so Amelia to get everything that she wants on Earth and still go to space. So I have to read this issue, but that's exactly what it is. Is it exactly she, which is always one for that, which is what she does. politically and as a oil to a lot of these characters. She gets what she wants, but she's also going to space. Yeah, because you know what? She just doesn't want to be here. She just doesn't. He doesn't want a part of this. She's outside. Like politically, she's neither. She's a crocoa. Yes, this is the future for mutants that I completely am down with. But I don't want to be there. I want to be in space as a mist. And I can't imagine why because all she ever talks about is like, well, okay, I'm on her side. However, I have one thing space. I would love to go to space. She just an astronaut. She is. So the fact that she became a professional astronaut on crocoa really delighted. He's on draper's secretary or whatever. She was an astronaut. She just doesn't want to miss a blanket ship. That's her name. Wow. Holy shit. I don't know my own security number, but I'm like so secure number. But I remember Mrs. Blinkenship. She doesn't want to she wants to go to space. And I like that if you're in space and you are the evil CIA director of space, Abigail brand, and you need a teleporter from the crew assembled there that we listed on the org chart to teleport your assassin around to facilitate political assassinations. Amelia vote is game. But imagine being Amelia and you're like, oh my God, space at last. And you get there is Abigail brand and you know, I know hell. Abigail brand and magneto meeting the base station. Pick something, choose something, want something secluded humanity. However, you're going to do it. Leave me out of it and put me in space. But all these people only want to do is pussy foot around and then put her in space. She gets another scene that's really fun later in the issue. I don't know this issue. Tell me about it. Fabian Cortez had died as part of the King and Black event. So he's just been resurrected on Cracow and because no one likes Fabian Cortez, they march him into address the quiet council still nude with like a yolk on him. This is the proper introduction of this new character core of the burning heart from Morocco, the assassin as he's talking and they're all kind of belittling him. But he doesn't quite get it because he's so full of himself a disruption, like a crackle of mist one might say. And he goes, who and as we turn the page, there's a big splash panel of Amelia, looking kind of like a magician's assistant like ushering in core of the burning heart in a flurry of the mist. Or her hair is shorter now actually kind of it looks more like her in this in this page. She says, I'm surprised you don't remember me. Fabian were such old friends. Guy, which is absolutely so good. Core of the burning heart. She's a power booster and she's been brought into replace Fabian because Fabian is fired is the actual result of this seat is she's now joining sword and is replacing him on the station. If that's what it gets to look fired, if Fabian Cortez has avoided HR for 20 years now, he means me. I am core of the burning heart, little small man. I am fire in the soul and I am murder in the dark. I am a harako and I am your replacement. My what? Abigail brand gets up from her seat because she's been sitting in on this meeting and says, mission complete. Amelia steps forward. Cougar of Boa clan is the news in our exam press. She knows she owes that favor to Cracola and to Arako. Says Cora. Of course says Amelia because floating between two planets and two islands is no problem for Amelia. She's happy to go between here. Yeah. The scene continues and then we see Amelia and Charles because Eric is leaving with Abigail. And it cuts over to the other part of the room where Amelia has her hand behind her hat and is kind of posing a little cacadishly. Charles in his like big cerebral helmet in his gimp suit leans forward and sort of like looks to embrace her and says, Amelia, you know, I don't think we've spoken since you arrived here. And she looks up at him and says, we've both been busy, Charles. But if there's nobody else demanding your time and they walk away from Fabian and leave him nude in the middle of the room and he says, Oh, no, nobody important. These pervers. This is such a good like mom and dad are horny. See, exactly what is this is exactly the vibe that they should have. Yeah, this is the right, which is why you can't do it too much because it implies too much. There's too much fallout from that. Like she can't be the X-Men's mom. That's a huge deal. Yeah. Well, especially in this era where like the ghost of Moira is so important to the story. But I like that she got this moment. Laura's already their weird aunt like they never got to have a mom. Yeah, they never got to have a mom. They are, they are the child of a single father that is absolutely what's. Yeah, there's a huge part of this whole relationship and masculinity involved in the sexual dynamics of it. They're absolutely the child, the children of a single father. It's full house. Yeah. And they have the flirt with with Moira being that I think they lock into Moira, especially obviously in the last five years. Lock into Moira being the other wing of the square. But she's an absentee mother absentee mother. Once Moira acts as in the picture, she also is the mother who abandoned that. So now now Amelia, over a little bit of Amelia, it's absolutely absentee. You can't even get in there. She's camp counselor and but I like the way she's presented here is kind of like she's stepmom. Exactly right. She's always had stepmom. She's always has. Yeah. Big stepmom energy. Moira is real mom vibes, but absentee she is stepmom. Absolutely. That's exactly what she is. Yeah. But I just love this. I love the implication that she and Charles did get to like have some closure together hanging out at the green lagoon on croco. You don't need to see that because we can imagine it. You know, and then she leaves. Yeah. And then she leaves to go back to space. Comment this is how she leaves. That was beautiful. That work. Yeah. Definitely. She is. She's back over suitcases. And then just dissolving into men. And then why did she pack a suitcase? That is her last appearance to date. I think she has another like group shot cameo at one point, but like that's her last speaking appearance. Good. I really, I really, I really earmarked dog earmarked or going out to do the Mitchell's, you know, the big yellow taxic. Yeah. So she did. Now apparently according to as we mentioned at the beginning throw away line robbing banks with John Gray Crow, which I think is an extremely funny midlife crisis. I like the idea that she is just decided fuck it. Like after crocoa fails Amelia vote really has no other like I think at that point she's done with politics. Completely. So let's just rob some bags. I could turn it to mist. You don't care if it hurts. Let's do this thing. She's on the other side of looking for something bigger when you're 42 and realizing you should look for something bigger when you're a 32 and maybe there's nothing bigger. There's something the size of a jar and we should avoid it and wrap some banks. Maybe you ran away from the thing that could have been. Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so. That's tough. And it's a story that I think it would be very interesting to explore if and when this character turns up again in a major way. I really hope she does. I think we're right for so much more Charles content post crocoa. I think we have a whole new Charles. Yeah, to find and I think she should be a part of it. Moira can't be. Moira can't be right. So it has to if you're good. The thing is Lillandras back. But I do think that Amelia whether or not she's Charles's lover is a character that you want in any Charles Xavier story. Yeah, honey, if I could keep my ex's out of my current story, the land. Especially if you're in space, famously with the land. Oh, Amelia loves space. Oh, but no, not her favorite place to go. Not Amelia's favorite place to be space. Damn it. She hates the L. I hate the land. Oh, I know, right? And they never interact. We're going about no one. We're going about not a blessed thing. God damn it. Space Empress. Board in space. Space privilege. I'm a birdish. I could be a bird for you. Yeah. I could. Just go out. Just go out. Clock, clock. Well, I hope that everyone at home is not running away to space after this long journey and is instead also eager to see Amelia vote turn up in hopefully some great ex-men comics in the future because I think she could and I think she should and I would love for ex-men comics to be great. Me too. And I would love to talk about them. I think now is a good time to segue into the Q and I. Thank you to everyone who wrote in about Amelia vote. I always know I can count on you guys psychopaths who listen to the show. And I really, I love that. For us, I love that for her. I love that for women over 40 who guest star on sitcoms everywhere. Can I hear it? Clay Oglesby writes, "Dear Connor and Patrick, the Valkypour and Trish Chilvy episodes are excellent. So I'm excited for Patrick to be that continuing the series of characters who aren't afraid to call people on their shit." Between 1996 and 2000 dish several stories including the mutant empire novel trilogy and the Magneto, Magneto Rex, and Magneto Dark Seduction Limited series seem to be trying to position Emilia as a major player in the Acolytes in Anjanausia. While Exodus, who was getting the same treatment at the time, managed to still have some key moments post-Eve destruction and then his rise to power in Cracowa, Emilia has mostly been a cameo queen ever since. Could this character ever take on a significant mutant leadership role or was trusted Lieutenant in the Acolytes for Ultimate Peak? Thank you, Clay Oglesby, Clayford Oglesby on Discord. Tristan Luton is obviously what they give the most dynamic mature women around. I mean, Mystique is a trusted Acolytes. Only in the movies, babe. Well, yeah, but like in general, like, there's a glass ceiling issue that I think she's running into. And I think they support their own, like, their characters are defined by that glass ceiling. So sometimes removing them narratively removes barrier to very interest. Emilia is fighting against a number of things. She is a reflection of Eric's politics as well as Charles to give her agency would be to have them be a reflection of her politics, which I think they should do at this point. I understand why they why it wasn't before, but I do think that this is a gorge that a number of these characters fall into. I think the big problem for Emilia as a mutant leader. I actually think there's two problems. One is that as a character, her whole thing is the issue, she and running away. And I'm just running away by by being fading away. What kind of closer to my politics these days, I'm like, I think a lot of us fared a little better without less spotlight on what the weird shit we were doing in the first place. Like, maybe just leave us alone. Like, I'm glad we can all get married, but maybe leave us alone. And I think that's closer to what she's at. The moment of like, I'm actually done trying to convince you people of anything. I just want you to leave me the fuck alone. Yeah. Why can't I make Rocky Horror pictures show in peace? Why can't you just leave me alone? And I get that, but I think that that precludes her taking on a political leadership role is what I'm saying, because she doesn't want to do that. I think she might now though. I think she's been through the ringer. She might even be a she might even be like a Bernie third wing version to be, you know, a detective at it and reductive. Well, she might be Toby's ex-wife from the West Wing. Like, period to harken back to my genius idea, but we honestly, we have, we, you know, we both in personal politics, as far as I understand, and in sci-fi politics. We have obviously the right is, is it's a far gone Nazi conclusion. And now we've broken into the left being essentially two, if not three wings of a left wing ideology. We're fragmented. And that's the only politics we're engaging in as far as efficacy and where we spend our money on our roads. She seems like someone who used to reject two bifractive polls who might have an interesting somewhere in the middle now for Charles and Eric or both on the left of new liberation. She's obviously a voice. She's obviously political voice that I think we should use that can operate in a way that is not in opposition to Charles's dream or Eric's dream, but is another thing, a different third way to the left of what the problem here. And this is what I was about to get out is I think that she has also a narrative issue, which is that if there is ever like a third prong female option in terms of like who should the mutants follow, sometimes it's Callisto, who is also a separatist in the same way and is a more famous character and sometimes especially these days, it's Emma, who is the one suggesting a third way, which is like pink capitalism kind of stuff. I'm a little always feel center right to me and Callisto always feel too far. Let's blow up the something. Yeah, I got that. I honestly, I honestly think Amelia feels like right in between that in a way that I think could be politically prone as this kitty to me. As you know. I do think should be very interesting for that exact reason. I just do think and this is just a fact of this genre and yeah, writes these comics only so many women are going to get a role like that in these stories most of the time until we until we keep talking to we keep you up. That's why we're here and hopefully we'll change some minds. You never know. Marie Alexander writes, dear Connor and esteemed guest. I was a woman. Let's hear from a woman. Many time writer. Thanks for always considering my questions. Your podcast is regularly suggested by me to others as well as revisit. I'm so grateful to you and your guests for their deep insightful profound musings, mixed with birth and compassion. All the gushing aside, I love Amelia vote. I do wish she had more of a presence in the comics, but hope springs eternal. To be honest, I really love quite a few of the ladies in the accolades. I do have a few on a car, Gil Carmellan and his show, Neu Sarah Riles, scanner to name a few, or well, the best known of the ladies in the group anyway. I don't know that they'll ever have a chance for an episode of their own on your show. So there's the chance you and your guest could share just a few ones to gush about the other lady accolades, what you like or dislike about them. Not for free. As long as I'm. Yeah, alternatively if you're going to cover them at some point, can you tell me which archetypes each of them would act if they were given a Bravo TV show or the real friends of Avalon? Oh, shit. I think you so much for making this the highlight of my commute to and for work by talking about my favorite freaky found family best always. Maria Alexander Joanna Cargill actually does have an episode with Mike Kerry, which was a dream also also we will inevitably get to a place where we're talking about some of these. Yeah, if you think Carmella Una Show, Neu is not one day going to have an episode of three but you've lost your goddamn. Oh, everything kind of going back to the office. You lost your goddamn. And we are going never ever ever. We're locked in hiding the head of a different easier job that's more fun. You're not going to stop doing it once you figure out your thing. We're going to do this forever and we will things. I think hopefully the craziest of your friends will scratch the barrel, the bottom of the barrel to talk about. Oh, and everyone. And no, the regular. I can't wait to talk about a barista that Bobby worked with. I can't wait to go to the regular's will always be back. I don't fucking sweat it. If a character has a full zaladane of 12 appearances, baby, the sky's the limit. We're getting there. But I do think that if they were, let's say, sex in the city because that I think is the easiest for like a group of gals TV shows. Those are the shows that suggest you pick a city that they belong in. Okay, that is a better, that's a better option. I think so too, right? I think Amelia vibes very Roni. Yeah. Oh, honey. Amelia is a real house of new joy. She's a real house of New York, very specifically. New York. She has a carotene treatment in bangs, honey. Yeah. Like Amelia vote is friends with Carol Radswell. Yeah, my queen, my one true goblin queen, my Madeline Briar. The princess herself. I love her. I love her. But the thing is like she's friends with Carol Radswell, but Carol is a little too cool for Amelia and so Amelia ends up actually at the end of the night like drunk with Lou. Yep. Yep. And Luando Asepsi is very accolade coded to be also. She's very New York is because New York is dealing with those the real. Sonya is such an accolade also. Sonya is scanner. I think Sonya is brotherhood. But yeah, okay, you know what? That's so true. She is not an accolade. She is brotherhood. She is brotherhood. And Laura lie, the savage led mutate from that one iteration of the brotherhood. Exactly right. Exactly right. I really do think New York is the only thing that gets close to expand. It has the grandeur and the slop. It shakes experience. And shakes experience. I've said that about Roni many times. Amelia is a Roni girl. The other ones are, I don't know. Joanna unfortunately would only get cast on Atlanta, which I don't think is her vibe necessarily. She's dominant. I think she's more. She's such a bruiser. She's a wall. That's the show where they encourage like they really want. And it is racialized. Obviously, they really want the like fighting forces in a way that yeah, they want an encourage in ugly ways. And she's not the kind of black woman that they cast on Potomac. No, well, I don't know what happens on Potomac. I don't know. I don't know. I think about that. Oh, it's so good. Is it? It's so good. I know New York. It's so good. It's so good. That's it. Oh, man. Potomac. I got a door. And for a few years there, Potomac and Salt Lake were like the best show. That's the word. That's the word. Yeah. Because it was right when Vanderpump kind of fell off for a while and suddenly Salt Lake and Potomac were just on all cylinders every time. As is requisite for my religion, I only observe things that would happen to New York City. That's so fair. That is so completely fair. And Una Shone is houses of New Jersey. Yeah. Of course she is. And of conversation. Sam Harrison writes, "Dear Connor and esteemed guests, I want to start off by thanking you for creating this wonderful space." As others have said, it couldn't have come at a better time in my own personal life and just in justters around this era of bullshit. Ever since my friends sent me a link to your beast episode a few years ago saying I had to listen to it, I was a goner. Yeah, episode. I have a Marvel and limited subscription now. I just caught up on all of the first croco in age in about a year and a half just in time to read on Canny 700 when it came out. Once your acumen had to be buying new Iron Man comics for Christ's sake, that's a lot. But I'm very happy. So thanks to you, your team, your guests and this community very much. I mean, that Iron Man book was fucking great. It is a good book. It's a smart guy. He is among the smartest guys. to Amelia having not known a thing about this character in she's as she popped up in the sword org chart, I spent more than a little time wondering who she was and what her deal was. And I found some pretty interesting threads in reading her publication history, but was left wanting a lot more. Most of my actual questions said you're out things that would be best explored in stories written by up-and-coming comic strieters like yourself. - Marvel if you're listening. - Or about her hair. She needs the bangs, right? And what kind of crisis is going on with the "Mousey Brown" for a minute? Proving once again that the "Seesh of One" to go it was a bad time for everyone involved. Say that, Sam. - Current. - Instead ask a sad elder millennial or corporate icebreaker question. - What's the millennial? - What topic do you think Amelia would give a TED talk on for an hour without any prep? So pump for your comics debut this year. I feel like it's weird to say I'm proud of you, but I'll say it anyway, very proud of you. Can't wait to read it, take care. Sam, Sam is Yankees in the Discord. That is not weird. Thank you. I appreciate it. - I'll take this one. - I'm terrified, but also very excited. You take this one. - Yeah, I think this one. It's obviously a Tentric Skulp for class. So what a, I don't know if you have a aunt who's been twice divorced or not. That's obviously her character. And that's what the bangs and the-- - I don't, but I'm familiar as we've discussed with the architect. - Jingle-jingle, jewelry. If you know a 42 year old woman 10 years ago, so who knows how she is now? - Not your fucking business, how old she is now. It's a sliding time scale. - Exactly, right. It's about how old they were then. So 10 years ago. - And you don't mean 10 years ago, by the way, you mean 15 years ago. - You know what? If you made me stop texturing the face of death on this podcast, that would be beneficial. But yeah, whenever they do, whenever you're a kid and she was older than your mom in a way that confused you, but single in a way that confused you even more. - When you were a kid, you mean 20 years ago, my love. I'm stopping now. - Oh, what's-- - I'm gonna figure it out soon. She is very successful. She is deep enemy, YMCA class. What she's doing, the point is it's for herself. It's past sorrows, it's past Eric, it's past Mugantum. It's past being, probably honestly pre the Pennopticon experience of modernity, it is not being witness. - Amelia vote does not have social media. - That's what I'm saying. It is not TikTok, social media, Instagram, influence. - She doesn't even have an ant Facebook page. - No. - Many of those ants have a Facebook page, but Amelia vote does not. - They do now. When I met them, when I had them, they were different. - They did not. - They lived in Florida and Indiana. - And they, it took a yellow cap as we discussed. But they also take a sculpture class. And they're also using like the sun to burn a happy birthday into a plink of wood and they give it to their nephew. They're doing art that's bad. But they're also, they mean a lot when they do it. And they don't care about anything that came before or after both in this literal and figurative example. Amelia, all she wants is to be this operative state between a lot of things that preclude her from committing to one of them or another politically and closing a door romantically. And she, I think it's full of shit in a lot of ways, a lot of these characters are when they draw a red line. But she in particular is out there, when she's not doing any of this, what she's doing is using a sundial to burn a peace sign and to a tree stump and giving it to her nephew. - That's beautiful. Thank you for that. I really feel changed. - And who am I dedicating that to? Who said that? Who's question was this? - That was Sam Harrison. I hope that tree stump is in the mail. Keep an eye out. Sounds way to you. - I agree completely. I also think she could do a TED talk on her Eat, Pray Love journey in the Red Cross. - Yeah, absolutely. - Like how she found purpose. - But her purpose is, and that's why I avoided the end result of what is her purpose. Because I do think minutes actually have talked about this a lot, that her federal quality is part of the character. And there's very few qualities they can stick in, like very few characters they can stick with something like that as long as they have. I think her giving a TED talk would be disingenuous. I don't think she knows. - Yeah, I don't think she would, at the point. Because she doesn't, there's nothing she feels like she's an expert enough on to do that. - Except Jingle Jangle Jury. - Fair. - And like sculpting two hands that hold each other as a bracelet. - She and Ian McAllen Magneto could do a Jingle Jangle Jury class together. - Would you become a quality once? - Someone has to ask the question. I think that what is interesting about her being a nurse. - Nurse is, she has good bedside manner, but like she keeps leaving. - I don't know if you, I never went into a hospital collar. - No, but this is what-- - She missed nurse behavior. Just wouldn't you the most out the door? - Okay, what I mean is, she comes in and out of people's lives. - Yeah, like a nurse. - Well my sister, when she was choosing which field of medicine to go into. - Oh, here I go, put my friend in my mouth. - No, it's okay, my sister's in ER doctor. - Not a nurse. - Not a nurse, but I'm just saying, my sister works in emergency medicine. And one of the reasons she chose emergency medicine was because she liked the idea of helping different people all the time and not necessarily wanting to have like ongoing years-long patient relationship. - Yeah, she's a different kind of doctor. - She's a different kind of doctor. - Right now. - Right, and she does it every day. And I think she's like, "This is the coolest person in the world." - That is amazing. Shout out to your sister. - I think Amelia is similarly someone who, she is a caretaker, but she doesn't want-- - I think she wants simplicity. - Yeah, and she doesn't want-- - I think she wants a yes or no answer. And I think a nurse, I think nurses, not to be pleased, honestly. If you feel like I'm mostly being physically just, everything I say, all the time, especially on this podcast. But if you are a nurse, I deeply value everything you do in God's daylight. But the idea of, they're being against a simple yesterday answer, where you can make someone's life a little bit better in that moment, being medically proficient enough. - She's here in this moment for you right now. - How can I help you right now? - Because you need someone right now. - And I'm gonna make her right answer. Is it, I remember when I was in the aspirin, is it leg up, is it leg down? Is it an IV, or is it not? My expertise can create a correct answer right now to make this person's life better. That feels so humiliated to me and a way a doctor is not. - No, because the first line in this kind of work is the nurses. - Yeah, exactly right, that's what it mean. - What's interesting to me, and this is why I brought up my sister, is the difference we see when she goes back to nursing in the Messiah complex era. The first time she was a nurse when she met Charles, clearly she was doing ongoing patient work. She was doing his physical therapy, stuff like that. When we see her in Messiah complex, she's an ER nurse. - Yeah, totally different. - She's not doing that ever again. She is not going to have a relationship with these patients. She's going to help people, and then she's going to miss out of their lives. And I think that shift, just by implication here, is extremely her. And I can't imagine that woman ever wanting to give a tent talk. - John the Claire writes, "Dear Smithers, girls with the Sullivan, "I can't wait to hear your thoughts on our favorite "nurse turned mutant revolutionary. "Uncanny 309's probably one of the best backstreet issues ever." I agree. "On to my question, has Amelia suffered "from not having a mutant code name?" Connor, I know you've discussed before how the use of human names tended to make a lot of the accolades not stand out. Obviously she was a much bigger character than most of them, but what are having a mutant name like frenzy have helped her star rise more. And if you feel like sharing any thoughts on what it could be, thanks for this episode and all you do. Connor, listen to every episode at least five times each now and I'm not stopping. On crappy work or news days, I know I can tune in and laugh at someone telling Charles or Beast what a dumb bitch they are. Patrick's Insights on Mystique, Val and Trisha Topnatch. And I can't wait to hear what he has to say about Amelia. She's a really fascinating character, and I think she deserves more page time. As always, make mine cerebral. John the Claire, vertigaudity on the discord. Well, thank you John, that's very sweet. I do think that it is always helpful to have a mutant name. That's right, yes. But I don't think she would ever commit to one. Exactly, that's the whole thing. So I don't like some other characters you suffer similar reflection on a popularity scale. She suffers from this in a big way, but also I don't really use her more if they had it. Just because she had, like they don't use scanner. Exactly right. She has one. And she has one. And also even like a fucking Marvel girl. Like there are certain cases where it just, I don't know, to me, it's always felt like the exception to the rule that sometimes they just don't have one. They didn't join a gang. They didn't get baptized, which is a poor metaphor here. Well, here she did get baptized. They joined a gang. That's literally what she did. Exactly, it's a poor metaphor here. But like, I don't know, sometimes it's like, even Xavier doesn't have one. But you could say Professor X is his code name, but like, it's not really. It's not. It's not. I agree with you. But there's a weird, the way that lore sometimes follows function in something as crevely commercial as comic books. Sometimes the editorial department has to like, put their heads together to make sense of decisions that were made 50 years ago over the ever. and come up with one. I have always thought there was something unique about and strange about being a mutant that was bestowed upon you. You're not Batman. You're not Spider-Man. This happened to you. You either took on a mantle that helped you fight crime or join a gang or be a political assassin or work for the government. There was no real reason other than comic books. Silly, silliness a hundred years ago that you had a name at all. So, every once in a while, when I was a kid, when someone didn't, I always felt that that was their choice. - Well, in the accolades, it definitely is a choice because most of the accolades just use their name but then there are a couple of them like Scanner who have code names. So it clearly is something where Magneto hasn't made a declaration either way that you have to get a fancy name. - But clearly is a strong word for someone that I think we're both editorially contextualizing ourselves. Like I do think things just happen in these books. - Well, I just mean self-evidently some of them do and most of them don't. - Exactly right. - It was optional is what I'm saying. - But the answer to this guy's question is it ever bothered me that sometimes her name was Jean Grey. - Sure. Sometimes she's just too important for that. And then sometimes someone like Amelia is just a little bit like, that's corny. - Yeah, I think the best example is another 90s character. Cecilia Reyes is never gonna have a code name. - I've only known her as that. - She thinks that's stupid. - It's stupid. - She would never in universe be like, yes, I'm barrier now. Like she would find that so fucking dumb. - But what's so interesting to me and it's something I love about comics that they're a living beating organism. It is something that we all put our hands together and we add to like especially obviously the actual writers and illustrators and it's a real office, but fans and people who shepherd these ideas to the next generation. Like it's a cumulative caveman art practice that builds on upon itself like a snowman. And sometimes there's just weird things that they just, some of those they forgot to do or didn't care about or whatever that later in life become like, no to me in my experience of this Amelia said, I don't have a code name because that's corny as hell. 'Cause that's fucking dumb and no belong to you. But that's us filling in the gaps of other writers. - We're filling in the blanks. Yeah, right, no of course. - But that's what's beautiful about it. - That's why I love this stuff. That's why I do this fucking show. - Exactly right. - So I only, yeah, that's one of the things she said, fuck no. - But I do think it has probably yes been something of a marketing issue for her because it makes it harder to make her a superhero. Frenzy was able to become a member of the X-Men because she could be frenzy. When she was in accolade, they only ever called her Cargill because it was like serious. Now she was being serious. What is helpful for Amelia vote though is that her name is fucking cool. Amelia vote is a cool name. - And it sounds like a clown. It's a couple of vowels. It's a couple of vowels in a row, including the G. - Yeah, it's an Aries down to it. - The G.H. - Vote as just a name by itself, particularly for a character who's involved all the political stuff and is often the swing vote among the accolade is memorable. - Hold it. It's like Jean Grey or Betsy Bratwick or Emma Frost. There are some names that are just good names and you don't, they don't actually need to be called the thing. - And the connection between literally all four of those characters, I do think all of them would be a little embarrassed about saying, "Call me blank." - Yes, 'cause it's a little silly. - They're all a little too good for that. Even if they're a different way, obviously different satchers, those specific qualities of those specific women reject a little bit being like, "And you can call me light switch." - Right, 'cause it's a little bit stupid. - It's like, "All right." - I feel like we could. - If you insist. - But someone says, "The storm says, "I'm gonna get your fucking name in the storm." - That's fucking storm, because storm is all ain't on being fucking storm and I'm into it and it's not corny in the sling. - Even multiple men, I'm like, "Yeah, there's a lot of you, honey." - But immediately, if I'm coming in, I'm like, "You can call me, "apparation." And it's like, "Amelia, you text me back, "we give a moment." - It's me, phantasm, and you're like, "Is it?" - Is it though. You know, I just, yeah. - White queens, no. - Emma is a huge one. It's like, "No, they just. " - Well, that's, her name is a gang name from a different, like a gang stone a lot of people are there. - Yeah, I mean, it literally all the works as a super villainous name. So when she's like, "Hello, I'm the white queen. "I'm a superhero." You're like, "That's insane." So, yeah, of course in Marvel, Rival, she's just Emma Frost. - But that's why rules, you know, and this is not Emma's episode, obviously, each other, Alex. But like, I love when she calls Kitty Kitten. And like, she shrinks the world around to her, someone's to her scale, to her performance of her own level in the X-Men and whatnot. And I think Amelia, same thing is, not trying to shrink everybody around her, but she's like, "I'm not leveling myself up either." - No, I'm vote Amelia C. - Yeah. - I am who I am, and I'm my name, you know? - Voter die, you know? - Period. I think at this point it would be weird to give her one. So I wouldn't. - A good question. Good question. - But a good question. Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately for her mist mistress is already taken by a different obscure villain with this power. - Which is me. - At the eagle, usually, yeah. - Ros cutting him, right? It's Hello Conor and Patrick. Before we get to my question, I just want to tell Patrick, whenever I am with someone in Barnes Noble and we pass Tell It To Me Singing, they always stop and pick it up. Two friends even boy and just based on the cover alone. - That is extremely sweet. Who is this? - Ros cutting him. - That is extremely nice to hear this. One of my favorite covers I've done, Tita Ramirez is an incredible, incredible author. If you're interested in Cuban American fiction, if you're interested in Tellin' Abelas, if you're interested in funny, this is a weird comparison. Gilmore Girls, but like mother, daughter, funny, daffy, like local culture. - It's an incredible novel about a woman who's mother is passing away while she's dying. She can't quite tell the difference between the Tellin' Abelas that she grew up watching while she's passing and the terrible secret that she wants to reveal to her daughter on her deathbed. And her daughter can't figure out which is real and which is gonna change her life forever and which might just be an insight into what her mother enjoyed passing the time with while she was dying in the hospital and what moved her because it was fun and what moved her pace it was real and that's true of life in general. And it's a really, really great book. Tita Ramirez, Florida writer, she's incredible. I really enjoyed doing the cover for that and it's one of my favorite covers. So that's really, that means a lot to me. Thank you. - Anyway, Connor and Patrick, hard to believe were finally getting an Amelia episode after all this time. I love this character. She's always been in my personal top 10. I think she's often underutilized and underappreciated much like her mutant abilities, especially for someone so closely tied to Charles and Magneto's histories. My question's about her place within the storyline. Spencer Akramen's been very vocal in his episodes about mutantums leaders within world systems. Magneto attacks those systems, Callisto challenges them. Emma, I would argue, utilizes and manipulates them and Charles, well, we've lived that story for half a century. Given this, do you feel like Amelia is the definitive searching citizen within those systems or a pragmatic survivor of them like a mutant Ilsa learned? She followed Charles' dream up to a point and then Magneto's vision up to a point. We saw her feeling the most confident working within sword on Krakowah, but now that's gone. Where do you think Amelia vote would fit in best now? P.S., who would each of your fantasy casting for Amelia B? I think 90s Mary McDonnell or 2000s Julianne Moore would crush it. Thank you both. And until Amelia vote is forced onto the amazing race paired with Fabian Cortez, Make Mine, Surrey Bro, Rast. We've answered the casting questions already, but I do think those are good picks. I loved this question generally though. I think the Ilsa learned from Casablanca comp is a really interesting poll. It is. Of course it is. I just don't think that she's-- it sounds like I'm taking agency from her, but I've said this a lot on this podcast. I think she's used as a bigger reflection of other people's politics. So it's not where she lands. I think she helps. She's the bumper. She's the-- she's-- to me, the bowling bumpers on Charles frequently and Eric. I don't think her agent-- her as much agency she has. I think she often-- given her sporadic appearances-- freaks more often as a guardrail on Charles' politics, more than her own, which are shifting and ambient. And unclear, which is why I like the Casablanca comparison. Like, what does Ilsa actually think about the resistance? Unclear. Unclear. And what does she actually think about Rick? Yeah. Unclear. She's mystique. She's femoral. I mean, there's that famous image of Ingrid Bergman with the veil. The best. Amelia Votus, kind of that way. Also, there's a filmy opaqueness to her. She becomes this mist that you can see through, but also can't really see the heart of ever. Exactly right. Humor Boehler-- there's a real clarity there. And this is a sign of the times I think also probably reflects times not changing all that much with Amelia. It's a home-free story. It's a home-free rejection of what's happening there. And she is a part of that that is more affectable, like even with a lighter. And the way she comes in and out of scene sometimes in Casablanca is-- We never-- the viewer actually get to know what she's thinking. No. Nothing. And similarly, we've never really gotten to know what Amelia's thinking. Do I think it's a pull? It's a really good pull. And I think that that is the way women often still function in narratives about men. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's what you're getting out of. That is what I'm getting out of. That's exactly right. And then that's exactly right. And I happen to, I'm on the other side of the link glass at this point with like so much Dame media that I consume where that is the case where I have been forced to reevaluate who they are in that side. Like I live on that side of the glass. We're gay. We're gay. Oh, I'm sorry. Again, we're in an hour like 20, yeah, an episode about a million vote. We love to analyze the Dame to kill for. Trust me. And she's mostly about a bab's bunny, whatever her name is like I'm Lola. Lola. Her name was Lola. Her name was Lola. And boy, she was a showgirl. Oh boy, was she. So I mean, it's less that there's less to reveal about what she actually thinks. And more of the fact that I think that there is power in us knowing less about what she thinks and that the creates a vacuum to fill out more whether it's curing or someone else quite literally she creates a vacuum. That's one of her that's her power. I'm excited for her to still be a stepping stone that we have to do more rituals and more with herself. I think she's gone out of her way to obscure what we're talking about in a very constant blanket type of way. I think this is the beginning of a very fruitful but still undisclosed relationship. And I would like to see is her crashing the fuck out about the loss of Krakow. I want to see her robbing banks with John Gray Crow. I want to see Aunt Amy just chiefing a sig. I know that Marvel characters can't do that anymore. But I want to see Aunt Amy spiritually chiefing a sig and just being like, look honey, we all have to grow up sometime. Like I was a political one. So now I'm this like I want her. And it's so nice once again, I want her running against Kitty. I want Kitty running for office. She would never but okay, but hun, Amelia vote would never run for office. Then I want her in the cabinet. I want her. I want her in politics. I think she's slippery enough to be. But this is what I'm saying is I want to see her at this low point that she's at now because then I want to see her get her groove back. Like I want to see that. I want to see her finally make a choice. I want to see her choose that and I think I think we need her to be to determining policy or even that's for shields or whatever shield is right now. I want her in the political side of things because she's not a fighter. She doesn't want to be a fighter. No, she's a viseer. She's also not a leader. That's what I mean. I want her to be like the chief of the chief chief of staff. I want her to be a Tory foster. Yeah. Not to take it back to a place that Beatles ugly to come. But that is where my hide goes. But I want her to be involved. Yeah. David Karitsky writes, dear Connor and Patrick, first is always a one of thank you Connor for your amazing podcast. She's gonna be so many hours of enjoyable content. And thank you, Patrick, for joining on two of my favorite episodes, Val Cooper and Trish Tilbee. You're welcome. Those episodes are the perfect mix of deep expan knowledge, great humor and thorough investigations. Do important 1990s mysteries like who killed John Bade Ramsey and what exactly happened with that Paula Abdul playing crash. What episodes about the Trish Tilbee episode features Paula Abdul is a great, great one. The Trish Tilbee episode features Paula Abdul as like a major recurring character because we keep bringing, we keep bringing the playing crash. But while she was on that, she's the one that impressed the breath. She sure fucking did. I got to listen to that. And thank God for that. God was into it. It's really good. You should. It's so stiff. Now onto my question regarding Amelia vote. Throughout her history, Amelia spent significant time in both Xavier and Magneto, the two main thought leaders on mutant protection and liberation. And yet most of the time she's deeply critical of both men and their philosophies. She's prescient for being correctly cynical of Xavier's views on coexistence in assimilation and for calling out his efforts to build an army of child soldiers that would lead to genetic arms race. But when she joins Magneto, both on Avalon and then again on Genoja, she's often opposing him for his more militant actions justifiably and rightly fearful of his rule. Even when she joins exodus accolades during the carry run, she doesn't seem particularly ideologically motivated to be there. So what are Amelia's own views on how mutants could help their standing in the world? Or does she just serve as the Debbie Downer or Negative Nancy for anyone else who's trying to organize the mutant cause? For that matter, if she does just want to hide and live a life passing as a normal human, why does she keep joining up with these mutant leaders, even as recently as a teleporter for sword? Is she just such good friends with Joanna Cargo and Carmella Una Shone that she goes wherever they go? Congrats again on the success of the podcast and may it never end. Make mine Cerebro David Kerritsky. I think this is an interesting question because this is the central tension of Amelia, right? She wants to be left alone. I just want to go away and I have the power to go away anytime I want, but she never actually does. Why is that and what does that mean? Why does she always need to be in the room where it happens when she keeps insisting that she doesn't want to be? I think that's the addition to being, I think that's a, that's why after everything, she's still goose me kind of the center lib thing where it's like, I know this is all fucked, but I think that I have the right answer, but I'm afraid to say it out loud. And I want you all to say it and I'm going to tell you why you're wrong. I do think she's a challengeable character that can't quite get her own politics in front of her own face. Well, she's like, that'll Cooper that way. In a big way, it would be so I wanted to do this. Girl, what is your politics? What is it? And that's ultimately what what I mean, but like a lot of us, obviously a lot of us, Faggot's reclaim these characters that often act, you know, I'm going to repeat myself a lot here, but they, they often act in opposition to a male character's ideals. And I think she is a foil for most of her men here and has, as gained sentience in our own imaginations, especially queer people, but like I think the reason is, is ultimately other ideals that she doesn't have a resolution at that because she mainly operates in opposition because she's not important. She's not in her own right. She's not considered important enough that it's like, let's do an Amelia vote book. That's not a thing we're going to get, you know, we should, but we happen and won't probably. She is a foil to their ideas both physically and mentally and it is hard to get a resolution there. But because of that, the beauty of it is that people pick it up and run with it and go, well, now she's in the size of which means she has these are various and you can feel this ideas, emptiness of ideas with political persuasion that creates an dynamic character and that's the beauty of comics. But I just don't think she had an idea yet of what, why she was, where she wanted to wind up permanently. Yeah. And I think what is interesting about the character above all is her need to involve herself while saying that she doesn't want, you know, it's a very gene trait that she has where she espouses a certain moral framework, but then constantly does the other thing. Yeah, which is what you need the main character that you've also accidentally, Jean is obviously fascinating. You guys should do Jean at some point in getting in particular, being like, she is the godmother of, well, the girl doesn't have an opinion really. Right. She becomes the most the opinion. Yeah. And then some of that is, well, because the vacuum that they filled with narrative and then sometimes it's too, it's so much narrative that it's all we can deal with now. You need to get way more powerful than what Amelia is currently to get to that side of the things, but currently it's like, oh, we built this character and now there's a vacuum. Some of that's institutional way that people write about women and some of its attentional. And now we have this very powerful vacuum that can get filled and we're using it and modern writers are using it and it can get strange. And then you get too far along on their permanent beliefs, which I'm glad Amelia, we still have some room to find out exactly where she lands, not that any of them are impervious of change. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of ambiguity with this character that you could play with. And that's part of what I think is appealing about her is she is this historical character in this franchise who has a prominent place but has never really had the opportunity. Name a male version of that. That's what I love about her and love women like her in the series in the comics in general. Like, I think you only get that from a powerful, interesting woman character who is underserved by the narrative. Yeah, right. Yeah, from 30 years ago, like we would have filled in, she would have already owned a planet in a timeline if she was a man by now, you know? Absolutely. But she's a nurse in Anchorage and thank God. Marcy writes, "Dear Connor and Patrick, I was so thrilled when I saw you recovering one of my underrated favorites, Amelia Vote, easily in the top three of X-Men Milf's." Yep. This person gets it. I've always understood the fascinating is I think there are very few instances where in older, I don't know, let's say 50 plus woman has any importance to the story without being like an evil crown or supportive mom or grandma. Exactly. Especially for a while, she was one of the few actually relevant characters among the accolades. I was thrilled to see her pop back up in sword and I found the sexy vibes between her and Charles to be hilarious. Do you think we're meant to think they were hooking up during the Cracow and Angel? Otherwise, do you think she should be dating anyone? I could see her dating forage, maybe? Just the right sort of emotionally stunted for her. And I know this was 100% never, ever happen. But for some reason, I would love to see her date Val Cooper. I will not elaborate, but it sounds great to me. Thanks so much for the pod. It truly makes my life better every time I listen. Best wishes, Mark C. You can elaborate, you can elaborate my DMs with a sketch, with a pencil sketch. - I don't think that she and Charles actually were hooking up, but I think that she thought it was fun to flirt with Charles while he was walking around in his silly croco in Gimpsuit. - Yes. - Give him the idea that maybe they could. - If you remember, if you remember, - If you remember, do a wedding with an ex who's there with someone else, that's what she's doing. - It's very that 'cause he's there with Eric and she's making a joke about it. She doesn't even know about Moira in the no place. - She's like, "Hey, hi, you remember that?" Oh no, they're playing her song. She's really a shot. She's being a bitch at the wedding. Come on, though. - It's fun. And I do think that they have like a healthier relationship now than they ever did in the past, but I don't actually think that they like rekindled in that way. I like the idea of her going out with Forge. I think that's extremely funny. The Val Cooper idea is great. I do think that like Val Cooper, Amelia Vote is afflicted by heterosexuality in a way that really is occurs. - I think it's Candidate Fox. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna throw it out there. I think it's fine. - I would support that. - She's not deep-powered, right? - No, she's one of the 198s. She was in that FEMA camp that Val set up on the, yeah. - Yep. - So, it's possible. - You never know. You never know. You never know. You never know. And Val Cooper probably was fucking Julia Carpentering College. - Exactly. - So maybe there's some wiggle room. I mean, you know, I think what it is for me is that like Val Cooper is a Claremont woman, so the idea that Val Cooper would fuck a woman is like, "Okay, sure. Yeah, I could see it. It can convince me, but I'm pretty, I'm already halfway there. - Or hella, we're there. - Amelia vote is such a Lobdel woman of the 90s that she feels straighter to me. - Oh, she feels, but in the same way that, you know. - But Anne, say you mean absolutely has a lesbian, - Yeah. - has a lesbian college roommate. - Yeah, no, you're not wrong. Yeah. But on the subject of other relationships that she could have, I liked the big idea that Conan was like jealous of her hanging out with Gregor so much because she's hot. - Yeah. - And I think that that would be fun, because we so rarely see Conan get an opportunity to have like a very human emotion that way. - It's so militons. - And I think that's fun. - It's so militons, yeah. - Yeah. I don't think that she and Gregor actually should like hook up for anything though, but I do think it would be fun to link her up with someone else who's like an age mate in that way, perhaps. - Age mate. - Well, like he's also a character friend. He's also a character who's older. - I don't like that term. - It's me. - Yeah, I know you don't like that term. - I don't like it. - Like forges an interesting shout because he also slots into like that category of person. - He's just a little man. He's like a sexy man. - I actually think she and cable really vibe and that one category in the 90s. - Yes. - And that could be interesting because she does look so much like she's in some words. - And she said some words, yeah. - Yeah. - That's hot and crazy. Yeah, that's hot and crazy. - I think that's real. - There's something add up a little weird and interesting that I could see here. - Yeah. - And I would find that in Tric. - And it's the most, it's the most melrose in the place where she could find that. - That is the most melrose place thing she could do is like - It's all done. - She's fucking cable. - So yeah. - Hopes her daughter next episode. (laughs) - Laila Barassi writes, "Hello Connor and I'm a "specious guest." And first of all, I just wanted to say how much I've loved every episode the "Tric the One and Only Patrick Sullivan." I listened to the "Val Cooper" episode while getting my first tattoo. - Oh! - Of what? - Laila's in the discord. Come join us. You can chat with her. She's so fun. - Okay. - I'll lure you in finally. - I'm in there. - Yeah, but like, hang out. - Oh look at it. Oh look at it. Why I look at it when I'm in episode that. - That is true. So you will be back. And I have listened to the "Tric the One" episode with all its Paula Abdul digressions at least three times now. - I'm sorry. - Yeah, they get it help. - Well Laila's serious. So she and I have talked a lot about Paula Abdul and Paula Abdul's feelings. - Oh, they're rules. - I love you, Laila. - Obviously, when thinking of Amelia vote, the first thing she comes to mind for me is how she represents a landmark Charles Xavier's "The Fucking Worst" moment. - Yeah. - She marks the pattern we see with Charles invading minds nonconsensually that starts with Kane Marco has Amelia in the middle and arguably ends in immortal X-men when he threatens to look into Storm's mind to see what Magneto's last words were. - That is the worst one. - That one's so bad. - I once did only when I was like, "Unforgivable" to me. Everything else I'm like, "I get it." A storm sees beyond the veil. - Yeah. - And Storm is here. - That seems to have a very critical moment. - Yeah. - That's Alec here. - Oh, I don't think it's out of character. - I know you don't. To me, it's too far. I don't think he would do it to her. Sorry. - She doesn't think of Storm as his own. He thinks of Jean and a lot of these people as his children. He does not think of Storm that way. Anyway, go on. - That's an interesting take. I'm not sure I agree, but I see where you're coming from. - Yep. - I think he respects her as a period of way. He does not respect a single other X-men. - I don't know, 'cause I think that Storm to him is always on some level going to be the heathen goddess he convinced was just a mutant child. - Well, that's White Nonsense. Of course he believes that. - Yeah, I think there's that. - I think his White Nonsense precludes him from diminishing her into a daughter figure in a way that he does with it. - That's true, because she still is this untamed thing. - And I think his exotic to him. - And I think his gullibriolness prevents him from treating her that way. Even a way it's eroticizing and fetishizing her somewhere. - I got what you're saying. I just-- - That's my thought. That's my opinion. - No, I got that, particularly at that stage of Krakow, though I completely buy it. I think it makes total sense in the story. - It pissed me hell off. - And I think it also makes sense that she's able to push him out. - She's saying the fuck off. - Fuck the fuck off with that. - Absolutely not. How long have I known you gave me a fucking break? - I am the Storm. - Don't you fucking-- - You embarrassed me to watch it happen. - It should, it's supposed to. - Yeah, but I was like, I don't think you would risk it. I just don't think you would deal with it. - Oh, I know, I do. - All right. - All right. - But you please say more than you like it. - You love him. - You love him. - You love him. - I know. - I got that. - Like, call for a professor. Like, set me straight. Like, 20 years ago. - I got that. Much like how Percy's Beast took the character to argue its logical conclusion from Thredady in the 90s. The difficult place Charles is currently at the end of Krakow. And narratively, as likewise, he's been building up for years to the point that it is now. All of this is to say, my question is, how does a character like Charles Xavier manage to stay as a figure were meant to look up to, if at all, when Emilio votes still exist in his world, with no past version backups to save him any more, no less? I think Charles' honor has come into question in recent years, and if nothing else, I think characters like Emilio who represent his many wrongs, we need a more central role if that character could ever regain much dignity. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the matter, until Marvel prints Giant-sized Astra, McMind's Cerebro since Cerebro and the Barassi, the Cerean Princess of the Cerebro Discord. - All the Cerean Princess period, but that's exactly the problem. - I think that that is exactly why Emilio is so critical to Mike Carrey's legacy, which is doing a similar thing. I think that the end of Krakow as Gillen and Ewing and Dougan wrote it, was meant to be the final word on Charles Xavier. I don't think we were meant to continue with Charles Xavier. - It held that way. - And I think that was the correct choice. - Me too, but then bringing him back, I'm like, alright, well, whatever. - But that's what I'm saying is that the problem is, a month later, the new editorial regime said, "Never mind, he didn't kill anyone, and we all still love Charles Xavier." - And that's because we're gonna do a movie, yes, to be there. - Maybe, maybe, or maybe it's because that's how it was when I was 11 years old, when I read this comic. - But that's why it has to be her movie. - I don't think that necessarily does. I really don't. - Maybe we're right. - I think it's both, probably, but I don't think Disney is exerting that much synergy concerned. - I think both are frequently just who's in it. It's a real, dangerously, a-sounding situation. - I think that that regression to doing this shit again with Charles is a huge problem. I liked what Hickman did in Imperial, because he did the Hickman thing of basically ignoring what anybody else did, that he didn't think was good. - Yeah. - That is an approach, certainly. But it's not an approach that most writers can get away with. And it is not necessarily the most holistic approach. If we are forced to keep Charles Xavier around past his cell by date forever, because inertia rules, then I agree that the way you deal with that is by having people like Amelia Vod who can shame the devil in the story. - Yeah, absolutely. - Because that makes him human. If he can, that moment in Mike Carrey's legacy, where he apologizes sincerely to Amelia Vod after decades, is one of the most important reparative Charles Xavier moments - It's huge. - The end of him and ever told. I think that that is the role that a character like this fulfills. And I think that she can do it to go way back to the early part of this discussion in a way that Gabrielle Holler, for many reasons, no longer can fill that role. - Absolutely. And also, I think it's the role of a heroic editorial office who can like thread that needle up when appropriate. - Yeah, and I have hope that there will be a time. I will say, Amelia Vod feels like a character Jed McKay would really like to write. - Yeah. - Since she's been mentioned a couple of times in the last few years, even after-- - I'm looking for a singer. - Seems like a singer. - Seems like a guitar. - I would not be surprised if Jed McKay wrote an Amelia Vod story. - She's still sorry. - Especially because he's playing with Astra, who's kind of Magneto's Amelia Vod. - Yeah. - Make my Astra. - So that would not shock me. And I think Jed McKay would write a great Amelia Vod. - Yeah. - So I wouldn't hate that at all. - Yep. Absolutely. - Bryce Lavender writes, "Connor one said that Charles has trouble imagining a future with Magneto and generally seems to struggle with women for many reasons. But there's something about Amelia that seems different. Amelia is something real. Not an immortal mutant. And he can barely begin to understand, like Moira or an alien Empress, like Lelandra. She's just a human mutant with an incredible power, but nothing that exurd Mary. She wants to talk to-- people about the mats, she's not otherworldly like his other love interests always seem to be. She's grounded in a way he's maybe not used to. I think about the scene where she finds his writings and confronts him and Charles comes out to her in India. It feels revelatory to both of them, the first time Amelia didn't feel alone. I can't imagine how it felt to be so in love and then to be so failed, so violated even for just that second by him. So my question is, do you think she can forgive him? Sure, Charles can dream and maybe even imagine a future with Amelia, but can she do the same? I couldn't personally. Thank you for everything, Bryce Lavender. I think Amelia's problem is that she always can. Well, she of course she can. She implicitly can. And I think she should. The problem with Amelia is all that she wants is to forgive Charles Xavier. That's she's looking for a reason to she's looking for a reason to forgive for longer than she has the last time because she does and then he fucks it up again. He does. He does another reason to do so. Right, but she's not looking she's not looking to do that with Eric or or or was his name the scary acolyte. Exodus Exodus Exodus. She emotionally agrees with Charles. She does not agree practically with Charles and she has very real reason to this to rebound from his decision making in his in his actions and the way he's wielded his force on her in particular obviously, but she she wants him like I do to be the better version that she can agree with and she's waiting for him to be so too agree with that has failed her so and all of us obviously so very snow version of that to agree with just yet she's waiting to do so though. I think that's exactly right. And it's part of what is really interesting about this character. It is a very again like classically 90s minor female character trait to be like the endlessly forgiving. I'm gonna go work at the rest stop until you're busy. You're done cooking honey. It's that right. It's that when you've grown up a little bit sugar. It's that women are often in wait of a man to grow up and that is unfortunately the kind of thread that she is a part of but it's also a real part of her character. And it's a real thing that happens in real life and is in real life. Superhero comic in this way. So it's a fun kind of everyday thing for us. Yeah, no, it's a cool like everyday element to bring into the soap opera of X-Men and I do think that she does that in a way that is atypical for this genre, which is part of what's interesting about it. What is absolutely electric about her to me. Last question. Keith C. Amaral writes Hello Connor and Pat just like Amelia C. vote. Hello Connor and Pat, considering Pat is cerebral resume, I can't think of anyone better to take on a vote episode. He has a type. I can't put my finger on that type, but I dig it. That's so true. It's really true. Like, Misty. It's a lady by the way. Val. It's just a lady. Is a lady. Amelia, but it's specifically like a lady over 40. Yeah, it's a lady. Oh, real broad. And I get that. I see that. I see the vision. Keith continues. Oh, no, Keith. Vote is one of my favorite 90 specific mutants. Even when you put her in a compulsory team uniform, she manages to stand out in a crowd. It's always struck me as weird that she isn't used more given her significant role in Xavier's early life. The slap alone should solidify her on a roster for at least three consecutive reboots. Yeah. Her brief appearance in sword was a highlight of the many croco and error highlights for me. Anyway, I was thinking about a book featuring X-Men characters with backgrounds in medicine. And I got vote, Dr. Nemesis and Cecilia Reyes. But if you add some mutants with healing powers like Alexa and Triaz, you could fill a roster pretty quickly. What do you think an X-book of medical drama, Allah, ER or the pit would look like? Who gets in trouble for violating hip-hop, which two characters have an inappropriate hook-up, which character gets fired for writing bogus prescriptions for friends, which character leaves the book after the first arc to star in the flagship X-Men title, but then returns with the last two arcs. I thought bringing it back to a place of grays would be a really soothing ending to the episode for you. So what are your thoughts on this? Since this is not a comic they would ever publish, so I don't feel bad speculating. First of all, if I'm going to suck Keith's drive for this question, and then second of us, absolutely you're your own fire. And this is you've gotten obviously get a put beast in basis going to be he's telling me accounts. Yeah, you've got to be there. You need someone on the cover who's like a big deal. Yeah. And he and Cecilia are X's, so that's like built in more is going to work. It's going to come in season season like K-Wall shows up. She'll probably come in like it into the first season. But she has her own show. Yeah, yeah. She's getting a spin-offs obviously. But I think this is obviously not going to do this, but I do think I loved is it clear amount that came back for that like everyone's bringing sexy sunglasses and yes extreme extra. Yeah, I do think there's a version of that where there's like Chicago hope, Chicago fire, Chicago medicine showing us hyper focused things that the experts are doing. I do kind of want ground level stuff. This is never going to happen, but I do I would like a clarity on what they do to the team. That's when I come alive is like when they do the Cannibal special and like stuff like that on the very practical fighting level. The fastball special. That's when I come alive is when I know for sure the name of the thing. I like when I know for sure was actually happening on a team level. The mechanical stuff how they work together. I really think on the mechanical level how they work together is so it can be really exciting and exhilarating, especially with like the night wing illustrator and like other people who were really good at showing the actual mechanics of what's happening, especially with the team dynamic. I think it's so exciting and I do think a medical like I know hypothetically keep discussing like a funny obviously soap there, which I would love, but I honestly do want to know who is on that staff versus who is on like clean up after who is on education these days. I do want more of the infrastructure and I think a medical team could offer honestly offer a like oh here's those five guys again like every seven issues. Yes, Steve Orlando did some of this in the infinity comics more recently where it was like emergency dispatch Krakow and teams. They wore like a white coat with a red act. They would do disaster relief. Is that really disaster? Yeah. Amelia would be great. A triage was was in that. Triage of course. Yeah. Yeah. I mean they're doing triage so you'd kind of be stupid not to include him. Tron her Red Cross background and give her something like that. I think that could be really cool. But I also think when the mutants do come together again, whether it's Krakow apart to or utopia part two. Yeah. It always does come around again eventually and it already seems like from the solicits for shadows of tomorrow, it seems like they're kind of going oh people liked that, huh? Maybe we should go back to something more a little bit like that. I think whenever there is another mutant apparatus occurring. Yeah. Apparatus is what they want. And I think when that apparatus exists again, it would be very cool to have and Cecilia would be cool for this too. But I think you could have Cecilia and Amelia, their names even rhyme as like sort of like. Resolient Isles. Resolient Isles. They do something different, but who knows? That doesn't rhyme at all. And they have a different job. And they're they're cops. Yeah, they're cops. Whose name's don't rhyme. So it's exactly like that. It's exactly like them. But anyway, Cecilia does not have the patience for any kind of bureaucracy, but I think if she was like the one coordinating things and then Amelia was like Secretary of Health and Human Services or something like that, like that could be really fun. I'm really genuinely interested in that. I would hope they what I missed the most for Koei, it felt like pun intended. They planted their feet in something and they were growing something that had infrastructure that I could get on top of. And generally it was new and and what does this mean? I don't like when X-Men feels nihilistic. And that was my biggest issue with the decimation era. And I think that is also the issue I'm having now is I think that if you kill Krakowah, what you're kind of saying is this is a building statement. You were never allowed to have that. Yeah, absolutely. And you never will be because we need you to suffer because this brand is about you suffering. That's true to a certain extent because conflict has to exist. It is a story about oppression, but I'm much more interested in seeing what these oppressed mutants can build than watching the castle get knocked down over and over. My thing, I'm serviced at this before, but my thing is that I would be more interested in looking forward to them evolving into being able to oppress each other, which is I think what happens with that. Right. And that's what Krakowah is trying to stratify in a way that was interesting. Yeah. And now we've lost that. So in respect to Immoric's implicitly. I mean, I was kind of implying like Cecilia doesn't want to deal with a bureaucracy, but Amelia would be more equipped to do that. And that is because of the optics of them. Exactly. Cecilia Reyes is an Afro Puerto Rican woman with natural hair who does not cow-tow to these white authority figures. Amelia vote is a white woman from the 90s who is famously good at cow-towing to these white bad and making trinkets for NFIs. That too. And I think that they would work well to get I mean, frankly, they could. Oh, fuck. I would watch it. That Keith the Washington will win on that for sure. That would be that would be that would be fun. Well, I think that will do us for the most Patrick, are there any other thoughts you'd like to share generally about Aunt Amy before we wrap it up? - Not a single one. - Many a long time. - We've been here a long time. We've never been more corporeal. Let me tell you. - I am present, I'm sad. I could not have, and I'm really enjoying being back on the show. - I love having you on the show. - I can't wait to figure out what the next scarlet is just gonna be, but I do think Keith on your chance my type, but we're gonna throw you off. But this is gonna be next. - There's a process. We'll figure it out. - But I love being here and I love to, I love to argument. I might hear everything in the world, expand and adult women. - I think this is your first two-partner 'cause we did go real fucking long. So. - Very part of you wanna see it. - Why don't you tell the listeners where they can follow you online and plug anything you wanna plug? - Yeah, of course. I am patched like a patch on Eugene's Naveless like Sullivan Backwards patched Naveless on all platforms. Like Connor said at the top, I'm an art director at her shit publishing and design adult novel book covers and I make terrible, terrible jokes on Twitter and post pictures of myself on Instagram. So all three of those things I do professionally. Thank you Connor. - Well, I would just say if for people who only listen to your beautiful voice, they should know that you also post horish pictures. - I'm a huge whore. - That are worth looking at. - This is a part of it, which is why I love the accident. Fettish forward, queer nonsense. So yeah. And yeah, I love connecting all the bad about all this. I'll be in this group at this episode. So I look forward to that. - Well, thank you so much for joining me. This was a ton of fun and I always love having you on the show. You can follow Sirri Bro on pretty much every platform at Sirri Brocast. You can follow me exclusively on Instagram @ConnerGoldsmith. You can find all of the episodes plus links to the merch store, the Discord server and much, much more at SirriBrocast.com, the official landing page for the podcast. For just $5 a month at the House of Zaladayn tier at patreon.com/rybrocast, you can get an ad free version of every episode as soon as they come out. Plus exclusive access to the secret files, content you won't find anywhere else, including the Sirri Bro Appendix, on more obscure characters, the Claremont Read Along, which thank you for your patience. And much, much more, including the Cerrebro du Cdma series, where Holly Raymond and I just talk about movies that we saw that we think are cool. There was a great, great episode with Spencer Ackerman. - Oh, I wanna hear this. - We did a whole episode about the new Super Van movie as a scathing critique of Zionism. - It is. - Yeah, it's shocking to me in a good way. - My entire little box is for that. It was just free-pulled style. - And I got the two smartest Jews I know to come on and talk about it. - I love Spencer. I've never met him, but love his works. - I can make that happen. - Yeah. - You introduced me to Macy Rod. I'm gonna not introduce him to Spencer. - Oh, I'll make it happen. - Yeah, I'll show you all of them. You show me a man. - There you go. I just wanna thank everybody. Spotify wrapped came out this morning as we're recording this. - My number one is Thomas Newman because I read comic books and I listen to the Road to Progition score a lot when I read comic books specifically. - That made me have a lot of fun. - Someone is Thomas Newman. - When you're like, oh yeah, girl, take it. And it was the Road to Progition. - It's a really chapel and gogo fighting it out. And then Thomas Newman cuts out in front because I listen to the scores of every comics every day. - I get that because I have definitely had, I've really had like a Philip Glass the hours moment. - You know what? - To the right comic. - You gotta give me a Connor corner where I talk about, I'm gonna give score suggestions for each comic because I have thousands of them. - I do believe that you have thousands. - My top artist was the Knox who we are gonna go see next week. - Oh, can't wait. I hope a query shows up. - It's the, they're all performing. - It should query, right? - It's the Knox Dragonette Anacquery are all doing it together, the whole album. - That is start to finish. - That is my walk up song, so to speak. When I first became single like three years ago, when I would go into the E-Gole or something by myself, my hype up song was that Dragonette one with a query and a Knox where she's waffered, where she closed down a nail salon or whatever and she walks throughout the dances by herself. That has long been mine. I've told her anti so really like a thousand times that that's my walk up song and every single time they go, who are you? - Who are you again? - Yeah. - Dragonette herself liked my Spotify rap post this morning. God, my stories. - I can't wait to hear. - So I was like, there you go, quick. I just wanna thank all of you listening at home, over 3,000 of you had "Serebro" as your number one podcast on "Spotify Rapped." "Spotify Alone," which is not even 50% of "Serebro's Downloads," was like half a million downloads this year. - Oh, that's amazing. - Thank you. - Amazing. - Some of them obviously, but congratulations to you in particular. That's amazing. - Thank you so much. I just really appreciate people being patient this year. The release schedule has been a little slower because I've been pulled in a few different directions by other projects and by some big life things that have been happening. And I just, I really appreciate everybody hanging in there. 2026, I can assure you, is going to be an exciting year for this show. I am feeling really reinvigorated and refreshed and dewy and young. Spotify told me this morning that my listening age is 19. My first ever Twinkara now. - 40 more, Connor. Mine was 44. Cut that out. (laughing) - But do you think that's because of the road to "Predition Score"? - Yeah, 100%. - You and the average. - I'm thankful for everybody too. - Goodbye. (laughing) - Before we go, I did announce last episode, the season premiere for season five of "Srew Bro." Emplate with "Call it a Noss" and "Anthony Oliveira." I'm really excited about that one. I am still figuring out the schedule for the early part of season five, but I can tell you another episode very early on that I'm opening questions for right now, is fan favorite guest, Jordan Block, on Clarice Ferguson Blink. - Block. - I wanna say. - Excuse you lose, my love. - Damn it. - We will be covering both the 16-blink that's less important and the age of apocalypse actually is more important. - The more important. - The more important character. - Yeah. - In the same way that I did with the episodes on "Mimic" and on "Marco Yoshita." So send in your questions on either of those characters to [email protected] and they might get read on the show. This is gonna be a fun one because I have never really, because it's not germane to the main continuity outside of the Nate Gray episode. I've never really done a deep dive on "Age of Apocalypse" that I think that we're gonna have fun with that. - So I'll be back a year from now when we do the FBI lady from the beginning of "Cruco," which is on the subway. (laughing) - Mark Martin now. - She was very, she was very Latina, Margo Martin. - Endowed, endowed, Latina, endowed. - Not no, not no. I see that. Dolores Ramirez is that character's name. - Fine. - I don't think she has 12 appearances yet, but give her a year. You never know. - I'll get there. We'll get her there. - Thank you everybody for your support and until next time, bye. - Well, I'll say goodbye as the milieu would say it. (sniffing) Goodbye, I love you. - X-men, X-men. (upbeat music) - In the 21st century, people mutated by Magneto aimed to destroy the world. (upbeat music) Only hope is. (upbeat music) X-men.