X-Men musings

[ratcreature]

This occurred to me when I commented in another journal, but one of the reasons why I like XMFC fix-it scenarios where the beach scene isn't the moment when Erik embarks upon an ideology of genocidal mutant separatism is that I can't imagine how Erik would even be able to make a sound judgment at this early point that a mutant-only society is a viable future option.

All the mutants Erik knows seem to be first generation mutants, presumably with regular human parents, and at this point none he encountered have reproduced. I'm no geneticist but it seems to me that just then they have nothing but hope that mutants will produce viable and fertile offspring with each other, who will also be mutants on top of that. And it's all well and good for your ideology to hope that you are the next evolutionary step rather than some dead-end (like Charles does too), but it's somewhat premature to burn all bridges to the larger genetic base when you haven't even seen the first mutant-mutant baby be born and reach puberty.

For all they know the mutations that give them awesome powers might lead to illness and early death kind of birth defects when two mutants have children, or they could be infertile, or just have a really high chance of either. It's probably best not to think too much about how Marvel's "X gene" is supposed to work in terms of real genetics, and I don't know much about the latter anyway, but still. I can't imagine anyone would just assume these mutations would breed true and without complications.

Comments

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think that's Erik's decision is in any way sound, though I also don't think that it's presented as a particularly good idea! Ideology aside, the parents of every single mutant Erik knows, including his own, appear to have been baseline human, so I can only see his early ideology as "when mutants appear we will bring them into our society", whereas by the time of X2 there are vastly more mutants and at least a few second-generation mutants (including Erik's own kids - seen on the list in the office that Mystique infiltrates).

In comics, one of Erik's three grandchildren is in fact human, and his daughter had a good try at wiping out the X-gene, so I think in that universe it's dangerous to assume anything at all about your genotype's future!

[ratcreature]

Yeah, the reasons for why mutant supremacy and separatism right then is not a good plan are many, from the ethics to the emotional to mere practicality, but I still want it to make sense how he arrived at his ideology.

I guess I can see Erik having internalized the kind of vulgar eugenics that underpins this unquestioningly, considering how pervasive eugenic thought was especially in the first half of the 20th century, not just fascists, but pretty much everyone from communists to social democrats to conservatives espoused eugenics too, even when they did not take it to horrific, genocidal extremes. So I suppose that line of thought may come seem "self-evident" to him. But it just seems vary daring to pin your eugenic hopes on mutations that haven't proved themselves in reproduction with each other, and with at that moment of few mutants such a narrow genetic base too. I mean, I keep thinking of the pitfalls of animal breeding, how for example some beautiful coat colors go along with diseases that are then fatal when bred with each other and such, even though the parents are healthy, and how inbreeding to enhance desired traits from a narrow base then highlights the genetic flaws.

It really makes me wonder what kind of mutant theories Charles, who is supposed to be a geneticist, has shared with Erik, and how they were received to get Erik, who seems a fairly practical person, to make that kind of leap of faith. I mean, from what we've seen Charles also hopes that mutants will replace humans, and it's after all not uncommon that people extrapolate whatever "science" seems to have said into wild directions that resonate with them. I'd very much like to see some fanfic explore whatever part Charles' ideas had to make Erik run with the idea of mutant eugenics as humanity's future.