Fanfiction and "Feminizing" My Media Prosumption

After a not-so-restful Winter break and a severely stressful deadline season, my recent piece on The Simpsons has signalled (somewhat) my return to posting incessant nonsense. Over that Winter break though, I managed to produce something I have very conflicting opinions about: my first ever piece of fanfiction. I'm, of course, familiar with Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, but this was really my first sincere engagement with fanfiction. It was a part of a wider project, one that I want to take the time to discuss a little: my personal attempt to disrupt the ways I engage with texts as a fan.

Prompting this is the increasingly widespread sentiment that women, in fan communities, often have to assimilate to male-dominated paradigms and spaces. This is the idea that women, in entry to fandom, are not only changing the products they consume (transitioning to needlessly male-dominated franchises and genres, such as Sci-Fi or Superhero, from the likewise needlessly female-dominated franchises, such as Romance stories or Young Adult fiction), but the way they produce and give back to fan communities. Engaging with this idea as a male prosumer (producer/consumer) turned into a project where I've sought to perform the inverse. Where women are expected to transition from feminine space to masculine ones, I, as a man, would transition from masculine to feminine. The prime avenue for this has been in finally exploring the world of fanfiction, no longer disregarding it as a petulant, juvenile thing (an outdated sentiment held over from my experiences as a teenager engaged with fandom).

You can read the fanfiction here. Frankly, the quality of the story isn't something I'm particularly happy with. I find capturing the voice of someone else's characters remains incredibly difficult, regardless of how much time you've spent immersed in the fictions they're from. It's kind of a punishing sensation, as it never really reflects the research you've done to finish your writing and, in that sense, it's far more of a challenging instance of fanwork than what is purported as its masculine equivalent: the fan theory. Where fanfiction creates new stories, the fan theory intends to further explain or develop existing stories; yet, the word "theory" belies its inherently fictional nature. Whilst these theories are derived from the existing fiction the fan is engaged with, these fictional facts, truths and histories experience much the same kind of mutation as the characters of fanfictions do.

This isn't to say that either fiction or theory are necessarily masculine/feminine pursuits, but rather this is meant to elucidate the gatekeeping that occurs around the conventionally masculine spaces of fandom compared to the relatively more open feminine spaces. Fanfiction community is certainly a (cyber)space which emerged in response to the gendered politics of masculine fandom; the splits of these communities can be traced back to the ideas of geek culture as a sphere inherently for men. Can we not say that the fan theory, as masculine counter-part to the feminine fanfiction, is rooted in this gatekeeping? It abandons character and emotional intuition for methodical, in-depth knowledge of lore, demanding a almost ideological purity from its participants. The discord between supposed feminine and masculine fan spaces can be seen through the response to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Particularly, in its final duel between (female) protagonist Rey and antagonist Kylo Ren.

The comments section of that video is representative of the majority male response. Masculine fandom seems generally more focused on the laws of the storyworld: Kylo receives training in the magic system, this training allows for better skills with the lightsaber and, therefore, he should not lose to the comparatively untrained Rey. The response of feminine fandom was different,  generally more focused on character: Kylo is at a disadvantage in the duel due to some post-patricide emotional turmoil and, therefore, has to lose to the comparatively focused, survivor Rey.

(On Star Wars, is it not telling that the male response to their disappointment in Star Wars: The Last Jedi was to seek funding for someone else to produce their fanfiction ideas? There is such a disdain for feminine elements of fandom, both in its texts and its practices, that the majority of male fans can't even conceive of engaging with the conventionally feminine spaces.)

So, in my work, one thing I was really keen on doing was to move my engagement away from feats, power levels and so on, instead taking a look at emotional, character-driven conflict. I felt it would be counter-intuitive to engage with the fanfiction space and not with its sentiment. Keeping in mind that I don't think I did a particularly good enough job on it, my fanfiction was primarily concerned with what happens to someone's relationship when their preferred method of communication is taken away from them (in that I was writing in response to a superhero text, that method was telepathy).

Something I'm particularly interested in is what I call Critical Fanfiction. Simply, fanfiction that works to change elements of its mothership text to pursue a author/audience resolution. On one level, sure, this is a pretty arbitrary and meaningless term. Most fanfiction serves as this: a fan may prefer Lord of the Rings if it was set in a coffee shop or if it had a crossover with the Game of Thrones franchise, for example. But there are deeper questions to be asked when the fanfiction goes beyond a fan's wish fulfilment and starts to resemble a form of fictionalised criticism of the text. When does slash fiction cease to be fantasy and morph into a critique of the author's heteronormative writing? When does the submissive reader morph into a critical one, and what does it say that this transformation occurs within the immersion of the text itself? A personal favourite discovery of mine has been the Harry Potter Becomes A Communist fanwork; is this not valuable as a response to the politics of J.K. Rowling and the ideas she injected into the franchise?

In our era of ubiquitous communication, this is reaching new, more torrid depths. Where the author once responded to fanfiction with hefty lawsuits, the author is now responding directly to criticism through social media, seeking to retroactively assert their own authorial primacy. Fanfiction is, I think, then a useful tool not merely to interrogate and view fan cultures and communities, but as an act with merit itself. It is caught in battles both between reader and author and between segmented communities. Moving between these masculine/feminine communities and being critical of the distinctions and separations can not only help transform fandom away from its toxicity, but could also see the return of fan praxis. Not the fan activism that seeks to pressure production companies into providing them with more content to consume, but an actual grassroots reclamation of intellectual labour and property. This, and fan studies/IP in general, is something I want to write about in more depth at a later date.

Briefly, I want to return to my place in this process though (and I do consider it an ongoing process). To the end of disrupting my gendered media consumption/participation, tonight I intend to finally sit down and watch Twilight. From its release and time in the spotlight to its eventual fading away, I participated in the vitriolic male response that held it in such disdain without ever seeing it. I think it's wrong to suggest this solely came from a disregard for media texts intended for young women (certainly, women themselves partook in Twilight-bashing), but I also think it's wrong to overlook the significance of it (Lindsay Ellis did a great video on this that you can see here). Do I expect to like it? Not particularly. I'm a long-time Buffyverse fan and have a very specific imagination when it comes to vampires because of that. Nevertheless, it will be valuable to finally form my own organic opinion about it and be able to move somewhat away from the reactionary frameworks that have oft clouded my perspectives as someone who at least pretends to engage with media critically.

Psylocke is Dead, Long Live Psylocke: On Body Swapping and Orientalism

Here we go again. In Marvel's current Wolverine-focused event, Hunt For Wolverine, writer Jim Zub is promising to put X-Men franchise mainstay Psylocke through another round of her perennial body swapping ordeal. From a leaked variant cover to #4 of the Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery in Madripoor mini-series and Zub's own confirmation, fan communities and comics journalists have discovered this plot point some weeks before the reveal. Before we delve into the torrid discussion surrounding the politics of body swapping (particularly in the case of Psylocke), let's first recap some history.

Psylocke, the telepathic, telekinetic mutant with a proclivity towards focused totalities and leather thongs, has had a series of debuts. Her first appearance, from creators Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe, was in 1976 in Marvel UK's Captain Britain #8. Long before she was identified as a mutant, Psylocke was Elizabeth Braddock, twin sister of Brian Braddock aka Captain Britain. Her US debut was not until 1986, in New Mutants Annual #2, and her debut as Psylocke was in Uncanny X-Men #213. Already, we can see that the character has a more complex history than most iconic superheroes, whose debut most often occurs in only one comic book. But, it only twists more from there, as we reach the crux.

What is the most common visage of Psylocke? I'd wager it is this figure, from the 90s, the hyper-sexualised Asian body.

Yet, the Psylocke who debuted in Captain Britain, and was later seen in Uncanny X-Men, was not Asian. Not just that the character, as sister to Captain Britain himself, hailed from Britain, but that the character was Caucasian. A mild-mannered, upper-class styling of femininity, that belied a hidden strength, comic book creator Alan Davis once compared her to Thunderbirds' Lady Penelope.

So, what exactly happened? As with all things concerning the continuity of superheroes, it's complicated. Put simply, Psylocke, upon anticipating tragedy would befall the X-Men, entered through a magical MacGuffin that transported her to Japan and rendered her amnesiac. A dastardly villain sees this as a chance to groom a new master assassin for his nefarious purposes. Psylocke is brainwashed and is then, due to an incapability to abide outsiders, subjected to bodily transformation. She comes into conflict with some X-Men, she overcomes her conditioning, defeats the villain and gets the happy ending. Only there's no such happy ending, considering her body is no longer her own, but that of a Japanese ninja. This new iteration of the character is confrontationally sexual, alluringly deadly and suddenly an expert of Eastern martial arts. Psylocke is dead; long live Psylocke.

There was also a later incident of retroactive continuity that posited that there was another character who Psylocke had simply transferred minds with. This is a complete logical mess and beyond the scope of this particular piece. Even if I had the space for it, I wouldn't want to delve into that matter because, quite frankly, it makes my brain hurt. Regardless, this transition from British body to Japanese happened under the pen of the character's creator: Chris Claremont. With fairness to Claremont, the questionable ethics surrounding minds and body are a repeatedly explored topic in his X-Men comics (many of a similarly problematic nature, including turning two other White characters into Native Americans) and he would later return to this character and revise the transformation into an Asian woman, returning her to her British body. After a brief period of disuse (she had been killed, but silly things like that don't tend to stick), Psylocke returned in her original body in Uncanny X-Men #455.

For some time it seemed like the British Psylocke was to be a victim of "hypertime", a term borrowed from Grant Morrison's conceptualisation of a DC meta-universe, where canonicity is determined by a readership's almost-democratic decision and doesn't adhere to what is strictly in texts. Whilst Psylocke had returned to her British identity, comic book artists simply refused to stop drawing her as the hyper-sexual Japanese ninja. After spending some time in flux, (textually white, yet aesthetically Asian) Psylocke would experience yet another body swap (courtesy of Matt Fraction) in Uncanny X-Men #508-511, this time reconciling artist measure and definitively situating Psylocke in the Japanese body. So definitively, in fact, that over the course of this story Psylocke's original body was mutilated and destroyed; a bizarre realisation of the idiom, "you can't go home again".

There are actually few enough differences between the renderings of the two ethnicities that you could get away with saying that Psylocke had always been, in some part, Asian. It would not be the most ridiculous moment of retroactive continuity in X-Men franchise history. Certainly, this is one solution posed by those who see both the problematic nature of the character's Asian body and the value of such a popular Asian character. Yet what is abundantly clear is that the moments of sexuality diverge with the change of ethnicity; the Japanese woman is afforded a fetishisation and sexualisation that the White, British woman simply never is. What's even more interesting here is that Psylocke did not merely go through the body swap and come out on the other side a newly sexualised character; she was always objectified, her modelling career backstory serving as an opportunity for male creatives to curate her for male audience consumption. What we then see are two distinct sexualities and femininities- both curated for male consumption, yet disseminated in separate ways.

I think it's fair to say that the femininity associated with the British Psylocke is privileged in the readership's eye. Her objectification can be considered a higher, more sophisticated cultural process than the comparatively crass and base depictions of Japanese Psylocke. You can see this in the distinct costumes the different realisations wear, but also in how the body is posed by artists. The Japanese body is almost always contorted in some unnatural way so as to always deliver some element of sexuality. The White body, meanwhile, is allowed some dignity in its objectification. Whilst still a conservative realisation of beauty standards, the White body is at least allowed to look human.

It is also worth noting that, alongside the new body, Psylocke gained new traits and abilities that had never been realised in her British form- particularly ninjutsu and an affection for all things Japanese, or, at least, all things Japanese by way of America. This is a woman who had been raised in a privileged, upper-class British household, with no feasible connections to the culture she had now become endowed with. The Japanese Psylocke had, for the swathe of the character's popularity, become the preferred reading. It is this version of Psylocke which is realised in cartoon adaptations and even in Olivia Munn's portrayal of the character in X-Men: Apocalypse. Her dated costume was criticised widely, but, to fans of the comic book, this was merely an apt adaptation of the source material. So the Psylocke of the wider consciousness is this crass, dated character of a Japanese superhero, yet therein lies the inherent danger of further meddling with her identity. She is known to be a significant Asian character and to obliterate her is a serious mark against a brand that focuses itself around sympathy towards identity diversity, if not identity diversity itself.

To question Marvel's fetishisation of the East is vital, considering the context of the recent promotion of Akira Yoshida (the alter-ego of white comic book creative C.B. Cebulski) to Editor-In-Chief; white people using Asian identities to promote themselves isn't just a textual phenomenon but a metatextual one also. What, then, does this return to Britishness and whiteness signify? Is it an attempt to remove the criticisms of authorial orientalism, or, perhaps, audience orientalism? Does Jim Zub seek to absolve Marvel of these issues or to simply allow fan communities to overcome this point of contention? After all, the constant re-switching and renegotiation can be attributed to a synoptic fan community, where the many (an audience devoted to multiple realisations of genre and character) interact with the few (the creatives actually involved with the generation of new stories) and all each proclaim themselves as arbiters of true representation. To me, though, I think there is something more profound and zeitgeistic at hand. Despite the surface-level diversification, wherein which a Caucasian character is replaced by an Asian one, we can read the Japanese Psylocke as actually endemic of the homogenising force of the 90s- the superhero comic book's "Dark Age". Where Psylocke had previously been allowed to exist as her own unique entity, complementing the make-up of the X-Men franchise in her own way, the onset of the 90s came with a clear, decisive mission. Everything has to be cool. Everything has to be dark. Everything has to be big. And everything has to be sexy. This new return to Psylocke's original body feels like a condemnation of the "Dark Age" design ethos, in a context where superhero audiences beyond the straight, adolescent male are finally being considered. By abolishing the Asian body, Jim Zub may also be abolishing the dehumanising sexuality associated with that body. Rather than to reconcile the inhuman, orientalist subject with dignity, the subject is to be replaced by the White: dignity present by default.

Then we are finally faced with the impossible question. To return Psylocke to Whiteness is to obliterate one of the franchise's most significant Asian representations, whereas to persist with the Japanese body is to likewise persist with the American fetishisation of Asian identities. With any new property or adaptation, it's an easy decision to just meld these characters together. Reproduce Psylocke as an Anglo-Asian character, from birth, and you side-step a lot of the concerns at hand. This does not, and can not, hold up in the ongoing, serial format of contemporary comic books. The format would resist it, fans of the format would resist it, and soon enough you would see a return to the status quo, proving any noble work done to progress the character moot. Only time will tell if Mystery in Madripoor can finally quell Psylocke's existential questioning for good, but, whatever the answer to this conundrum is, I think that it is clear that it cannot be found in the constant switching, re-switching and re-re-switching of bodies.

In a way, the answer means little. Such a fraught cultural issue benefits more from the question. The fictional Psylocke is no ubiquitous battleground for debates around orientalism in contemporary popular culture, but, rather, is a microcosm from which we can further scrutinise issues of representation at large.

The "Wedding of the Century" Is Stagnation, Disguised As Progress

The torrid relationship between X-Men franchise mainstays Kitty Pryde and Colossus, promises to reach its climax in this Summer's "Wedding of the Century". Thus Marvel responds to DC's marriage of their forefront franchise icons, Batman and Catwoman; and even as a franchise devotee, this is underwhelming. Partially because of character status, as Colossus and Kitty Pryde are not as culturally ingrained as the Bat-Family of comic books have been, but also because of a cold, dispassionate drive towards this much hyped marriage. What we are seeing with the wedding is a microcosm of not merely the X-Men: Gold series' wider problems, but of Marvel Comics' as well; with initiatives such as ResurreXion, Legacy and Fresh Start, stagnation is being sold either as progress, or in place of it.

The Most Beloved Marvel Weddings! *Not Pictured: Kitty Pryde and Colossus.

X-Men: Gold, launched by Marc Guggenheim and Ardian Syaf last year, has promised to push the franchise in new directions, whilst looking back and staying true to its identity; with Guggenheim stating, "...our mission statement for the book, which is going backwards to go forward.". It's a nice sentiment, but upon reading the book, you realise that sentiment is all that it is. This isn't of particular news, the comic book format itself demands this kind of nostalgic, cyclical storytelling, but what we can see when reading Gold is that nostalgic revisitations of status quo don't only have narrative implications, but ideological ones also. That Marc Guggenheim has written this story by looking back on the franchise's history, uncritically, he has represented an inherently flawed relationship with a white-washing perspective. 

Gold has taken rebuilding the Colossus/Kitty Pryde relationship as one of its primary concerns; our last sight of these characters had them as far away from each other as they had ever been. Kitty was in fact engaged to another Peter (Peter Quill, of the Guardians of the Galaxy) and Colossus was engaging in an exciting relationship with Deadpool 2's breakout character Domino. Kitty was in space during the last flagship X-Book and Colossus was possessed by a future-timeline-Apocalypse (it really is best not to ask). The line preceding the launch of Gold (part of the ResurreXion initiative, which relaunched nearly all ongoing X-Books) is widely considered one of the worst times to have been a fan of the franchise, as the build-up to the Inhumans Vs X-Men crossover event was mired with the jettisoning, mischaracterisation and killing of fan-favourite characters. The tone was one of hopelessness, so Gold and ResurreXion aimed to move away from this status quo as swiftly as possible. Kitty Pryde, and her nostalgic return to her relationship with Colossus, is emblematic of a wider shift back to a safer, more audience-friendly status quo. 

The concern with the return is that it has not been a mere revisitation of stories and characters gone by, but it is a rerun of a relationship that was a categoric failure. The heart-rending break-ups and the extremely violent jealousy are mere prelude to the crux of the relationship, first laid out by writer Chris Claremont; the age gap between these two young people. Whilst ages in comic books are rarely specific, we know one thing for certain- Kitty Pryde was underage when she and Colossus first pursued a relationship. Writers following up on the relationship miss out on why the relationship needed to end messily; not only was it two hormonal, young people ill-equipped to navigate interpersonal relationships but there is a pretty clear ethical concern in depicting the flawed, complicated, morally-questionable entanglement of these characters as a generic love story. Writers such as Guggenheim re-characterise incidents with questionable power dynamics (most notably, "Merry Christmas Sexy" from Uncanny X-Men #143) as part of a retroactive, overarching love story by revisiting them. The first iteration of their relationship is innocent enough, it is a 13 year-old with a crush on an 18 year-old who doesn't quite understand how to deal with the situation. It's cute watching a hyper-masculine superhero blush. It's less cute when they are 14 years-old and 19 years-old and a decision is made to see the relationship to more serious stages. The quite predatory nature is not merely looked over, but incidents where it is made apparent are romanticised.

And these problematic, nostalgic returns are seen across the board with Marvel's white-washing brand initiatives. Sam Wilson's Captain America has been cut out in favour of the original in Legacy, with the 14 year-old black MiT student IronHeart pushed away for the original Iron Man and Jane Foster's Thor giving away to Thor Odinson in the lead-up to Fresh Start. Diversity may not be being pushed entirely out of Marvel's books, but it is being again relegated to side-stories and more obscure parts of the Marvel Universe. Gone are the days of non-white, male lead flagship titles.

Yes, it really does matter.

Guggenheim is not the first to revisit the relationship, nor the first to revisit it with a white-washing perspective. Much of the complaints that can be levied towards Gold's interpretation of the relationship can also be levied at Joss Whedon's popular run on Astonishing X-Men, which also brought back the relationship, with an uncritical lens, amidst a plethora of character baggage. Whedon, however, was working through a particularly different context. The status of the Kitty/Colossus relationship before Guggenheim was definitive, they were broken up and it had ended badly. Whilst they reconciled as friends, writers such as Jason Aaron and Brian Michael Bendis had made clear that a relationship between the two would amount to nothing more than repetitive, unfortunate reruns. Arguably, they have yet to be proven wrong. Similarly, the couple were separated before Whedon's run, but with the caveat that Colossus was previously dead for several years (he got better) and Kitty had been in a state of disuse for almost as long as that. Whedon didn't need to naturally foster the re-relationship and any accusation of white-washing could be attributed to the elating effect of having a loved one return from the grave. 

There are then many similarities in the conceptual approaches towards the franchise employed by Whedon and Guggenheim- both desired a return to an iconic, unfulfilled romance of their youth alongside the return of conventional superheroic tropes and icons (notably, the colourful costumes). In Gold though, this nostalgic storytelling is having a more dangerous effect than merely returning a superhero franchise to its glory days, the wedding has become a regressive narrative point. Guised in Guggenheim's performative, lightweight feminism, we have seen the Kitty Pryde approach to both leadership and the marriage.

Below we can see a recent problematic incident from X-Men: Gold #27. It may seem innocuous, but in Guggenheim's desperate attempt to show Kitty off as a strong, modern woman, he obliterates her Jewish heritage and identity. In Jewish weddings it is customary for both parents to accompany their child down the aisle, so this whole interaction is pointless, serving only to imbue Kitty's mother with some internalised sexism for her daughter to dispel.

Walking 15 feet? It's a man's job.

Guggenheim's unsatisfying strand of feminism (which has seen him declare that "reverse sexism isn't the answer") is actually impeding diverse stories, evidenced not only by the removal of Jewishness from the upcoming ceremony but from the fact that a character, so long associated with bisexuality, is being subjected to a hetero-wedding. As every year passes, and another writer adds another Peter to Kitty's romantic history, this important character detail is procedurally whittled away; I think very few people even acknowledge her as a bisexual character anymore, let alone one of the X-Men franchise's most prominent ones. So, in these reminiscent relaunch initiatives characters are not just removing the questionable character contexts of characters, but also removing deviant character identity, a potential plea to conservative audiences who no longer see themselves in works that increasingly represent the diverse, real world. 

Yet, there is at least a surface-level refusal to fully capitulate to the alt-right commentators who want to see Captain America fight ISIS under the orders of President Donald Trump; evidenced by some enduring legacy characters and a commitment to telling stories with female characters at the forefront. It is these focal women who stir up further criticism though and, as we've discussed Guggenheim's lacklustre approach to feminist politics, the development of 'strong Marvel women' tropes may be impeding wider moves towards progressive storytelling.

Similar to her determination to score progressive points by making a show of having her mother escort her at the wedding, Kitty Pryde is shown to be the one proposing to Colossus. This is bold, determined and shows she's a character who takes her personal life into her own hands, unguided by anyone else. In fact, her proposal panel is widely recreated, constituting promotional imagery and the cover to #26. One, tiny gripe. Kitty didn't make this decision. Colossus brings it up, before their relationship has truly reformed, in #9. It is provided as the way to move their relationship forwards, despite neither character seeming to be learning or evolving from their past experiences. Here, we see one of the tropes to these new strong Marvel woman; they possess and present their own agency, after male approval.

Nothing gets the fires of romance stirring quite like the noise of construction work.

This is seen beyond Gold's wedding storyline, in characters such as the revamped Captain Marvel and notable SHIELD figure Maria Hill. Captain Marvel, who has existed previously as Ms Marvel, Binary and Warbird, has been redistributed as the strong, modern woman, by taking the suit, name and qualities of her male predecessor. In a more meta sense, Maria Hill's rise to Director of SHIELD was similarly based on male mentor figures and employing attributes of masculinity. Hill's directorship of SHIELD resembles Captain Marvel's directorship of Alpha Flight which resembles Kitty Pryde's premiership over the X-Men and, at the moments of their transformation into the modern Marvel woman, these three characters all conspicuously exhibit similar pixie cuts.

There is, of course, nothing explicitly offensive about the haircut. Yet, when it perennially appears for Marvel's "strong" women there is a sense that women can only achieve positions of power when taking on masculine qualities. Captain Marvel has been criticised for being depicted as increasingly less feminine, and whilst these comments arise from more lecherous readers who want Captain Marvel to exist primarily as a sex symbol, this criticism does shine a light on this emerging trope. Short-haired, unfeminine, white women in positions of authority are the main thrust of Marvel's 'wokeness', impeding diverse representation and limiting the narrative potential of its female characters. It's worth noting that the first character to take up the Captain Marvel mantle, after the original, was a black woman who is nowhere to be found in current publication. 

A haircut doesn't constitute character progression. From Left to Right: Captain Marvel, Maria Hill and Kitty Pryde.

So, what we seem to have is Guggenheim relying on the trope of marriage for serial narratives. From comic books to soap operas, we see that works which resemble pulp fictions often revert to the same plot points when a shock or signal of development is needed. Murders, a secret affair or a wedding tend to be the most prolific, often with them all converging (perhaps on a Christmas special). The wedding here serves as a cheap way for Guggenheim to leave his mark on the franchise; people won't be able to hand-wave away his work on the franchise as easily as he did the work of those who preceded him. But with Marvel's need to capitalise on a big narrative moment such as this, the inevitable tie-in (X-Men: The Wedding Special) has actually allowed us to see other writers attempt to reconcile this troublesome pairing.

Chris Claremont, Marc Guggenheim and Kelly Thompson each wrote a story for the Wedding Special, but with Claremont and Thompson's stories we see a nuanced character focus that attempts to push Kitty's mind-space forwards- beyond the 'strong female' caricature Gold has portrayed her as. Thompson gives her some pre-commitment anxiety, with nods to her bisexuality, whilst Claremont gives her resolution with the deceased men of her life and a Doctorate. Rather than showing marriage as a prosaic marker of character and relationship progression, these writers utilise the wedding as a point from which to derive further, deeper character drama. Whilst mired by the circumstances surrounding it, the Wedding Special is genuinely enjoyable, with a solid emotional grounding. It is beyond the scope of this post to question why this intelligent writing has not been able to manifest within the main storyline itself, but it is interesting food for thought nonetheless.

Piotr evidently had this suit tailored specifically for his metal form. I just want to know why.

There is a lot of narrative potential to this coupling because of its flawed nature. Whilst this has been glossed over, the potential for the wedding is there. With the upcoming return of Wolverine, he has the perfect chance to make a creepy cameo appearance like when Cyclops and Jean Grey married, for example. More than that though, the virulent relationship could really bubble to the forefront. Confrontations could emerge, finally exposing Colossus for his shameful role in arguably grooming a 14 year-old girl or declaring that childhood crushes are inappropriate places to form long-lasting relationships. There could be conflict between Colossus' over-dominance and Kitty's newfound responsibilities, or the moral journey both have been through in recent years. The wedding itself has a unique opportunity to deconstruct one of Marvel Comic's most beloved yet troublesome relationships.

However, it seems most likely that the "Wedding of the Century" will be yet another point of stagnation for Marvel Comics. We are constantly promised a world that reflects our own, that lives and grows in the way our lives do, but that world remains hopelessly cyclical. Characters retread beats they had moved past, act without the context of their own histories and are forced to lose defining attributes of their identity. Perhaps it is a question of format. Perhaps the cycle can never truly be broken. If this is the case, studies of the comic book medium will have to acknowledge that no matter the counter-cultural influences on superhero storytelling, a conservative mindset is always waiting off-panel for its return.

For the wedding issue itself, there is clearly room for subversion. A bait-and-switch wedding could be the exact kind of twist Gold needs to shake-up its storytelling rut, but even if this becomes the case, the journey has been rife with such nostalgic storytelling that even a collapse of the couple could pave no new path for the franchise.