Fanfic / A Treatise On Evolution And Extinction

"You’re not alone anymore, Erik. We’re not alone. You’re not the only one whose job it is to protect them. We’re going to make it, Erik. One day we’ll be sitting around a beach with our children and our children’s children and we’ll laugh about how scared we were. I’ll see you with laughter lines, my love."

—Charles Xavier vows to his husband, Erik Lehnsherr

A Treatise on Evolution and Extinction is a X-Men Film Series Alternate Universe in which Erik Lehnsherr did not leave the X-Men at the end of X-Men: First Class. In the years that follow, they establish Genosha, a safe country for mutants, which is where the fic story picks up. It centers around Charles Xavier, Erik, and their four children (Pietro Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff, Jakob, and Jean). After over a year of writing and posting, it is currently complete with five parts. The entire fanfiction, written by lucifersfavoritechild, can be found here.

The currently available parts are, in order:

• Part One: The Island
• Part Two: The Onslaught
• Part Three: The Phoenix
• Part Four: Extinction
• Part Five: Evolution

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Provides Examples of:

• Action Politician: Charles and Erik. All of Genosha’s leaders, to an extent, since they’re all mutants and ready to fight if they have to.
• Adaptational Nationality: As a result of being Charles (half-English, half-American) and Erik’s (German) daughter in this fic, Jean is part German and English and speaks with an upper-class British accent (though her German-speaking voice is appropriately ... German since she learned from a native speaker).
• All-Loving Hero: Jean. She takes after her father(s).
• Ambiguously Jewish: Averted. Erik and his children are ethnically and religiously Jewish, though not particularly strict. It’s mentioned that they celebrate Jewish holidays, and Jean notes seeing Kitty Pryde at temple. Jakob also habitually wears a Star of David pendant that he got at his and Jean’s b'nai mitzvah; Jean has one as well, but it’s mentioned less often. An important chapter occurs when they celebrate Passover.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Jean after the extent of her powers is unleashed (though this is less because the thoughts of those around her are terrible than her inability to control her powers and restrain them to fewer people).
• Animal Motifs: Birds for Jean. Wyngarde refers to her as a “little bird”, and like birds, she’s associated with flight, rebirth, peace, and hope. At one point she wears a dress with birds embroidered on it. Taken up to 11 when she becomes the Phoenix.
• Babies Ever After: Part Five. By the end, Charles and Erik total eleven grandchildren.
• Badass Boast: Jean in chapter 25.
  No one controls me. And no one who binds mutants deserves to call themself one.
• Badass Bookworm: Charles and Jakob. The latter is frequently noted as having his nose in a book or going to libraries. He is also extremely brutal and unrelenting in a fight, and has no problem killing those he considers enemies.
• Badass Family: The entire Xavier-Lehnsherr clan, including Charles, Erik, Jean, Jakob, Pietro, Wanda, Raven, Azazel, and Kurt.
• Battle Couple: Charles and Erik, Jean and Scott, Jakob and Ororo, and Pietro and Remy. In the background, Mystique and Azazel.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Jean. She’s generally nice (in fact, prior to part three, this is her primary character trait), but once the shields in her head collapse, it becomes a very bad idea to piss her off. Don’t try to control her, hurt her family, or harm mutants, and you’ll probably be fine.
  • To a lesser extent, Charles. He’s usually the kind, wise, and beloved leader of Genosha, but if you try to hurt his kids, all bets are off. He was also willing to alter thousands of people’s minds so no one would know about Jean’s powers, including Jean herself.
• Big Brother Instinct: The four siblings are all protective towards one another to an extent, but Pietro is the most obvious and protects (or at least tries to) each of his siblings at different points (funnily enough, he’s also the oldest). He tries to run with Jean when it seemed like the Avengers might try to kill her, and he beats Clint unconscious when the archer tries to shoot Jakob.
• Big Good: Jean comes to succeed and surpass Charles as this.
• Blessed with Suck: When her powers are unearthed, Jean is an incredibly powerful telepath and telekinetic. So powerful in fact that she initially can’t help but constantly read the minds of everyone around her, can feel the molecules of basically anything around her, and is constantly being overwhelmed by her own senses, resulting in her mental state fracturing.
• Brainy Brunette: Jakob, prior to his hair turning white. He’s very interested in physics and astronomy and loves to read.
• Broken Pedestal: Several people have this reaction to Charles and Erik after they learn what they did to Jean, not to mention their mass memory-wiping of thousands of people, including everyone on Genosha at the time.
• Brother–Sister Team: Jean and Jakob.
• Burning with Anger: Jean can sometimes be so emotional that it causes the space around her and her own skin to heat up to dangerous levels.
• The Charmer: Pietro, on occasion. He’s able to bring Remy LeBeau over to his side within hours of meeting him, and is generally more charming than people sometimes give him credit for.
• The Chosen One: Jean, from part three onward. She is the Phoenix, a being capable of immense destruction - or bringing peace to the entire world. And she’s seventeen. No pressure.
• Color Motif: All over the place. Just with the main family, Jean is red (for fire, power, and the Phoenix), Jakob is black and white (to show his black-and-white thinking and intensity), Pietro is silver (connecting to quicksilver, aka mercury; silver is also associated with being second-best, as Pietro sometimes feels he is), Wanda is dark red (contrasting slightly with Jean and showing her general moodiness), Charles is blue (for calmness, serenity, and heroism), and Erik is red-and-purple (combining for royalty, power, danger, and anger).
  • Eye colors are also important. Jakob’s are a deep, vibrant blue like Charles’s before he manifests, but turn to an iridescent white afterwards (though occasionally described as glowing blue when he’s using his powers). Jean’s are blue, but paler to connect her to Erik. Erik’s eyes are described as grey and steely, referencing his powers and strength. Pietro and Wanda both have brown eyes to stand out from the others and connect to their mother and Romani heritage.
  • Hair is similarly important. Jakob’s go from a dark black color inherited from Charles to white when he manifests, further separating him from humanity and connecting him to Erik, whose hair is white in the comics. Jean’s hair is red, reflecting the Phoenix. Notably, Wanda is the only one of her siblings whose hair is never given a metallic descriptor (which references their relationship to Erik), foreshadowing her eventual disconnect from the family.
  • Red and white are a recurring color combination, from flowers, to clothes, to blood on people's hair or face, to Jean and Jakob themselves as a mirrored pair. It's not greatly noted upon within the story, but when you read with that in mind, it comes up a lot, particularly in scenes to do with Jean, Jakob, or both of them.
  "At the moment, [Phoebe'] hands occupied by white and red yarn as she sat knitting — a hobby that caused more than a few curious looks in the island heat." — Chapter Six, Botanokinesis
  "The nursery was finally ready, having quickly been filled with furniture and clothes and books and more toys than any child could possibly know what to do with. In the place of honor were the two red-and-white knit dragons that Phoebe had brought over after months of quiet work." — Chapter Eleven, Body Transformation
  "“There we go,” Elixir said slowly, raising a small, screaming white-and-red bundle in his arms." — Chapter Twelve, Secondary Reproductive System
  "The sky was blue, but as the sun lowered, it would turn red, washing the white clouds in swathes of blood." — Chapter Twenty-One, Aquatic Respiration
  "Tears streamed down [Jakob's] face, mixing with blood and sweat, staining the stark-white clothes he’d been given, turning his skin into a salty mess." — Chapter Twenty-Four, Superhuman Endurance
  "Charles’s feet were bare, soles bleeding from the thorns that lay along the forest ground, mixing blood with pale ash. Red and white, forming a disgusting paste on his soft skin." — Chapter Twenty-Four, Superhuman Endurance
  "“I’m alone now,” Charles said, not looking at him, but at the green trees and vibrant grass, the red-and-white birds that fell dead from the sky." — Chapter Twenty-Four, Superhuman Endurance (in Jakob's stress and torture-induced hallucination)
  "Wyngarde reached a hand up to his head, doubtless to control his attacker, but the mutant [Jakob] was relentless, face twisted in fury, porcelain-white face and hair of the same color stained red with blood." — Chapter Twenty-Five, Psychic Willpwer
  "[Jakob] looked so different, hair as white as the snow outside, blood and painful cuts lacing over his face and hand, pale complexion marred with red." — Chapter Twenty-Five, Psychic Willpower
  "Jean woke first, in a small white room she recognized distantly as the infirmary at the X-Men’s HQ. A vase of blooming red flowers on a shelf was the only decoration." — Chapter Twenty-Six, Electrokinesis
  "a tall women in a linen dress lies motionless on the ground—blood dirties her face and stomach—it seeps into the ground and stains her white hair—" — Chapter Thirty-Three, Power Absorption (referring to Ororo's mother when she was murdered, a memory Jean saw)
  "Eventually, they stood, Jean holding the cloak tight around her, her face and body streaked in the sweet-smelling ash, turning her vibrant hair white." — Chapter Forty, Telepathic and Empathic Abilities III. (Jean's hair is naturally red)
  "When [Jean] joined them, they partitioned the flowers amongst themselves, all four carefully placing the tropical white and red blossoms on top before stepping back." — Chapter Forty-One, Interlude II.
  "The girl tried to open her mouth, cracked lips barely able to move, but no sound came out. Her eyes were filled with blood, turning the whites red." — Chapter Forty-Seven, Necrokinesis (Rachel, the girl who dies in Jean's arms and who she eventually names her daughter after)
  "More than one [protest sign] said things like "MAGNETO WAS RIGHT", but another read "YOU DON'T FIGHT FOR US!", and "PRO-HUMAN ANTI-MUTANT!" Her heart skipped when she saw one that said "PRETENDER" in dripping red ink, like fresh blood against the white backdrop." — Chapter Forty-Eight, Persuasion
  "Memories of [Ororo's] parents, dead and broken on the ground, filled her head. Blood in her mother's beautiful moonlit hair. Bits of brain matter around her father's broken skull." — Chapter Forty-Nine, Regeneration
  "But [Jean] still couldn’t even think of [Erik] as old, though when she looked, white was beginning to streak his dark auburn hair and there were more lines running through his face than there once were." — Chapter Fifty-Eight, Mutation Suppression
  "Reaching behind her head, [Jean] took her red hair, streaked with white ash, and began to pull it into a long braid." — Chapter Sixty-One, Rebirth
  "A red-and-gold figure passed through the clouds and shield, setting foot on the grass cliff, standing in front of them. White ash streaked through hair and across a rounded face, blue irises encircled by a ring of gold." — Chapter Sixty-Two, Shielding

  • Jean is wearing a white gown when she's splattered in Phoebe's blood after killing her.
• The Conscience: Jakob sometimes serves as this for Jean . . . despite not having the best conscience himself. He helps keep her sane when she starts to go off the deep end. (He has no qualms going off it himself, though.)
• Consistent Clothing Style: Jakob always wears black and dark grey, warm clothes with layers (completely at odds with the tropical island he lives on, not that he seems to notice), a set of black rings, matching cuffs, and a Star of David pendant. If he’s wearing shoes, they’ll inevitably be combat boots.
• Cult of Personality: Charles and Erik. They’re pretty much universally adored and idealized amongst mutants, and run Genosha largely without problems ... prior to part three.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Once she becomes the Phoenix, Jean delivers one of these to anyone who attempts to fight her, including all of the Avengers and some of their friends at once.
• Curtains Match the Windows: As a mutant, Jakob’s eyes and hair are pale white.
• Daddy's Girl: Jean for both Charles and Erik. It’s implied that Wanda was similar when she was younger, but she grows apart from her parents after joining the Avengers, and their relationship is deeply fractured by part four.
• Dark Secret: Charles and Erik. Originally hinted at, it’s eventually revealed that they suppressed Jean’s powers and wiped her mind (as well as thousands of others to keep the secret) when it became clear she couldn’t control them.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Ororo is initially suspicious of Genosha and its people due to experience having taught her that good things just don’t happen. She eventually comes to integrate herself and accepts the Xavier-Lehnsherr clan as her new family, even falling in love with Jakob.
• Deity of Human Origin: Jean is a deity of mutant origin.
• De-power: Jean between the ages of 7 and 13 when Charles suppressed her powers. They remanifested on their own, but significantly weaker than they had been (for the time being).
• Desperately Craves Affection: Wanda, as seen in her interactions with Vision, and often with her family, as she craves Charles’s and Erik’s approval but still feels like she isn’t enough even when she receives it.
• Determinator: Jakob. To a fault.
• Disappeared Dad: Erik was this to Pietro and Wanda for the first seven years of their life since he didn’t know they existed. He tries to make up for it ... and doesn't always succeed.
• Dissonant Serenity: This is Phoebe’s default state. Justified since she always knows what’s going to happen since she experiences time non-linearly (for her, all time is past, present, and future). When she snaps out of this and is genuinely impacted by the things going on around her, it means shit’s getting real.
• Double In-Law Marriage: Remy and Scott are brothers (to their surprise); the former married Pietro and the latter Jean, who are half-siblings in this incarnation.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: By the end of the story, the Xavier-Lehnsherr family and mutantkind as a whole have been through hell and back, but thanks to Jean, they’re finally able to live on Genosha in peace (and without anyone having to commit genocide).
• Elemental Motifs: Several of the mutants have this. Water for Aquamarine, earth for her brother Richter, lightning for Jakob, fire for Jean ...
  • Jakob is also associated with water to a lesser extent, loving rainstorms, being a swimmer, and attempting to drown himself on one occasion in the hope of forcefully manifesting his powers (it didn’t work).
• The Empath: Jakob. Not that you could tell from his personality, but he has empathic powers that allow him to feel and influence people’s feelings.
• Ethereal White Dress: Jean wears a white nightgown in the finale of Part Three when the Phoenix takes over and she comes into her godly power. By the end of the night, it's been covered in blood and is burnt to ash when Jean is reborn.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Dads: Jakob's parents are both very dear to him (though he's not exactly bad as in evil, he treads the line at times).
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Two big ones. Jakob’s hair turns white after his powers manifest. Jean wears her hair in elaborate braids throughout part two, but it’s loose and often messy in part three when she’s overwhelmed (and overtaken) by the Phoenix. In part four, she’s somewhere in between the two styles, with her hair still mostly down, but parts of it braided.
• The Extremist Was Right: Though Erik calms down significantly (or at least acts like he has), Charles is forced to admit that he’s at least partially right about humanity after the events of Part Three where multiple nations around the world are plotting to lay waste to Genosha and mutant discrimination laws become both worse and more common.
  • In the end, the solution is cutting the mutant world off from the humans, acknowledging that they’re too different and dangerous to the other (the mutants too physically powerful, and the humans having the advantage of numbers and weaponry). This is essentially what Erik championed from the beginning, but with less dead humans. However, Jean is hopeful that one day they'll all be able to live in harmony, even if it's a long ways off.
• Eye Color Change: Jakob’s eyes turn from blue to pearlescent white when his mutation manifests. Jean’s eyes also turn gold when the Phoenix is in control.
• Family Man: Charles and Erik are this to their family, and it’s how they’re primarily characterized in part two. In the background, Azazel is this with Kurt and Mystique.
• Family of Choice: Very common on Genosha. Mutants as a whole tend to consider themselves one big family, at least on the island. The X-Men are also one, to the point that all of them consider Jean as much their own kid or little sister as her actual family, and are willing to put their lives on the line and fight the Avengers to save her after her split personality takes over. Of note, Ororo and Scott both form such strong connections with the Xavier-Lehnsherr clan that they come to consider them their true family, with the former even mentally remarking on how they remind her of how things were before her parents died.
• Fatal Flaw: Most obviously Charles and Erik. Charles is supremely arrogant, believing he knows what’s best for everyone (and if they don’t want that, then they’ll see the light eventually ... after he goes ahead and fixes their life for them), and not only can, but should be in control of everything. In a lesser example, he simply informs Vision that he cannot see Wanda because Charles can’t read or control his mind, and thus does not trust him with his daughter, while never losing his gentle, fatherly tone. In the worst example, he placed constraints on Jean’s mind when she was a child, believing he could control her, and tries to do so again on two separate occasions once she’s older. Hoist by His Own Petard comes in big time in part three.
  • Erik has two in his pride and rage. He refuses to admit if he’s wrong and he’s very hateful towards humanity, even if it doesn’t always seem like he is because he’s chosen to play nice ... for the time being.
• A Father to His Men: Charles and Erik are almost universally like this to the Genoshans, particularly the X-Men.
• Fiery Redhead - Jean after her powers come out in full force. Prior to this, she was more gentle than anything else (though not without a spine).
• Foil: Jean and Jakob. Jean is sweet and friendly, Jakob is rude and cynical. Jean doesn’t know what to do with her life, Jakob knows exactly what he wants. Jean is compassionate towards humans, Jakob is suspicious and hateful towards them. Jean is associated with bright, fiery colors, Jakob with black and white. Jean exudes warmth, Jakob is constantly cold. Jean doesn’t particularly care for school, Jakob is a scholar. Jean’s powers come easily (it seems), Jakob’s are suppressed. Jean doesn’t like to fight, Jakob loves to. Naturally, the two are very fond of each other.
• Foreshadowing: It’s repeatedly foreshadowed that Charles and Erik did something, and that this something has to do with their children. It’s revealed in part three to be tampering with Jean’s mind and powers.
  • It’s also foreshadowed that there is something just ... wrong with Jakob, apart from not having powers, and he occasionally says he feels like there’s a part of him missing, just out of reach. This is eventually revealed to be due to Jean (accidentally) suppressing his powers when they were children and the memories being stolen from him.
• For Want Of A Nail: It’s not immediately obvious, but Jakob is the nail. If things had gone according to the Powers That Be’s plans, Jean would have become a being of pure power and rage, unopposed by mutants until it would be too late due to the protection of Genosha. The simple change of having her twin brother, someone who loved and understood her completely, no matter what she did, allowed her to prevent this.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The siblings. Jean is phlegmatic, Pietro is sanguine, Jakob is choleric, and Wanda is melancholic.
  • Extends to their love interests. Scott is choleric, Remy is sanguine, Ororo is melancholic, and Vision is phlegmatic.
• Friendless Background: Ororo prior to coming to Genosha. She eventually warms to the idea of having people care about her again.
• Friend to All Children: Charles is explicitly this. While comforting some children, Wanda mentions that she’s basically just copying him.
• Glass Cannon: Jakob. His electrokinesis is impressive, and even his empathy is shown to be useful in a fight, but although he’s a trained fighter, he’s not any more strong or durable than a baseline human. Jean is this initially, but once the Phoenix is unearthed, she’s basically indestructible.
• Gone Horribly Right: Phoebe realizes too late that her entire existence is this. She can't really see the future, or even potential futures, but only what she herself has lived through over the course of her life. She spent her life influencing events to achieve a better world in Genosha, but due to Charles's manipulation of her mind and the fact that she couldn't see past her own death, she didn't realize she was helping set up a version of the world that almost ended in total destruction until her own death.
• Good Is Not Nice: Jakob and Erik. They’ll, say, host the Avengers, but they will not even pretend to enjoy it. Erik's status as “good” is also called into question in part four, as he does increasingly horrible things in defense of mutants and his family.
• Good Is Not Soft: Charles is genuinely loving and kind-hearted, and wants only what’s best for his family and mutantkind. He was also willing to alter hundreds of people’s minds so no one would know about Jean’s powers, including Jean herself, and restrained her powers in a way that caused her to develop an alternate personality. When the Avengers decide Jean has to be killed, he doesn’t hesitate to fight them and gives Erik and the X-Men permission to do whatever it takes to protect her.
• The Good King: Charles is essentially this for Genosha (though he’s not strictly speaking royalty, as he's elected by the Genoshans alongside Erik).
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: The X-Men vs the Avengers. The former want to protect Jean at any cost, mostly because she’s family and most of them have known her since she was a baby, but also because Doctor Strange reveals that she has the potential to save all of mutantkind in a potential future. The Avengers initially just want to help the X-Men stop Jean, but when she ruthlessly curb-stomps them, accidentally kills Phoebe with only a moment of remorse before the Phoenix takes over, and casually levels a (hurriedly evacuated) town, they refocus their efforts on killing her because she’s too powerful to live; Strange also said that Jean had the potential to kill all of humanity, putting billions of lives at risk. Neither is evil, but their priorities and how they want to handle the Phoenix puts them in direct conflict, and neither pulls their blows when things come to a head.
  • However, even before this, there was tension between the Avengers and Genosha, as the former were originally created in response to the “mutant threat”. They only worked together when absolutely necessary, and even Wanda and Pietro joining the team didn’t fix everything (on a personal level, it actually made things worse as the twins felt isolated from their home and family, and Charles and Erik did NOT approve of Wanda’s relationship with Vision). At the end of part two, Charles decided not to call the Avengers for help with Weapon X because he didn’t want human rules and protocols to interfere with saving Jakob, even though this meant leaving Pietro and Wanda out of the rescue for their own brother.
  • On a broader scale, humans and mutants. The humans are scared of the superpowered people who can pop up everywhere and are sometimes openly hostile towards them, and pretty much all human countries are distrusting of the isolated, insular Genosha. On the other hand, the mutants are far outnumbered, not all are fighters or even particularly powerful, and they’re actively discriminated against everywhere except for Genosha, which is a single small island with limited resources and political power. They’re both scared of each other, and for good reason.
• Happily Married: Charles and Erik ... usually.
  • In part five, they're joined by Pietro and Remy, Wanda and Vision, Jean and Scott, & Jakob and Ororo.
• Headbutting Heroes: The Avengers and the X-Men. Even prior to the incident with the Phoenix, they preferred not to work with each other and to stick to their own spheres of the world and villain-fighting. Following part three, they refuse to work together or speak at all after their last altercation left members of each team dead and others severely injured.
• The Heart: Charles is this, and Jean eventually inherits the title.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Jean took Erik’s leather jacket from X-Men: First Class with her in part three as the Phoenix when she’s spiraling out of control. In part four, she adds a long, dark-brown leather jacket to her wardrobe to show her increasing power and influence.
• Heroes With Bad Publicity: The X-Men are this outside of Genosha due to prejudice against mutants. They often intervene in such things as robot attacks and help fight against an alien invasion in New York, but many humans still mistrust them. An attempt to fix this was made by Pietro and Wanda joining the Avengers, though many people from both sides opposed this. The reverse is also true with the Avengers being distrusted by the mutants. The situation gets significantly worse on both sides during and after part three.
• Heroic Resolve: Jakob when he realized Jean was in danger. He gathered enough strength to break out of his tank and save her despite being tortured for the past day. He collapses and falls unconscious only once she’s safe. Then Jean against the Dark Phoenix at the end of part three.
• Hidden Elf Village: While Genosha isn’t completely cut off from the rest of the world, they act like it most of the time. Humans can only live there if related or married to a Genoshan mutant, and they’re rarely allowed to visit. (Once when the Avengers, themselves superpowered and not all human, come for a state visit, most of the Genoshans regard them with distrust, though no one openly says anything to them.) With the end of Part 4, Genosha fully attains this status, shutting itself off from the human world permanently, with mutants only ever leaving so as to bring those born to humans back.
• Hide Your Otherness: Genoshans are emphatically opposed to this and encourage newcomers to delight in their mutations and use their powers openly.
• The High Queen: Jean grows into this by the end of part four (well ... High Voice of Genosha). Ororo also becomes one as an adult when she takes the position of Imperator.
• Homosexual Reproduction: Charles and Erik.
• Humans Are Bastards: Erik and Jakob are of this opinion. On a wide scale, they’re not shown to be wrong, as humans are shown to discriminate against mutants and would have wiped them out as early as part one if they could. Tensions between the two species finally come to a head in part four.
  • This was also a source of tension for Jakob in part two since he was technically human for most of his life. He hated seeing himself as part of the same group who oppressed and killed the people he considered himself a part of.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Charles and Erik initially insist that restraining Jean’s powers was this. Eventually evolves into My God, What Have I Done?.
• I Have No Daughter!: Erik towards Wanda after she sides with the Avengers against the Phoenix. Both of them later come to regret this and reconcile.
• Immune to Mind Control: Vision is immune to mind control since he doesn’t have an organic brain. This resulted in Charles disliking Vision’s relationship with Wanda, since Vision was an unknown to him. (However, it’s implied that Jean could still control him, though Jean also has telekinesis.) It also prevents Charles from just erasing the Avengers' knowledge of the Phoenix and everything going on in part three, since he can't do the same to Vision (who didn't exist the first time he erased everyone's memory.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Jean ... initially.
• I Want Grandkids: Charles at one point towards Wanda. Though this was mostly just his desire to have Wanda come home, he does want grandchildren, remarking to a sleeping Erik, “One day we’ll be sitting around a beach with our children and our children’s children and we’ll laugh about how scared we were”.
• Jeanne d'Archétype - It’s in the name.
• Jerkass: Jakob towards humans. He takes after Erik in this regard; at one point, Jakob is openly insulting Captain America to his face, and Erik can’t quite stop himself from laughing. Though he’s generally pretty nice to mutants.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Both Jakob and Erik, to an extent. They can be abrasive and downright cruel to enemies, but both want what’s best for their people and love their family above all else. This is the whole point of Jakob’s character - he’s not even that nice of a person, but he loved his sister so much that he accidentally saved the whole world by caring for her.
• Junior Counterpart: Jean towards Charles, and Jakob towards Erik. Like Charles, Jean is a kind, compassionate, forgiving, yet powerful mutant and an unexpected leader. Physically, she resembles him through her soft, round features, pale skin, and large eyes. She tends to use her telepathic powers more than her telekinetic ones. Like Erik, Jakob is a tough, strong-willed Determinator with Jerkass tendencies, but cares greatly about his family, people, and ideals. He also tends to prefer his electrokinetic powers over his empathic ones, especially in a fight (he’s the electro- part of electromagnetism).
  • Of course, they also show signs of being this in reverse. Jean takes drastic measures in the war against humanity in part four and is willing to sacrifice others for her loved ones. Jakob is able to bring Jean back to herself using his compassion, love, and empathic abilities.
    • For extra points, Jakob has large blue eyes (as a human) like Charles, while Jean's are pale like Erik's (though still blue) and she's said to have some of his sharpness in her face.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Dark Phoenix in part three. Prior to the reveal part way through part three, the tone was more humorous and domestic, the mutants’ enemies easily defeated with the focus being more on the characters and family themself. The Phoenix signals a turn as the heroes are put in conflict with each other, and the set-up for the war in part four is built.
• Knight Templar Parent: Charles and Erik risked the entire world for a chance at saving Jean - and they’d do it again.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Charles did this to everyone who knew about Jean and Jakob’s powers after he suppressed the Phoenix ... including Jean and Jakob. (In fact, he did this on such a wide scale that he was out of commission for a while afterward due to the migraines it caused.) One of the hints at his shady activities, not long before the reveal, is that he did this to Rogue after Jean hurt her.
• Lean and Mean: One of the ways in which Jakob takes after Erik.
• Light 'em Up: Jean is able to do this as the Phoenix. At the end of part three, she seemingly explodes in a huge burst of light as she sacrifices the Dark Phoenix to bring Charles's back to life.
• Lightning/Fire Juxtaposition: Jakob (electrokinesis) and Jean (her fire powers as the Phoenix).
• Like Parent, Like Child: All of the kids share some traits in common with one or both of their parents, but Jakob is the most obvious as he intentionally tries to emulate Erik (which is part of why he was so devastated by his seeming lack of mutation). They're both proud, self-confident, tough, powerful mutant supremacists who consider violence a viable solution to most of their problems. At the same time, they are very family-oriented and consider protecting their own to be more important than anything else, showing a softer side to their loved ones. Jakob's electrokinesis stems from Erik's metallokinesis, and it's the power he's shown using more often both casually and on the battlefield. On the other side, Jean is sweet, compassionate, diplomatic, heroic, and family-oriented like Charles, and is more comfortable with her telepathy than Jakob is with his empathy. And, like Charles, people sometimes forget how powerful she could be because of this. Of course, that last part is less true after part three...
• Love at First Punch: Ororo struck Jakob with lightning the first time they met. He immediately falls in love with her and never shows interest in anyone else.
• Made of Iron: Jakob takes over a day of torture, suffocation, and hallucinatory drugs, but still manages to break out of a tank in time to save his sister by headbutting the glass. He passed out almost immediately afterward, but the fact that he was conscious at all was impressive.
• Magnetic Hero: Charles and Erik are this, attracting the love and loyalty of hundreds of mutants when they liberate Genosha, and only gaining more followers from there. Jean becomes this in part four when many mutants start to consider her their Messiah (and even showed signs of it in part three when Ororo and Scott were ready to fight the Avengers for her despite being teenagers themselves).
• Meaningful Name: Jakob means “seizing by the heel” and refers to the biblical Jacob being born holding his twin by the heel; Jakob is similarly born holding Jean’s heel (although the two of them have a far more amicable relationship than the biblical versions). It’s also the name of Erik’s father, and was chosen due to the Ashkenazi custom of naming children after deceased loved ones. His middle name, David, is a reference to Professor X’s son in the comics, David Haller, and means “Beloved”. Both are common Jewish names. And at the end of part three, Jakob cluthes his twin's heel and begs her to return to them and herself.
  • In Greek myth, Phoebe was an Oracle of Delphi and the goddess of intellect and insight. In this fic, Phoebe is the name of a mutant whose nonlinear perception allows her to know and experience her entire lifespan at once (it’s never made clear whether Phoebe is a given name or not).
• Meaningful Rename: A staple of Genoshan culture, as teenage mutants will rename themselves when they graduate and achieve adulthood at age seventeen. Whether or not they actually use their chosen name in day to day life varies from person to person, however. Some people only use their given name, some only use their chosen name, some only use their chosen name as a codename on missions, and some use both interchangeably.
  • Jakob sticks to his given name for a while even after choosing a new name, but by the time he's older at the end of part five, he goes almost exclusively by "Onslaught". At that point, the only people who still refer to him by Jakob are particularly close family members, such as Jean. Cyclops and Storm also started going mainly by their chosen names by that point.
• Messianic Archetype: Jean, starting at the end of part three when she brings Charles back to life and seemingly dies before being symbolically reborn in ash and light. She’s The Chosen One with true companions in the form of Jakob, Ororo, and Scott. She’s betrayed by Wanda in part three, who comes to regret this. She’s a compassionate hero with an unusual (even miraculous) birth. She’s from groups that are persecuted by humans and faces suspicion and fear from them, being a Jewish mutant. As of part four, some mutants actively regard her as this, believing she will save them from the hardships to come and usher mutantkind into a new era. She does.
• Metallic Motifs: Iron and steel for Erik (strong, durable, dangerous), gold and copper for Jean (power and the eventual savior; prior to the Phoenix, copper-hair also showed how she was mostly in the background, with utility, but not much flash), silver and mercury for Pietro (second-best; speed and volatility), and steel and platinum for Jakob (strength, power, and purity). Wanda ... doesn’t really have one.
• Mind over Manners: Zigzagged. Telepathy is normalized on Genosha, but mutants generally won’t go too deep into someone’s head without cause or permission. Jean tries to adhere to this, but literally can’t before gaining control of her powers. And Charles is perfectly alright with violating other people’s heads if the situation calls for it …
• Mind Rape: Jean briefly inflicted this on Rogue when she was breaking down due to the Phoenix, and only stopped because Rogue’s powers started to affect her and knocked her out. She felt horrible about it afterward, though by that point, Rogue didn’t remember ...
  • Mastermind also attempted to do this to Jean at the end of part two. Didn’t quite work out for him.
• Misery Builds Character: Jean goes from quiet, sweet, but generally unexciting in part two, to a strong-willed, fierce, determined leader by the end of part four, but only after suffering through the Phoenix and the onslaught of her own uncontrolled powers.
• Moral Pragmatist: How Charles and Erik were able to build Genosha together despite their opposing views.
• Mr. Seahorse: Charles receives a secondary mutation in this fic that allows him to become pregnant. Much to his surprise. It all turns out well, and he and Erik have two children of their own. The mpreg is almost incidental to most of the story beyond introducing Jean and Jakob, and is rarely mentioned after they’re born. At least, until it's revealed that this was part of the Powers That Be's plan ...
• Mundane Utility - The Genoshan mutants use their powers like this often. Aquamarine uses hydrokinesis to boil water for tea, and Jean uses her telekinesis to get things out of her school bag without picking it up. It's one of the small things that makes Genosha a paradise for mutants when compared to the rest of the world where they have to run and hide to live.
• My Beloved Smother: Charles adores his family above all else, but he can also be arrogant and overbearing, meddling in the lives of his loved ones because he thinks he knows what’s best for them better than they do. As a child, Charles was emotionally neglected by his mother, and he overcompensates as a parent to be sure he won’t make that mistake (he makes new ones instead).
• My God, What Have I Done??: Charles and Erik when they realize how badly they messed up with Jean.
• Mystical White Hair: Jakob after his powers manifest. And Ororo when she shows up, this being X-Men canon.
  • Part Five also shows that several of Charles and Erik's grandkids also have this, particularly Naserian (Jakob's eldest) and Luna.
  • Nerds Are Sexy: Ororo certainly thinks Jakob’s attractive, even if she’s asexual. Though Jakob isn’t “clasically” nerdy apart from being scholarly and intelligent.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Genosha. Lead by an openly queer couple, the first country in their world to have legal gay marriage, and accepting of all sexualities and genders.
• Older Than They Look: Charles is 50 in part three, but Havok notes that he hardly looks older than when the twins were born. Lampshading James McAvoy's appearance in X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, of course.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jean is closed-off, frazzled, and constantly on the verge of a breakdown in part three due to the Phoenix. Phoebe too, since she stops being constantly serene because of how Charles tampered with her mind and she no longer knows everything that’s going to happen to/around her.
• Ouroboros: Phoebe has a statue of one in her office. When she’s dying, she contemplates the nature of the Ouroboros. Symbolically.
• Papa Wolf: Erik and Charles. It is a very bad idea to hurt their children. Not even the Avengers are exempt for this, and not even when they have every reason to believe that one of those children could end the human race and Earth itself.
• Parental Favoritism: Downplayed since both Erik and Charles love all their children, but Jakob is acknowledged as Erik’s favorite son (considering Jakob tries his damndest to be a clone of Erik, it isn’t hard to tell why), and he also seems to care for Jean more than Wanda. Charles is more egalitarian towards the children, though Wanda and Pietro aren’t biologically his. Wanda speculates at one point that Erik loved Jean and Jakob precisely because of that; Charles is an All-Loving Hero, but Erik was ashamed and embarrassed to have children with someone other than the person he considered his soulmate. Part of this is projection on Wanda’s part, but not all of it; Erik loves them all pretty much equally, but felt more connected to the younger two partially because of Charles, but also because he’d been with them since they were infants, whereas he only met Pietro and Wanda when they were seven.
• Parental Substitute: Charles will be this for any and everyone who lets him, including Pietro and Wanda (prior to adopting them outright), Ororo, Scott, and all of the X-Men.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Jean as the Phoenix,. So much so that the Avengers gathered over a dozen allies in a desperate attempt to stop her from destroying the planet and everyone on it (it’s implied that this still wouldn’t have worked if they’d gotten a chance to fight her directly - Jean is just that powerful). Doctor Strange said that in her final form, she would be able to absorb and destroy stars. Charles and Erik could also be categorized as this, with the former twisting hundreds of minds to suit his ends, and Erik leveling large swaths of Washington in part four. It’s implied that Jakob may eventually be capable of this as his powers grow with age.
• The Phoenix: Jean once the extent of her powers are revealed. She becomes associated with fire and regeneration, apparently burning to death while she revives Charles before rising from a huge pile of ashes. And she is LITERALLY a god-like being known as the Phoenix.
• Physical God: Jean is revealed to essentially be one of these in part three. However, she rejects this destiny (or at least part of it). She’s still insanely powerful, but refuses to give up her humanity (mutantity?), preferring to lead and live with her people instead.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Jakob’s hair turns from black to white when his powers manifest.
• Power Incontinence: Jean, with disastrous consequences. She gets better ... eventually.
• Power Limiter: Charles put one in Jean’s head when she was a child. This ... didn’t end too well.
• Powers That Be: In part three, Stephen Strange reveals that something has been pulling strings in their reality to ensure the ascension of the Phoenix — including making sure Erik stayed with the X-Men following the Cuban missile crisis, making it possible for Charles to become pregnant so Jean would be their daughter, and probably more. The only things they didn’t seem to account for were Jakob, and Jean’s own force of will.
• President Superhero: Charles and Erik are this for Genosha. Eventually, Jean and Ororo take their place.
• Pretty Boy: Charles is this in canon, and Jakob appears to have partially inherited it, though not without a certain edge and less so after his manifestation.
• The Promised Land - Genosha is this for the mutants. ESPECIALLY in parts four and five.
• A Protagonist Shall Lead Them: Jean becomes a leader of all of mutantkind in part four, when they’re being threatened by extinction from the humans for the Phoenix’s actions earlier.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Charles and Erik are this ... usually. Part Five shows that Jean and Ororo strive to follow their example.
• Restraining Bolt: Charles put one in Jean’s head when she was a child so her powers wouldn’t drive her insane or cause her to hurt someone. This ends up backfiring somewhat when the bolt is gone, and they discover that Jean’s repressed powers developed their own personality. (And it is pissed.)
• The Reveal: Charles and Erik repressed a huge portion of Jean's powers after she suppressed Jakob's mutation and almost went insane as a child. Immediately following this, it's learned that cosmic, godly Powers That Be manipulated the events of their universe to allow the Phoenix to fully rise and destroy the Earth in order to become one of them.
• Sacrificial Lion: Phoebe is killed by the Dark Phoenix in part three, the first important character to die before Alex, Vision, and Hawkeye follow her. In addition to being felt and discussed by her friends and loved ones afterward, her death signals the beginning of the war in part four as Genosha’s most important adviser, and the only one with complete foreknowledge of events, is gone.
• Sanity Slippage: Jean in part three. She gets better.
  • Jean also went through this as a child, prompting Charles and Erik's drastic actions.
• Screaming Warrior: Scott after the Hulk kills Alex/Havok.
• Shock and Awe: Jakob’s electrokinesis.
  • Ororo also does this, often in conjunction with Jakob.
• Shooting Superman: At one point, a guard tries to use a taser on Jakob. This does not work out for the guard.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Jean and Jakob (see Foil above).
  • Pietro and Wanda. Pietro is charming, fun-loving, and takes life easy, but is hiding deep insecurities. Wanda is openly anxious and at times depressed, moody, stressed, and constantly striving to do well; the few times when she’s happy with no downside, it doesn’t last long.
  • The third generation gives a couple of brief examples of this with ...
    • Lacey and Luna. Lacey is sweet, carefree, in touch with nature, and doesn't seem to notice or care when something is wrong. Luna is moody, irritable, and quieter in general.
    • Naserian and Njeri. Naserian is visibly a mutant with white hair and freckles, plus purple eyes, being easily beautiful, powerful, and popular. Njeri isn't a mutant, but badly wants to be, and chafes under her sister's shadow. It doesn't help that she and Jaali are the only ones of Jakob and Ororo's kids who look human.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Charles still lands on idealism more so than most of the people around him, but he takes several steps towards cynicism in his duty to protect his children and Genosha. Notably, he’s willing to kill the Avengers to save Jean, and votes in favor of officially starting a war against several human countries and organizations when the mansion is destroyed and dozens of mutant children and teachers killed.
• So Proud of You: Erik towards his children (particularly Jean and Jakob), on more than one occasion.
• Split-Personality Takeover: The Dark Phoenix and Jean. Jean takes it back with a vengeance.
• Super Family Team: The Xavier-Lehnsherr clan, particularly when Jean and Jakob start training with the X-Men.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Jean’s eyes turn gold while the Phoenix is in control. Even when she destroys her alternate personality, she retains a ring of gold around her usual light blue irises.
  • In part five, Jakob's son Othenio has gold eyes.
• Team Mom: Jean starts to take on shades of this. She learned from Charles.
• Technicolor Eyes: As a mutant, Jakob’s eyes are an opalescent white. At least two of his kids follow in this tradition, Othenio having gold eyes and Naserian purple.
  • Jean's eyes retain a ring of gold around her irises when she accepts the Phoenix power as a part of her.
  • Luna's eyes are portrayed as red in this version, linking her to Remy.
• The Rival - The Avengers and the X-Men, particularly when it comes to Wanda. Comes to a head in part three.
• Took a Level in Badass: Jakob when his powers manifest, and Jean when the full extent of hers are unearthed.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Erik, after building Genosha with Charles. Part of this is due to the fact that he’s rarely around humans anymore, and instead surrounds himself with mutants. On the occasion where he does have to interact with humans, expect him to revert back to a Jerkass.
  • In part four, Erik shows he still has his old bite when he destroys Washington DC in revenge for Wanda's death.
• Unkempt Beauty: Jean, increasingly in part three. Prior to this, she was always well-put together, dressing immaculately in Genoshan fashions and keeping her hair in elaborate braids. In part three, she pays much less attention to her appearance as she slips into insanity, and her hair is often messy and loose. But she’s still Jean, and the Phoenix adds an element of power and danger to her that’s not unattractive.
• Unstable Powered Woman - Jean after the extent of her powers are unleashed. She’s eventually able to control her powers without weakening herself, and uses this to save Genosha and mutantkind, serving as a subversion/deconstruction of this trope.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Jakob and Erik are of this opinion ... so long as that Utopia is for mutants, of course.
  • For all that he finds it distasteful, Charles is not unwilling to get his hands dirty to achieve Genosha's ends.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Everyone towards Charles and Erik in Part Three.
• White Dress of Death: Jean wears a simple, ethereal white nightgown during the latter part of Part Three as the Phoenix takes over and all hell breaks loose. Multiple people die before the night is over, and blood is sprayed on the dress when Jean kills Phoebe.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Jakob isn’t evil (at least, depending on your point of view), but he really doesn’t like humans and definitely has Jerkass tendencies.
• White Shirt of Death: Jean wears a white dress of death during the Dark Phoenix plotline, getting blood on it from Phoebe and Charles.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Jean, initially, due to the way her mind is spread across thousands of people and objects at any time. She gets better, though not without a bit of bloodshed.
• Wreathed in Flames: Jean sometimes has this effect as the Phoenix.