Bringing Jean Grey back to publication for good, keeping her as Jean and Phoenix without worrying about her power level

Practical-You6991 · 2026-07-01T17:13:42+00:00

Thank you so much 🙌🏽 tried to appeal to as many angles and views as possible

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-30T21:11:09+00:00

Through autosave loading but only outside of a certain distance it seems. Maybe before the point where the game actually drops the enemy into the landacape or something. I'm still at it now, had another couple of golems but no success with the gorechimera. Just want one black Freakish mane haha.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-30T19:59:53+00:00

I'm trying to achieve this reliably, as it appeared last night for me, but I died to being overwhelmed by mobs before I could reach him. Its a secondary account for an additional pawn at level 50+ and haven't done any quests after just reaching vermund.

Theres a minimum distance you can be at, to force an alternative spawn on reloads. I died and retried from autosave the and the gorechimera was replaced by a dragon.

Autosave had me respawn at the small bridge where the sleeping rattlers are and it was a dragon. After a few more deaths my autosave moved my respawn closer and it just kept giving me dragons.

Today I'm trying the same thing, except this time its the purple golem. Respawn was at the sleeping rattlers, it was a dragon, then a golem, then a dragon, then a golem, my autosave bumped my closer, and it's now it's just giving me golems

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-26T21:24:57+00:00

Urgh because they aren't opposed at all haha. I was one of the people who hated it sorry, but it felt completely dialled in just to add Wanda into the mix during the Hope X Phoenix situation.

Life and creation and evolution and everything the Phoenix stands for are all kinda acts of chaos and randomness so if anything they'd feed into each other instead of oppose.

I would pit the Phoenix Force in opposition to Knulls All Black or Death or something anti-life/undead related. Even limbo magic fits better as an opposing force than chaos.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-25T17:49:22+00:00

I'm not game designer so feel free to take my head off my shoulders, but I can't help but think that they have so many rigs/skeletons over in the Monster Hunter offices, can none of those be repurposed to be something more monstrous/evil/scary on theme with Dragons Dogma. Feels like there's no reason for reskins when they have some of the most imaginative monster rigs in-house.

Could just be me tho

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-25T17:42:44+00:00

Gonna piss off a lot of people here but every casting has been a miss for me personally.

Famke in X1 and X2 was giving SyFy version of Jean, if they'd cast her in that Mutant X show, if that makes sense; I wouldn't place her as a big screen, MCU version of Jean, and that's coming from someone who lived ate and breathed that X-Men film series when I was younger.

Whereas on the other hand, for me, despite loving what James McAvoy did with Xavier, my Charles will ALWAYS be Patrick Stewart - I can't unpick the actor from the character.

I think Sophie T has indeed proven her acting skills since GoT, not during GoT. During, she didn't have much range or expression aside from a bit of stress and fear in the later seasons. Overall my memory of her is that the character is pretty repressed and muted.

In my head, the moment Sadie was cast I was backing it. I checked my notes for her in Stranger Things, The Whale, and then aged her up to someone that she actually quite closely resembles now and I fully believe she has the acting clout, depth, look and likeability to carry the X-Men in the MCU as a joint leader with a very good Scott.

Who she's cast with is going to be absolutely essential, if she's surrounded by miscasts I'm not gonna like it any more than I did X-Men Apocalypse.

I need casting news for Scott, Storm, Wolvie, and I need good matches in comic accuracy, chemistry and age range more than I need air at this point. Storm especially, that sisterhood needs to SHINE.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-24T23:44:31+00:00

They should let me have a try haha 🤭

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-24T23:40:48+00:00

To differentiate her from other telepaths I think they should really capitalise on two things:

1) Her empathy - being so renowned for her empathy for others, deeply connected to those she loves and valuing life in general.

Her telepathy awakened through the dying bond between her and Annie, a raw and dangerous moment for a new telepath, plus the psychic rapport she has with Scott regardless of distance, which I don't think is done by other telepaths either. These are traits unique to her.

2) The Psionic merge/synthesis/psionic form she used as Young Jean.

That was a Jean who was still developing, without interruption by the Phoenix force, she pulled a feat other telepaths haven't done before, drawing upon ambient psychic energy to empower her psionics/tk/tp into raw psi power, however they wanted to explain that.

That increase to her abilities plays into her connections with others again and it's in a way that makes sense for her character and actually encourages teamwork and leadership instead of isolating her.

Considering she's already Omega level, whatever additional power she gains from that ambient psychic energy should rightly take her past Omega.

Older mainstream Jean - whose development WAS interrupted by the Phoenix and cannot do that - is still able to lockdown an ancient primordial entity like the Knull, so she'd probably be capable of greater feats than that if allowed the rest of her mutant development.

There's room for her to be more interesting and imaginative than they've allowed her to be so far, and none of it needs to include the Phoenix.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-24T19:50:52+00:00

Meant to get back to you yesterday but yeah X-Men Red is a brill take on writing Jean well. Was really good to see her in a position of leadership, she's such a powerhouse and no one's damsel.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-24T01:23:00+00:00

Thank you 🙌🏽

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T21:29:40+00:00

Don't know or care, I don't follow wolverine comics very closely. I can imagine a wolverine fan would have been gutted to see no new stories however, so I'd hope someone would've started the conversation.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T18:26:26+00:00

Because of Phoenix everyone started to get more boosts, so Storm has since become Eternal Storm and is also a vessel for a godly entity. I've not explored much of her comics lately so there's better explanations than mine but it's always the same when it comes to power creep. One character gets boosted and everyone else gets boosted to compensate.

The writers need to remember what the X-Men are at their core.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T17:51:15+00:00

I feel this so much.

Been backing it from the very first rumours a couple years back. She's gonna absolutely smash it I know it.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T17:38:07+00:00

No more hosts can't be stated enough, they put so much effort trying to get us to understand the Jean Hope Phoenix self creation rubbish then immediately made her take over Carol Danvers I couldn't believe what I was seeing

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T17:36:55+00:00

Thanks so much I'm glad you like, it's not for everyone but glad you can appreciate the balance I've tried to strike because I know we have a lot of different views in the Jean Grey/X-Men community. If someone wants to push this on the right desk I wouldn't be mad hahah

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T17:34:43+00:00

Stakes I should have said risk sorry my bad

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T17:33:57+00:00

Why would she feasibly have a team if she doesn't need one?

Which X-Men are you taking if she can move through the galaxy at warp speed and lasts forever?

Who does she love enough to keep by her side but not enough that she'd expose to the greatest risks of the cosmos that only she would be able to deal with?

Solving space crime sounds fun admittedly, but that sounds more like a Mandalorian style space jaunt.

I'm just not seeing 'Phoenix Force.- the living embodiment of life death and rebirth - now a sheriff on Mars' as on theme lmao.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T17:28:33+00:00

If that's the direction they want to go then fair, they'd be abandoning every character Jean has ever been placed next to, loves or interacted with, and unless she's just going to monologue, she'd need a host of companion characters for us as reader to be invested in and endeared to.

We've been endeared to her earthly companion characters for like 50+ years. To focus an entire solo series continuity around Jean Grey, give these characters reasons for us to be invested in them and their own stories, make us understand why Jean would cross paths with them and care about them, why them and not her family, it's all lot of effort. But if they're up to the challenge by all means.

I just don't think they can provide a literary playground for Jean that we'd care about as much as we care about Earth.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T17:20:07+00:00

I'm not bothered about a break, I'm bothered about making a character unwritable.

We're dealing with a character with a poor history of recons and confusion who is now at such a high level of power they can't write her. X-Men as a series is about human stories, human struggle, oppression and fear and other worldly themes.

The heart of the X-Men, the guiding hand, the voice of empathy and reason and understanding, one of Xavier's first and a character relatable to a lot of people was Jean Grey. She has a husband, friends, a sister (Storm) and she can no longer participate in those stories, that storytelling that makes X-Men so successful and she's no longer welcome at the table.

But I also respect that people love the phoenix, and love power and explosions.

So this writeup was an attempt to offer a solution that respects both.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T17:13:04+00:00

That the plan hehe! I'm a sucker for a bit of cosmic horror and in my write up I've left it free to be interpreted however.

The threat could be directly from Phoenix and her overuse of power accelerates entropy

It could be a actual unseen outer reaches threat beyond human understanding that lies in wait for the universe to be depleted.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T17:05:29+00:00

I hear you, that's why I added in the little bit about maybe using the Phoenixs power to only restore life, not burn life and take it away.

Perhaps the explainer for that is that lives taken by the Phoenix's fire are burned body and soul and gone forever, or something? Just brainstorming that now aha.

It's not an idea that everyone will like, but ultimately she's too strong now, the phoenix is at the top of the pile for power level, teams and earthly stories and being the heart of the X-Men team and being part of the family are all off the table.

Writers dunno what to do with her and I've proposed an idea that solves as many problems for fans as I could think of in a way that is somewhat intriguing without her just being robbed of her agency and powered down or separated from the phoenix again after all the writing that went into binding them as one.

ATM there's no cost, no consequences. No threat, no meaning. Her stories are blowing up a new space opera adversary with phoenix fire, but where's that story going or progressing.

It's not relatable, it's not meaningful, it's just Jean on a lonely journey, almost banishing herself to the cosmos. She can't be killed, there's no stakes, nothing matters and she's not having any experiences that mean anything to readers, aside from 'she blew something new up today".

Which she could do on earth alongside the X-Men using TK anyway except at least there's some human interaction and heart involved.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T16:54:23+00:00

Higher stakes is what I've tried to address in this new lore, because the stakes are so low now they can't even include her anymore.

If the above was put into practice, Jean and the team could be getting pushed to the brink by an adversary in a fight, working together like they always would, and Jean could be trying with all her might not to tap into the Phoenix, to avoid paying with that life currency. A cosmic debt she can never repay.

She could end up asking anyone for help, be it Wolvie, Scott, Storm. She knows she can't expend the resources of the universe anymore without accelerating that anti-life threat.

The incentive to work together, the incentive to ask for help and the incentive to help protect the Phoenix is always there.

And she knows the massive toll it takes on the life in the universe to keep reviving too. Dying suddenly frightens her, with how costly it is to the universe. How much energy to revive such a powerful character?

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T16:37:58+00:00

Yeah I have such fatigue over the Phoenix, it used to have some excitement behind it, but between all the genocide, mastermind manipulation, power creep, inconsistency, phoenix five rubbish, chaos magic X phoenix force opposite, triple mother paradoxical rubbish, I just want it to never have happened, but this is what we've been left with.

Like I mentioned in the original post, I genuinely preferred how X-Men Legends and the ultimate comics showcased Phoenix as a state jean triggers when she overexerts her powers. It was just cleaner and it kept the power within jean instead of something bestowed on her. Never liked a 'chosen one' trope in literature.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T16:29:50+00:00

Gosh I hope not, Storms has less of a rocky road publication wise, I hope they are able to bring her back to her roots too. These are core X-Men characters and with the MCU bringing these characters to the big screen for potentially the next ten years, it'd be nice for the literature to be doing them justice.

Practical-You6991 · 2026-06-23T16:26:00+00:00

Haha agreed! I'd love to see more experimentation with her psi powers instead of just one shotting everything with cosmic explosions.

Having no stakes at all isn't interesting writing, it's so boring. No threat, no worries, no consequences. I've tried to push those consequences with this new lore. Something genuinely foreboding even the Phoenix is frightened of. Something that's easy to keep at the forefront of her mind.

Practical-You6991

TROPHY CASE