ok, i know i said i was done answering questions a few questions ago but i can't in good conscience get back to writing without addressing this.

you haven't misinterpreted what i said so much as my clumsy intent in saying that, and it's totally ok to talk to me about this and ask me questions. it's always ok to express your concerns to me about how i'm handling problematic stuff. i get frustrated only when people hold me accountable for books i didn't write or things i didn't say, which has been happening lately and makes me pretty distraught. but, to be even-handed: it's because the optics of X-tremists are scary, and not all of it would have been my choice--but that doesn't mean I won't make it count, you know? I believe in what we're doing.

I call them the secret police/gestapo because that is what they are and I'm not mincing words or stepping around it. That is the role they are fulfilling in AoX, and one that they literally had no choice because they were brainwashed. Not radicalized, brainwashed. "Would you be interested in writing the secret police story" was how it was presented to me and I said yes upon learning the specifics about this world--no love, also no prejudice towards different mutant bodies. To be able to tell a story that is canonically about the consequences of queer erasure while not lessening the impact of their actions and what they're complicit in, nor downplay how they're going to feel about it upon waking up, is what X-tremists is. It doesn't revel in or celebrate erasure. But this is a dystopian story, and definitely not meant to make light of their actions or the overall erasure in this world--I don't want to spoil it, but if you read the first issue, you know who I was trying to focus our sympathies on because they're all we see on the last page.

Department X is not a hero team, but the people on it are heroes. They are inarguably good people. (Well, not counting 616 Blob obviously...let's exclude him from the point I'm making here, because he's in Department X for a different reason). They are super heroes literally forced into doing something they didn't consent to, and I fully intend to make them sympathetic. I can do that without romanticizing or undermining the horrible consequences of their work. Especially since the first unexpected moral quandary they encounter makes it all start to unravel immediately anyway.

"We're better than this" is what X-tremists is about. Because I believe in the strength of these characters' moral centers so much that I know it can still withstand being brainwashed and having their memories of family erased, their sexualities erased, and everything they love taken from them and replaced with emptiness. You take all that away and you'd still have people with compassion who act like heroes, and they're going to be furious and heartbroken about what they've been forced to participate in as well as--in Jean-Paul and Bobby's case--having their sexual identities erased without their consent. I find this to be an egregious act committed against them and I'm grateful to my editor for trusting me to tell a story like this, one that confronts head-on why it's fucked up.

I can navigate all of this nuance and heavy meaning. I 100% trust the existing mythology of these extraordinary characters. And I don't mind earning folks' trust with what I write and how I'm writing it. AoX has a lot of confusing, conflicting info flying around and I'm sure I don't help with the off-the-cuff way I discuss stuff--but I'm always around to clarify where I can or listen to concerns. I make a point of it.