Jean's genocide

I was thinking:
"take THAT, stupid space-broccoli!!!"

I think genocide is the wrong term for it. Genocide is deliberate. Genocide implies an intent to destroy an entire group.

Phoenix had no intent to destroy the D'bari. She focused upon the sun b/c she was hungry and didn't know about the planet of inhabitants depending upon it. They had nothing to do with it and were just in the wrong place and the wrong time.

I read it as a tragedy, yes, but genocide or mass murder? No.

While it wasn't genocide as in intentionally killing an entire species, Phoenix was still to blame for their death and it can't be ruled out as a tragic accident. Sure, she consumed the star cause she was hungry, but she wasn't starving and she didn't have to neccesarily consume that star.

True, Phoenix hungered.... but the way how casually she decided to consume D'Bari ("this star should do nicely"), shows that she could have picked another star. She just didn't care, didn't bother to consider any consequences of her actions. Acting carelessly is no absolution of guilt, it just takes away intent, but not responsibility.

Edited by Peter Luzifer - 15-Mar-2010 at 12:44am

All very good points. In greater detail, here's how I see it.

Ignoring the retcon that Phoenix wasn't Jean, she should have been held accountable for all those deaths. True enough, she wasn't in her right frame of mind, being overwhelmed by near limitless power, but at the same time, she was aware of what she was doing, and potential implications of her actions. I would argue that at the level of power she was at, there is no way that a telepath of that magnitude would be entirely unaware of a densely populated planet. She would have sensed something, at least an inkling of sentient life from the star system, and whilst the journey through space would have made her ravenous, travelling far enough into Shi'ar protected space, she could have easily found another star that didn't have populated planets depending upon it.

Her attack on the Shi'ar cruiser is almost incidental at this point other than to force the Shi'ar to action against Jean, a former ally. Jean is clearly beyond drunk on power at this point and so therefore sees the Shi'ar's attack on her as an attack on a god--which she truly seems to believe herself to be at this juncture. She reacted like many of the gods of myth when faced with opposition-- with extreme prejudice and reducing them to ashes. Again, furthering my point that she could have easily sensed the life forms on the planet she had just destroyed, is that she was able to pluck the thoughts of the crew out of their minds and knew they would keep attacking her. She HAD to know that D'Bari was populated and the damage that her consumption of the star would cause.

So, on one hand, Jean wantonly murdered 5 billion people, and as such, the Shi'ar, Kree and Skrulls kind of had a point when they wanted her blood. Her subsequent sacrifice to save the rest of the X-Men, whilst noble, does NOT erase this deed or go anyway to balance the scales, although I suppose it could be seen by the Shi'ar that justice had been done-- a killer has been brought to justice.

On the other hand... are more fingers. As well as the retcon that Phoenix was a facsimile of Jean Grey that took her place, and was experiencing human emotion for the first time. Lets face it, we're a pretty emotional race, as it goes. There are times when the smallest things can make us happy, sad, angry... and these are strong emotions, all of which a being of limitless power is experiencing for the first time, and not through the traditional growing up, having a childhood, learning right from wrong... but through experiencing life as a female in her early twenties. Absolutely no emotion whatsoever for millenia... then BOOM. Emotion-town. Population; Phoenix. Firstly, she's dealing with the fact that she is experiencing love for the first time, via Scott, who clearly loves Jean too. Then she is subtely manipulated into having conflicting emotions on this scale, between Cyclops and Mastermind. She is coerced into attacking her friends (whom Jean sees as family, a different aspect of love), then released. She experiences furious rage aimed at Emma Frost and Mastemind for their torture of her friends and the mind-games played on her, respectively. She experiences fear and distrust from those around her, including people she feels love for, by her growing power levels and the casual way she will alter other people's memories and opinions, and that she will use more force than necessary on the Hellfire Club goons who were driving after Kitty. She feels betrayed when her friends attack her and try to stop her. All of these massive emotional flip-flops after experiencing nothing by way of an emotion for millenia? It's enough to drive anyone mad, I'd imagine, especially when you're a being of such power that you can not only do something about it, but you can literally do almost anything to change it. Not only is the temptation there, but there is motive, and considering that was all Phoenix had experienced of life as a human was emotional turmoil, being a copy of Jean Grey notwithstanding, its akin to the difference between reading or hearing about something secondhand and experiencing it for yourself. For example, I could read in graphic detail about how much it would hurt to get shot in the guts, but until it happened to me for real, I would never truly know how it felt.

All of these factors were a LOT for Phoenix to reconcile, and even with Jean Grey's basic personality, memories, and presumably moral compass to guide it, Phoenix couldn't handle being fully human and flipped out. She needed more energy to convert herself into a god-like state, and so did what Phoenix knew to do-- eat a star and gain more power. The fact that the star was populated was of little consequence to a crazed cosmic force, and whether she knew or not, she devoured the star. Perhaps this makes the motives more understandable, but it certainly does not excuse Phoenix's actions, however nor does it lay any blame at the feet of the real Jean.

I think it's difficult to see Phoenix (as a separate entity to Jean) as not being responsible for the D'Bari deaths. Her actions directly led to the destruction of an entire race, however I can see your point about her deeming herself so far beyond them that she wouldn't mourn for them.

However, with this being a retcon, and getting myself back on track (since I seem to have derailed myself, which is an achievment in and of itself, really)... in the original, intended context,  ie: Phoenix was Jean, no two ways about it, and that she was simply shown the full extension of her abilities... was Shooter right to say that, at that time, the character of Jean was irrideemable in terms of having killed the D'Bari, and that she should be shown to suffer the consequences of her actions, by way of being killed off? To reiterate-- Jean as a mutant of considerable power and NOT as a cosmic entity masquerading as Jean, killing an entire planet of sentient life forms due to her being drunk on power... is that something that the character would, or even SHOULD have been able to come back from?

I don't know if there are any people in this discussion that read Dark Phoenix as it came out, but I did, and even though I was very young at the time, I remember thinking as she killed the Shi'Ar and destroyed the D'Bari: "Oh my GOD! She can never come back from this! She's gone insane!"

not to co-mingle topics as I believe someone brought it up in the Wanda thread anyway - but it is a little similar the way these two very powerful characters were driven insane and committed heinous acts, and in Jean's case was absolved thru retcon that it wasn't her, and Wanda is still awaiting her absolution (that is, if she even gets it). And Jean/Phoenix/Whateve killed a solar system, where as Wanda killed maybe tens of people (I would count those who died because of powerloss like Magma's boyfriend), and even ressurected one of the people she killed, twice.

In Jean's retcon, they obviously wanted to get her as far away from the crime as possible, so they made it a completely separate entity and I'm not sure even how often it was brought up in those early years.

I think I've come to several decisions factoring in every possible case.

1) Phoenix was really Jean and she was driven to insanity due to the manipulations played on her by Mastermind combined with her massive power boost-- Not guilty. If anything, Mastermind should have been the one to face the Shi'ar for breaking her psyche and causing the insanity that was entirely out of character for her at that point in time.

2) Phoenix was a cosmic entity that replaced Jean and was driven mad by her exposure to raw human emotions and Mastermind's manipulations--JEAN is not culpable at all. If anything, Phoenix is doubly to blame for masquerading as Jean (Identity theft/ fraud), and everyone who messed with her head is also to blame for driving her mad. Ultimately, Phoenix, as a millenia-old cosmic force is still to blame for the deaths of the D'Bari, was aware of the consequences of its actions, and should be held accountable.

3) It was Jean all along, and whilst she was temporarily a bit messed up in the head, her actions were derived essentially from her wanting to push her limits and see what she was actually capable of with her new found power-- Probably the biggest stretch since the retcon, but if this had been the case, then she does indeed deserve to be lasered into annihilation. Just because she had the power at her disposal to do such a thing, doesn't mean she needs to prove that she can. It would be akin to Psylocke ACTUALLY shattering a mountain just to prove that she can back up her outrageous claims with something substantial. 

Originally posted by Savant Hmm... so I'm the one saying don't execute the mentally ill and JanO is the one saying fry her? I may need to change my forum sig JanO

Going back to something savant asked (and hopefully not getting too much off-topic here)...

Edited by Peter Luzifer - 16-Mar-2010 at 1:24pm

The point in Shooter's decision to have Phoenix die was also that he wanted her to be "redeemed", not just punished. In some way, we still had to feel for Jean, and in her sacrefice she became once again "heroic", taking responsibility for what she had done, and what she would have done again.