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reduxulousoctopus · 1 day

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X-Men '97, Post-Episode 7, ~2500 words Morpherine established relationship, missing scene (unless the show actually does explore what happened during that fight, in which case boy is there egg on my face).

I follow established show canon by referring to Morph as he/him in diegetic works (fanfic and fan art) and they/them in non-diegetic works (my episode analyses and reblogs), because that's the stupidest option and, like Morph, I am also an enby with a terrible sense of humor.

Now come watch me struggle to write two whole lines of dialogue for one of my favorite characters in the series, Beast, because Me Too Stupid to Write Smart Talk Good.

“You wanna explain what the hell happened back there?”

Although he considers pretending he didn’t hear the question, Morph reluctantly glances across the center aisle of the Blackbird to see Logan glaring back at him with an expression as hard as the adamantium underneath it. Although it’s a look he’s seen plenty of times before as an innocent bystander, Morph has only been the target of that glare on a handful of occasions. Usually when he’s severely fucked something up. Or when Logan is completely out-of-his-mind, cuckoo-bananas worried about him.

Morph suspects that this time, it’s a little Column A, a little Column B.

A wiser person might realize they were in a hole and stop digging; Morph smirks and asks, “What, the Summers Family Reunion? Well, you see, when a man and the clone of his wife love each other very much…” Morph chuckles. “By the way, this might be a bit creepy to say as one of his honorary uncles, but Baby Nathan grew up to be a serious hottie—emphasis on serious.”

No laugh. Okay, maybe that wasn’t his best material, but not even a lip twitch? Logan must be pissed.

Morph sighs and slouches in his seat. God, he doesn’t want to talk about this right now. Or maybe ever. He can feel his throat literally closing up to stop the words from coming out.

When enough time has passed that what little patience Logan had left in the tap completely runs dry, he goes right for the jugular: “I thought you were dead. Again.”

Morph winces.

“I saw that… ‘Trask Sentinel’ blow your goddamn head off. Then, next thing I know, you’re up and walkin’ around like nothing happened.”

“Not that you’re complaining, right?” Morph asks with a weak attempt at a laugh. “You know what they say about gift horses. Although, you’d think the lesson from the Trojan War would be that you should look gift horses in the mouth.”

From the seat behind him, Morph hears: “Although it’s a common misconception, that phrase actually has nothing to do with the Trojan Horse. The proverbial ‘gift horse’ is a literal, living horse, and to look it in the mouth—”

“With all those books you read,” Logan grumbles, “I thought at least one of them would've taught you it's rude to eavesdrop.”

“It would be difficult not to overhear, given the two of you are speaking quite loudly in a confined space while surrounded by people,” Beast points out. “Have you considered that this perhaps isn’t the best venue for a private conversation?”

“He is a super-genius. We’d better listen to him,” Morph tells Logan. “We’ll talk later, okay big guy?”

The stubborn set of that heavy jaw says Logan knows damn well ‘later’ means ‘never,’ and he isn’t gonna let Morph weasel out of this that easy. “If you ever want me to let you off this plane, you’ll talk now.”

“Let me?” Morph scoffs. He transforms into Quicksilver, puts on his best smug speedster grin, and says, “Just try and stop me, slowpoke.”

To his shock, Logan actually flinches. It’s a subtle thing, Morph might not have even noticed if he didn’t know Logan so well. The cause eludes him, however—until Morph remembers that he looked like Maximoff when the Thrask Sentinel… when everything went dark and quiet for a few seconds.

Funny. There was a time when Morph, blinded by youthful naivety and hero-worship, would have insisted Wolverine wasn’t afraid of anything.

Returning to his default form, Morph mutters out an apology. He tries to imagine what it would be like to see Logan die, only for him to get up a few seconds later and act like nothing happened. With that healing factor of his, they’ve gotten damned close to that exact scenario more than a few times.

How much worse would it feel, if Logan had kept his quick-healing abilities secret and Morph had to find out the hard way?

Morph takes a breath, looks out the window at the black clouds rushing by, and starts from the beginning.

“You know how most of us don’t know we’re mutants until we hit puberty, and our powers manifest? Well… I didn’t have to wait that long. Problem is, since I was just a baby, I had no idea how to control my powers—no more than a normal baby is born knowing how to walk or talk.

He holds out his hands with his palms cupped together to form a shallow, makeshift bowl.

“When I was born, I looked like a wriggling lump of white clay, about yay-big. No arms or legs, no face, no ears, no eyes. Just a mouth that would appear somewhere on my body whenever I was hungry or wanted to cry.”

Whatever Logan was expecting to hear, from the look on his face, it clearly wasn’t that.

“But even at that tender age, someone clearly recognized my star potential. I was only two days old when I made my media debut: Severely Deformed MUTANT Born In Pittsburgh Hospital.” Morph shrugs. “Not the most positive review, I’ll admit, but you know what they say: all publicity is good publicity. After all, that’s how the professor found me.”

Logan’s frown returns, more confused than angry. “You told me you didn’t meet Xavier until you were thirteen—after your mom passed.”

“That’s when I moved to the Institute. Turns out we actually met quite a lot earlier than I remembered, which is pretty embarrassing. Ideally, you don’t want to meet your future high school principal, college instructor, mentor, and world famous civil rights leader while wearing a diaper. Even worse, I was wearing a diaper, too—and I told him, mister, one of us is going to have to go home and change his outfit and it sure isn’t going to be me.”

That gets him a smile and a huff of a laugh, which would be an encouraging sign if he didn’t know how the story ends.

“So Xavier talked to my parents, explained the whole ‘mutant thing.’ Dad wasn’t happy. Then again, I’m not sure he ever was. He would have been disappointed to have a girl—a sentient lump of polymorphic biomass was right out. Thankfully, Xavier was able to use his telepathy to coach me through my very first transformation. He showed me how to turn into a normal baby boy, who would eventually grow up to look like this.”

Morph transforms into his old default, the one he still uses whenever he wants to pass: pale (although not that pale) skin, brown eyes, brown hair, hooked nose, pointed chin, gaunt cheeks, arched brows. Not exactly Fabio, but it’s the face Logan used to know him by—the face he sometimes worries Logan might secretly still prefer.

“Then he put some psychic blocks in place to limit my powers to something a bit more… manageable. Don’t give me that look. It sounds shady, but the professor messing with my head was the only reason I got to have a normal, happy childhood with my parents. God only knows what would have happened otherwise—if I’d even be alive now.”

The worry and suspicion that appeared on Logan’s face at the mention of psychic tampering grudgingly fade away. “When did you find out?” he asks instead.

“A couple months after the professor… y’know,” Morph sighs. “I hacked his personal files. Since he wouldn’t be around anymore to help you recover your memories, I hoped that maybe I could find something small he overlooked, some clue that might give us an idea where to look next.”

Logan’s eyes widen and his mouth goes slightly slack. “Morph…”

“I didn’t find anything, before you get excited. Not about you, anyway. Sure found out a lot about myself, though—a lot more than I was bargaining for.”

“That’s when your default form changed,” Logan realizes.

“Yeah. It was kind of hard to think of this,” Morph replies, gesturing at the face of his human-passing form, “as my ‘real’ face after that. Not that my new look is any more real, of course.”

“Who else knows?”

“Other than our friends listening to this conversation right now?” Morph asks pointedly, causing an entire plane full of X-Men to each make their best attempt at looking busy. Nightcrawler’s method of peering thoughtfully at the radio controls with one hand on his chin is particularly masterful—Logan mentioned he used to perform in a circus, so it’s no wonder he’s got such a good instinct for stage-business. “I told Hank and Moira not long after I found out. Seemed like a bad idea to keep that information from my doctors. Especially when one of them is also my therapist.”

At receiving a glare from Logan, Beast develops a sudden and convenient fascination with the view through the Blackbird’s window.

“But you didn’t want anyone else to know.” Logan could accept that, even if he doesn’t like it. Nothing personal. A man’s business is man's business, after all—even for a not-quite-man like Morph.

Too bad it wouldn’t be the truth; no more ‘real’ than any face that Morph wears.

“I didn’t want you to know.”

Morph can handle Logan’s anger, no problem. That’s almost charming, after all these years. But it’s the flicker of hurt, just like that little flinch earlier, that really cuts him to the quick.

“Not because I don’t trust you, or want to keep things from you or anything, it’s just… I didn’t—I couldn’t—”

He sighs and looks away again. He transforms back into his new default: smooth white skin, mask-like face. Obviously inhuman.

Still a lot more human than he looked when he was born, though.

“So, yeah. That’s why I’ve apparently gained the ability to survive having my head blown off. It sure would have been handy to know that my organs were optional the last time a Sentinel put me down. Now, instead of being out of commission for two years I’ll never get back, I can just squish myself back together and keep on keepin’ on.”

Logan doesn’t respond, and slowly, the mutter of other conversations step in to fill the void. Morph stares at nothing, sick with nerves. It’s deeply unfair that he can still feel nauseous even though he doesn’t have a stomach anymore.

He would say it’s all in his head, but if he can survive without one, maybe he doesn’t have a brain, either.

Badum-tch.

Good line. Hopefully he’ll remember it after the existential horror wears off, in the brief window when things will be funny again before the heartbreak sinks in.

Because there’s dropping a bombshell on a relationship—then there’s dropping a fucking nuke.

Oh God. There isn’t going to be a window, is there?

“Morph. Look at me.”

Although he considers pretending he didn’t hear the command, Morph reluctantly glances across the center aisle of the Blackbird to see Logan looking back at him with an expression as soft as the heart he usually tries to hide.

“No matter what you look like, there’s one thing you’ve never been able to change,” Logan tells him. “That’s real enough for me.”

A wiser person might realize they were in a hole and stop digging; Morph can’t stop himself from opening his big stupid mouth. No wonder that was the one feature even Baby Morph knew to give himself. “There are more blocks Xavier left behind that I haven’t pushed through, yet. Maybe I’ll even figure out how to change my scent, someday.”

From the look on his face, Logan clearly hadn’t considered that possibility. Morph immediately wishes he could take it back, feeling like he’s just tarnished something sacred.

It’s always been strangely intimate, the way Logan can recognize him by scent alone. Even from the beginning, when Morph decided to pull a prank on the grumpy new recruit, only for Wolverine to sniff him out mere seconds into his planned routine—it was as if, like the Emperor’s New Clothes, he suddenly realized he had been naked the entire time.

Another, smarter shapeshifter might have avoided Logan after that; Morph couldn’t get enough.

One-sided pestering turned into an unlikely friendship, turned into friends-with-benefits, turned into… whatever they have now. That which dares not speak its name.

The thought of losing that connection, the idea that someday he may be able to change himself so thoroughly that even Logan won’t be able to recognize him anymore… It’s too awful. Cursed knowledge. Like learning about the solar cycle when he was a kid, and suddenly having the horrible realization: if even the sun is going to die someday, what makes him so sure Mom will get better?

Out of the corner of his eye, Morph sees Logan’s hand start to move, stop, then start again, reaching across the aisle towards him. For a insane, terrifying moment, he thinks Logan’s about to hold his hand, outing them in front of God, the other X-Men, and everybody—but of course, that enormous, rough mitt lands on his shoulder instead. Perfectly platonic, approved for all audiences by S&P.

Though they’re shooting through the air at supersonic speed, under the heavy weight of that hand, Morph feels rooted to stable ground. He closes his eyes and takes a few slow breaths he doesn’t actually need, with lungs he only has when he remembers to make himself some.

If there are any people left when the sun finally burns out in a few billion years, they’ll still be telling each other jokes as they go into that endless good night. Just think of the money we’ll save on sunscreen. Maybe, but you know the light-bulb companies are gonna take us to the cleaners. Ha ha, freeze frame, theme song, end credits.

Even as her body slowly wasted away under the combined onslaught of cancer and chemo, Mom always laughed at his jokes, no matter how many times she heard the one about the chicken who crossed the road. His most appreciative audience, to the very last curtain call.

The world is pretty fucking scary right now, and only getting scarier. Sinister. Genosha. Losing Gambit. Sentinels again, in all new and even more monstrous forms. Even worse: total war between humans and mutants looming over the horizon, shaking the ground with each step, getting closer and more inevitable every time someone mentions it, like a demon whose power grows every time you says its name.

But just because things are scary doesn’t mean the world's turning into a horror movie, and just because things are sad doesn’t make it a tragedy. Everyone gets to choose the genre of their life story—and Morph will always pick comedy.

He gives the hand on his shoulder a friendly pat, and uses the motion to disguise a slightly more-than-friendly squeeze. “I’m alright, just a little airsick. I think it’s making me maudlin.”

As he pulls his hand back, Logan frowns a little in confusion—he knows Morph is experienced enough in the air that he shouldn’t be getting nauseous over what are, for the Blackbird, barely above pleasure-cruise speeds.

“How unfair is that, by the way?” Morph asks. “I don’t even have a stomach right now.”

Logan chuckles. Nah, baby, don’t give it up for me that easy, Morph thinks, fighting a grin. You gotta make me work for it a little…

He needn’t have worried, though. When he does make it to the punchline, Logan laughs so hard that he snorts, the laugh-lines Morph has personally carved into that seemingly indestructible face creasing and growing deeper still. And as their friends who Definitely Weren’t Eavesdropping join in—even Rogue, so teary and congested that her laughs would sound like sobs if she wasn’t smiling—Morph knows all their attempts to hide their relationship have been for nothing, because there’s no way that all the love he feels for Logan in that moment isn’t writ large all over whichever face he's wearing right now.

That’s real enough for him.

#x men 97 #x men #morph #wolverine #morpherine #my stuff #wait what this actually ended up good #have I actually been a good writer this whole time and just too depressed to notice?#what the fuck that's not fair

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reduxulousoctopus · 14 days

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Okay, have just finished Courage and now I feel like I gotta write my review of "the Morpherine episode" lol

Before we get into it, I have to say I'm a bit disappointed by the Sentinel plot after what happened during the finale of season one.

To recap, it turns out that the Sentinels are abducting world leaders because their programming told them to defend humans from mutants, but because "mutants ARE humans," Mastermold interpreted that to means their mission is actually to defend humans from themselves by taking control of the world. Brilliant way to resolve that arc, and a clever subversion of both the human bigotry that created them AND Xavier's/the X-Men's mission to promote equality between humans and mutants (because the Sentinels are still their enemies even while technically agreeing with them).

So having the Sentinels, especially Mastermold, just be generic mutant-hunting robots again is a let-down, especially without any explanation. They could have kept the Sentinels as the villains for this episode without ignoring all that, y'know? Ah, well. More superficially, they also changed the voice of the Sentinels for some reason? They just sound like guys now, it's weird.

Alright, that's enough of the actually respectable media analysis, let's get into what we're really here for:

While I didn't notice any bombshell lines like "Or maybe it's love you're missing?" in this episode, there were plenty of cute moments. For the most part, nothing they do really steps outside the bounds of best-friendship. For example, Logan is the only one who hugs Morph to welcome them back, but that's not particularly suggestive of anything besides a confirmation that the two of them are closer to each other than they are to the other X-Men.

That said, as soon as Wolverine and Morph are alone, there's a moment where they're both watching some drone footage of the factory they're going to investigate--or, at least, they're supposed to be watching the footage. Instead, the two of them keep staring at each other, then quickly glancing back at the screen as soon as they notice the other one looking. It's like they both know they should be focused on the mission, but all they can think about is each other and the fact that they're finally back together after so much time apart. Or they understand each other so well and have that kind of chemistry where they can have an entire silent conversation just by looking at each other.

There's also some dialogue during their mission together which could be interpreted as slightly flirtatious:

Wolverine: "Still haven't lost your touch, I see." Morph: "Just like riding a bicycle."//"Looks like you haven't lost your touch, either. [laughter]"

It's wild that Wolverine--the jackass who once loudly demanded "Yeah, who? No deserters in this crowd!" after Cyclops tried to subtly explain that some mutants (Rogue) might want to be "cured" (Rogue) and live a normal life (Rogue) because their powers cause them so much pain and isolation (Rogue Rogue he's talking about Rogue she's literally sitting right next to you, catch a fucking hint!), and made fun of Gambit for reacting with alarm at the sight of a (deactivated) Sentinel--is so openly concerned for Morph's emotional well-being after realizing that Sentinels are involved. Like at one point Cyclops even has to step in like "the Professor's just been abducted by giant robots can you shut the fuck up about Morph's feelings for one second???"

We get yet another scene of Logan reacting to Morph's scent, this time as a direct parallel to the one in 'Till Death Do Us Part when he first realizes that Morph's still alive. There's something so weirdly intimate about Logan being able to identity people by scent, considering how closely smells are tied to memories and emotions. Add the fact that Morph's shapeshifting powers can change everything except their scent, so that means Logan can always recognize them no matter what they look or sound like-- it's so good. And the writers must have agreed, because they put in more scenes of Logan tracking or recognizing Morph by their scent than anyone else (at least at this point in the series, we'll see if anyone catches up).

When Morph does their usual shtick, Logan's right there grinning from ear to ear like a doofus. Sir calm down, you're one step away from giggling and twirling your hair around your finger. This is kicking your feet in bed writing "Mx. Morph Howlett" in your dairy type behavior, stoooooop.

Wolverine calls Morph "kid" a couple times this episode, the flip-side of Morph calling him "old man" in Whatever It Takes. Morph also calls him "big guy," which is cute.

Speaking of names, I think this is the first episode where Morph calls him Logan instead of Wolverine. While crying, too, which-- how dare you?? Like yeah, a moment of intense emotion is exactly the correct time to have one character switch to using a more personal name for another character, but also it hurts my feelings so stop it. Look at Wolverine's face, show-writers, you made him sad too.

Morph's very pretty brown eyes get a lot of focus and close-ups in this episode. I wonder if Logan misses seeing them more often now that Morph's going for the inhuman blank-eyed look in '97.

Not relevant, but I have to mention how much I love Wolverine's line-read of "keep your shirt on, puh-rettay boyuh." lol I don't think that's a Canadian accent Mr. Dodd but I do appreciate it thanks. Bringing it back on topic though, at the end, the heartbroken delivery of "Morph, wait!" when Morph takes off to go back to Muir Island is so freaking sad. His voice even breaks a little on the word "wait". He tried so hard to bring Morph home was so happy to finally have them back only to to lose them again and I

So anyway. Yeah. The hype is real. I was disappointed by the Sentinel plot, but that isn't really the focus of the episode. Despite my complaints, the time they could have spent explaining why the Sentinels are back to hunting mutants would have cut down on the exploration of Morph's character, their terribly-timed attempt to return to active duty, and their relationship with Wolverine.

And although nothing explicitly "shippy" happened between them in this episode, Whatever It Takes already established (in my opinion) that there was something not-platonic going on between them before Morph's supposed death (whether they were in a romantic relationship, friends with benefits who caught feelings, had a mutual attraction they never acted on, etc).

With that context, I think their interactions in this episode could be seen as an example of what they're like as a couple. We get to see their dynamic, how they banter, what names they call each other, an example of something that they argue about (Morph feels like they're being babied by Logan's over-protectiveness), an indication of how sentimental/outwardly affectionate they are (Morph mockingly asks if Wolverine's "going to get all mushy on me" and Wolverine answers "I don't get mushy"-- you know, like a liar), and so on.

I'll probably have more to say about this episode later but I've literally been up all night and need to go to bed before I pass out at my desk lol

#morpherine #wolverine #morph #x men

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