i think part of the reason i enjoyed the end of omega kids, with quentin telling the kids he understands being a mutant & a teenager, telling them he'll give them the kindness & understanding his teachers granted him, & then straight-up killing them, is bc like...
yes, sure, he's been given a lot of second chances, & a lot of them he's squandered his own damn self. i will never deny he's a fuckup. but man, i think, as the person experiencing it, being kidnapped, threatened with custody, & essentially kept on house arrest doesn't feel like a second chance? being on a psychic leash held by someone who seems to hate you doesn't feel like a kindness? being in an environment where someone is constantly threatening you grievous harm, not in a 'hope you survive the experience' way, but actually, personally, threatening your stupid ass isn't a great learning environment? & god. the birthday party at the hellfire club always gets me. logan telling tony he wasn't there to bring quentin back - he was there to deliver one last push. towards what? the suicidal edge the kid's been dancing on? the black hole of money & power & the worst associates he can make? or just away from you, one of the few people he's found himself close to, trying to soften the blow when you die by hurting him more???
that's how teachers are, in quentin's eyes. good teachers, even. some of the most impressive people alive. they do their best. they help you flourish. & then they destroy you.
i LOVE how nasty QQ was to those kids at the end of Omega Kids right after saying that line about giving them the support he was given as a kid cuz...He had kept talking abt all that support he'd been given in the firsy to issues and??? Bro was not given support???
Like idek if this is a hot take or a bery basic one but...Every time i reread Riot at Xaviers I am struck by how unhelpful the adults were. Quentin and his friends were doing drugs and talking about their distress about the lack of action they were seeing from their authorities following a literal genocide of their people and then they start killing people- and the adults are like "they'll get it out of their system "???? "we'll so a public psa abt why drugs are bad and ban the striped vests and that'll fix their extreme radicalism" girl.
As this cool essay puts, Quentin was absolutely failed by his authorities/mentors in his forst appearance. In his subsequent (and more lighthearted) appearances he is given more chances but even those are framed as needing to fix something "bad" about him and dont acknowledge the failures of the adults before him. As Evan said, it's just assumed that he's the bad guy even when he was still just a kid.
Anyway rant aside...That is why I liked the irony of him saying he wants to give the kids the support he got and then coldly executing them. Cuz thats actually more accurate to how he was treated. I just like the boldness lately to return Quentin to his more nasty roots, remembering that he can be really fucked up and isnt just comic relief and tshirts all the time...But also that nastiness comes with what seems like an understanding Why he's that way.
The dark path he went down could have easily been avoided if any of the adults at Xaviers school bothered to put more time into him. Maybe we're too late in the game to get an acknowledgement of that (though McKay seems very open to the idea that Xavier was pretty terrible to QQ!) we'll see...
Sorry that was very poorly worded but yeah I really liked Omega Kids. I liked how bad he was. But also that hint to us about why he's that way.
