GL1 said:
But it does not explain how Jean, a mutant born at a specific time, has an origin outside of time, thusly, it suggests that while Phoenix and Jean now are one, that they were not always so. Perhaps they were, but it's hard to explain without saying that Phoenix/Jean created Jean Grey, and thus, arranged her parents, yeah her whole lineage, yes, even controlled world events to ensure that Jean Grey would be born.
Intheknow101 has already explained the time paradox quite well, imo, in ways that I hadn't even thought of. The White Hot Room, the birthplace of the Phoenix and everything else, exists outside of time and space. Time
has no meaning there, so Jean Grey could be the Phoenix from the very beginning of time right up to the very end. The physical body of the Phoenix, Jean Grey, was born into the timestream at a specific date in the 20th century, yes, but that doesn't really mean anything because, outside of the timestream, she has
always existed.
GL1 said:
The only thing that makes character traits remain the same is writer preference... it has nothing to do with logic. Infinity is Infinity.
You're talking about character
personality and, perhaps, character history. That's not really the same thing as character traits so far as it concerns this discussion. Yes, Storm might be a New York car thief in one reality, but she's still Storm with recognizable Storm traits such as her gender, her race, and her powers. If she was all of a sudden an middle-aged male Asian with laser powers in another reality, I don't think there's any way to logically argue that that's still Storm.
GL1 said:
Again, infinite realities. Unless the Phoenix can and does eradicate all realities where Jean never meets the Phoenix Force or where Jean doesn't exist, then those realities, logically, must exist.
But if you're going to assume something is true just because it
might be true in some oddball reality 75 degrees displaced from the 616, there's no point at all in trying to put meaning or definitions to anything at all. I could say that
Jubilee is actually the true Phoenix since it
might be possible in the 3567348752 reality or something, but there's no basis for that. You can't prove a negative with another negative and call it evidence. On the other hand, we know that Jean Grey is the Phoenix in this reality. That is fact, and really the only thing that truly matters. As a
bonus, we have evidence showing that she is the Phoenix in multiple other realities. That merely strengthens the notion that she is the Phoenix in this one since her character traits ought to be the same.
GL1 said:
So... Phoenix created Jean Grey?
Jean Grey is Phoenix. I understand what you're saying, but the idea of the Phoenix Force actually creating a host for itself, or anything else for that matter, is really looking at it the wrong way. The Phoenix Force is not a person. It's a force. It's a force wielded by a person called the Phoenix, who is Jean Grey. It has no identifiably humane desires, and no personality beyond that which it copied off of its wielder, who is Jean Grey. It doesn't even really have the capacity to perform any actions whatsoever without being bonded to a host; moments where it does, as in Endsong, have always been exceptions to the norm, not the norm itself. The Shi'ar even remark on this, saying that it's bizarre for the Phoenix raptor to manifest without the X-Man Jean Grey. It belongs to her and she belongs to it, and the being known as the Phoenix, who is merely what Jean Grey is called when she accesses the Force, is the one really doing all the work. To say that the Phoenix Force created Jean Grey is like saying that magnetism created Magneto or something.
Now, that is not to say that the Phoenix Force is not
sentient. It is. It speaks to Jean Grey periodically, it spoke to Rachel, and it is obviously self-aware, especially regarding its duties. But the Phoenix Force's sentience, stripped of all connection to Jean Grey's life, memories, and personality, is merely comparable to that of a robot or machine. It's like a computer that does what it does when it needs to since that's what it's supposed to do. That's why it needs a host at all, someone to tell the computer what to do.