LORNA DANE.
The Value of Potential
Since last night, I’ve been thinking about all the times where I see potential in something great. I’ve thought about all the times those things were derided as worthless or bad, how there seemed to be hardly anyone else out there who said similar things or agreed with me… but then things changed once people actually got talking.
Rosa Farrell from FF4 used to be looked down on as a “worthless damsel in distress.” People now see that she started white mage tropes, she fought through a desert by herself to reach Cecil, she sacrificed herself to Kain and Golbez so they wouldn’t kill everyone, and so much more.
Polaris is a character that used to be seen (and still is far too often by Marvel) as nothing but Havok’s girlfriend, a character who I distinctly remember one guy saying should be thrown into space limbo to “keep her away from characters that matter.” Today, there’s tons of fanart, tons of cosplay, tons of RPing as her, and there’s a popular live action version of her.
The impetus of this entire post is RAGE 2. I loved the first game. For years, other people dismissed it as, in their view, a worthless and mediocre game. But right now, RAGE 2′s announcements are incredibly popular. Of all the games leaked by Walmart Canada by accident, RAGE 2 is the game people have been talking about constantly. Even before Bethesda started releasing teasers and people only had words to go on.
All the things that I see potential in, that I strongly support, if they’re given a real shot, they turn out to be exactly as great and awesome as I said they would be. We get whole franchises, whole storylines, whole inspired generations because the potential of those things was realized.
Of course, not everything I see potential in manages to get its potential explored.
Dreamer is still dead on Gifted from a horribly written death.
Aya Brea and Parasite Eve are still abandoned because Squeenix can’t be assed to acknowledge that 3rd Birthday was a huge mistake.
The “Tomb Raider” “reboot” continues, having the appearance of greatest success because the franchise and character suffered from over a decade of misuse via a mix of poor treatment or poor marketing of good treatment. Nobody fully understanding how much greater, how much more successful, a real Tomb Raider game starring actual Lara Croft would be. With the success of Aloy and Horizon: Zero Dawn on just ONE console for one year proving this true.
Potential is a surprising and amazing thing. When you are willing to acknowledge or look for it, and you seize upon it, you get something wonderful out of it. You get castles of depth and value. Take something deemed worthless, and if you treat it right, you can build an empire.
Wolverine was once considered expendable enough that he was in the running to be permanently killed off. Today, he’s one of the most popular characters Marvel has. He’s so popular that cartoons and comics have been made titled “Wolverine and the X-Men,” putting him first. But his potential was acknowledged. It was explored. The character and the company benefited because of that. I’m sure many people did too.
It’s easy to pretend something with value doesn’t have it if you don’t take the time to look. It’s easy to act like it would be a waste of time to explore when there are “better,” “more successful” characters and franchises out there. But what you see is just what exists today. It’s not what could be. It’s missing how much better everything could be.
Rosa, Polaris, RAGE, they would still be seen as worthless and insignificant if people hadn’t said otherwise and said or done things to make their potential seen.
I cannot echo how badly Third Birthday butchered the glory that is Aya Brea. We’ll probably never get another Parasite Eve anyhow, as Square probably won’t want to pay the rights, but either way, the pure mockery that is T3B just cannot be stated in words alone. Aya deserves better.
3rd Birthday and how Squeenix continues to refuse to fix what they did pisses me off so much. People rightfully complain about Other M, but what Squeenix did to Aya was so, so much worse. But because Squeenix is the type of company that tries to hide the things they’ve done wrong instead of admit to mistakes and fix them, they don’t even have the integrity to begrudgingly try to fix things and move on like Nintendo eventually did for Metroid 7 years later.
And one of the most galling parts of all this is that Squeenix was originally going to bring Aya/Parasite Eve back as a franchise! They had a slide for a presentation for potential franchises that had Parasite Eve on it. They saw there was immense potential. Then they took one look at the completely justified outrage toward 3rd Birthday and just abandoned it all. Cause they care more about appearing to be progressive than actually being progressive.
I will never have any respect for Squeenix or anything they do as long as they continue not to fix what they did to Aya Brea and Parasite Eve. Any company that lets bad work on the scale of 3rd Birthday linger because they think it’s “under the radar” enough to “get away with it” is a bad company in my eyes.
For the sake of my fanfiction, let’s pretend mutants aren’t discriminated and are accepted by humans. What other challenges/villains can the X-Men face?
It’s worth thinking about this even outside the sake of fanfiction! Most great concepts and characters are multi-layered.
I’d argue looking at what Marvel was focusing on for the X-Men while they were mad over Fox owning the film rights is a good starting point. Their entire intent at the time was to downplay discrimination mutants face, so they would’ve gone for anything else.
Mister/Miss Sinister is one case. Their entire plan involves genetic alteration and enhancement toward personal and evil ends. Doesn’t necessarily have to include the hated and feared component, but would keep the importance of genetics intact.
Mojo is another case. His nature isn’t necessarily X-Men dependent, but he’s most commonly associated with the X-Men.
In general, if mutants aren’t hated and feared, other factors take precedence.
They can still be exploited. Their powers could bring temptation by bullies, bosses, etc to use them even when not appropriate (e.g. clairvoyance to cheat at cards).
They might be seen as more expendable. If you have an expensive piece of machinery, and a mutant (especially an undocumented immigrant), and they can both do the same thing, the tendency might be to have the mutant do dangerous work to spare the bottom line. Thinking would be if the mutant dies, the machine is okay. It’s an asshole line of thinking, but it’s very possible.
Alternately, they might be seen as too precious. Special abilities lead to special treatment, which means people are less likely to let the mutants use and realize their abilities by fearing they’ll go too far.
And then there’s discrimination toward normal humans. Why hire an ordinary guy that needs a forklift to move stuff when you can hire a super strong mutant to do it for normal wages? Would ordinary humans have any hope of being in positions of power with powers giving mutants an edge?
A lot of things could still be done with mutants accepted by humans, it just depends on what areas you want to explore.
Marvel’s 15 Most Powerful Alpha-Level Mutants, Ranked
Now this is an excellent write-up for Lorna. Here’s what it says.
Since Polaris was created by Arnold Drake and Don Heck in 1968’s X-Men #49,
Lorna Dane’s origins have been something of a mystery. Shortly after
her first appearance, Magneto, the X-Men’s ultimate rival, claimed that
she was his daughter. Although that fact was disputed for decades while
Polaris served with the X-Men and X-Factor, Polaris eventually confirmed
that Magneto was actually her biological father. Since her
electromagnetic powers are basically a less refined version of Magneto’s
abilities, that revelation wasn’t too surprising in retrospect.During “Apocalypse: The Twelve,” Polaris was identified as an Alpha-Level mutant in 2000’s X-Men #97,
by Davis and Kavanagh. Although it’s never been confirmed, several
sources claim that her mastery of magnetism could be on par with
Magneto’s abilities. However, Polaris hasn’t had as much practice with
her abilities as her father since she’s spent a lot of time outside of
combat situations, with a different set of powers, without any powers or
possessed by a malicious spirit. Still, Polaris has managed to
accomplish some impressive feats with her abilities. After the mutant
nation Genosha was destroyed, Polaris maintained a massive magnetic
field that held the final recorded moments of millions of its residents
for months in 2001’s New X-Men #132, by Grant Morrison and Phil Jimenez.
It explains the murky history of her parentage and acknowledges what it is, unlike a previous CBR article from a different writer who tried to make it look like she’s not Magneto’s daughter.
It presents how she doesn’t have all the powerful moments she should by explaining she hasn’t had a chance to use them as much as she could and should, and lists all the scenarios contributing to that.
Most importantly, it acknowledges Genosha and what happened to her. It’s something that Marvel tends to pretend never happened, and it really needed this kind of highlight.
I also really like that there’s no mention of Havok at all. I’ve been pissed off lately over how much “she’s Havok’s ex-girlfriend” has been emphasized on X-Men Blue. It’s great to see an article manage to acknowledge she’s a character in her own right. It goes a long way toward showing that she’s more than just the ex of the only person Marvel has ever allowed her to have a relationship with in 50 years.
The Value of Potential
Since last night, I’ve been thinking about all the times where I see potential in something great. I’ve thought about all the times those things were derided as worthless or bad, how there seemed to be hardly anyone else out there who said similar things or agreed with me… but then things changed once people actually got talking.
Rosa Farrell from FF4 used to be looked down on as a “worthless damsel in distress.” People now see that she started white mage tropes, she fought through a desert by herself to reach Cecil, she sacrificed herself to Kain and Golbez so they wouldn’t kill everyone, and so much more.
Polaris is a character that used to be seen (and still is far too often by Marvel) as nothing but Havok’s girlfriend, a character who I distinctly remember one guy saying should be thrown into space limbo to “keep her away from characters that matter.” Today, there’s tons of fanart, tons of cosplay, tons of RPing as her, and there’s a popular live action version of her.
The impetus of this entire post is RAGE 2. I loved the first game. For years, other people dismissed it as, in their view, a worthless and mediocre game. But right now, RAGE 2′s announcements are incredibly popular. Of all the games leaked by Walmart Canada by accident, RAGE 2 is the game people have been talking about constantly. Even before Bethesda started releasing teasers and people only had words to go on.
All the things that I see potential in, that I strongly support, if they’re given a real shot, they turn out to be exactly as great and awesome as I said they would be. We get whole franchises, whole storylines, whole inspired generations because the potential of those things was realized.
Of course, not everything I see potential in manages to get its potential explored.
Dreamer is still dead on Gifted from a horribly written death.
Aya Brea and Parasite Eve are still abandoned because Squeenix can’t be assed to acknowledge that 3rd Birthday was a huge mistake.
The “Tomb Raider” “reboot” continues, having the appearance of greatest success because the franchise and character suffered from over a decade of misuse via a mix of poor treatment or poor marketing of good treatment. Nobody fully understanding how much greater, how much more successful, a real Tomb Raider game starring actual Lara Croft would be. With the success of Aloy and Horizon: Zero Dawn on just ONE console for one year proving this true.
Potential is a surprising and amazing thing. When you are willing to acknowledge or look for it, and you seize upon it, you get something wonderful out of it. You get castles of depth and value. Take something deemed worthless, and if you treat it right, you can build an empire.
Wolverine was once considered expendable enough that he was in the running to be permanently killed off. Today, he’s one of the most popular characters Marvel has. He’s so popular that cartoons and comics have been made titled “Wolverine and the X-Men,” putting him first. But his potential was acknowledged. It was explored. The character and the company benefited because of that. I’m sure many people did too.
It’s easy to pretend something with value doesn’t have it if you don’t take the time to look. It’s easy to act like it would be a waste of time to explore when there are “better,” “more successful” characters and franchises out there. But what you see is just what exists today. It’s not what could be. It’s missing how much better everything could be.
Rosa, Polaris, RAGE, they would still be seen as worthless and insignificant if people hadn’t said otherwise and said or done things to make their potential seen.
Cudjo Lewis, the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the U.S.
It’s so significant too that this narrative was collected by Zora Neale Hurston, one of the greatest authors and anthropologists of her time. She was shunned by the “gatekeepers” of both of these professions, largely because of her Blackness, her womanhood, and her uncompromising commitment to honoring and showcasing both in her works. She died penniless and alone in a state-run institution in 1960. All of her works had gone out of publication by then. It took more than a decade before she was rediscovered. A young author by the name of Alice Walker had come across her work and was deeply inspired by it. “In 1973, after an exhaustive search, Walker came across Hurston’s unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Fla. She purchased a headstone for Hurston’s tomb and had it inscribed “A Genius of the South.“”
It is through Zora Neale Hurston’s pioneering sacrifice, and the acceptance of that inheritance by Alice Walker that we have found this missing piece of our history. Without the courageous and unfailing work of Black women, we wouldn’t have Cudjo Lewis’s story. We are slowly regaining a narrative that’s been hidden from us, one that continues to be lied about. Trust Black women to lead the way.
Hey if I ever like or reblog something from your intra-fandom nemesis or whatever pls don’t hate me or think I’m taking sides because straight up I don’t know wtf kind of Greek tragedies are playing out in this fandom half the time
[ text → ✉ → @greenhairedmama ]: AUNTIE LORNA!!! <3<3<3
[ text → ✉ → auntie lorna 💚]: HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!
[ text → ✉ → auntie lorna 💚]: i painted all of the moms in my life some paintings!!!
[ text → ✉ → auntie lorna 💚]: whenever you’re free i can come drop yours off!
[ text → ✉ → auntie lorna 💚]: i love you soso much i hope you have an amazing day!!!
there are guys in my dorm who decided to play cards in the elevator
see what intrigues me about college isn’t the intellectual pursuit or the bonding or whatever, its the fact that people have the freedom to do random shit like this
Okay, everybody, I have a story about random shit in college. When I was in college, there was a particular class I took where, no matter what time you walked into class, if you made it into the room before the professor, you wouldn’t be counted late. I mean, that’s a pretty cool policy, given how some professors are really obnoxious about attendance.
Well, one time, a fellow student of mine was running late to class. As she reached the edge of the building, she saw her professor making it to the front steps (super long rectangular building here). He looks up from walking and he sees her. He then points to his watch, gives her a well-meaning “Look who’s late” face, and walks on inside.
What he didn’t know, though, was that this particular student was like freakishly good at bouldering and related climbing skills, so she was just like “Fuck it” and SCALED THE BUILDING!
She tapped on the window of the 4th floor classroom (the floors had like 20ft ceilings, so, she was quite a ways up there), nearly making one student piss himself. They opened the window, she rolled through, onto the floor, and slid into her seat about five seconds before the professor opened the door to the classroom.
He did a double take, started to say “How the hell d—” when a security guard ran in, red-faced and panting, pointed at her and bellowed “STOP DOING THAT!”
omfg the amount of fucks college kids don’t give astounds me
IVE ONLY SEEN THIS POST IN SCREENSHOTS
I LOVE THE IMPLICATION THAT THIS STUDENT HAS A REPUTATION FOR SCALING THE BUILDINGS
salarta 