Warning signs of depression (generally) in order of appearance
Oh no.
well shit
Also guilt, shame, and self-loathing! You find yourself unable to do the things you want or even the things you need to do and you feel like a terrible person, it’s real fun
I had some thoughts on my drive in to work today concerning Lorna’s beautiful and awesome green hair. And because I love writing these articles, I’ve decided to make writing them into part of my celebration of Lorna’s 50th anniversary.
As most fans know, Lorna used to dye her hair brown to hide her green hair.
She’s had that green hair ever since. So here’s the question: Why was Lorna dyeing her hair?
These are a few theories.
Foster Parent Protection
This is the theory I’ve held longest, but it’s only as I start to write this post that I realize it’s not the only possible reason.
Lorna is growing in a world that fears and hates mutants. What if her foster parents knew she was a mutant and hid it from her? Perhaps Magneto took Lorna to the only living family other than himself that could take her in, explained his desire for Lorna to lead a normal life, and the Danes took over from there.
Even if the Danes didn’t know Lorna was secretly a mutant, the visual signifier could have led people to believe she was a mutant and attack her. So, it could have been a matter of protection.
Subconscious Aversion
This is a theory I don’t like (at least right now), but as it’s a possibility I’m including it.
Lorna’s green hair came about when her powers manifested – and she accidentally killed her parents. In other words, in a child’s mind, green hair = trauma and death. Mastermind may have altered her mind to make completely forget, but trauma is not just the memories themselves. It’s the echoes they leave in the mind, and that would have been difficult to impossible to erase.
So, Lorna dyeing her hair may have been a small part of her that remembered the feeling of her trauma and didn’t have the tools to get past it, so she avoided it. She dyed it brown, her hair color from before her powers awakened, after all.
Bullied
And then there’s kids.
Kids are horrible to other kids that stand out “too much.” Just about anything could be grounds for bullying and harassment, and green hair is astoundingly showy in a room full of kids with brown, black, blonde or red hair. As she says in her introductory story, she dyes her hair to “avoid attracting the curious.” What if in this case, that meant kids who wanted to pick on her for it?
Similarly, maybe it made her more of a target for sexual harassment, and her method of dealing with it back then was to “dress down.”
End of Hair Dye
So with these three theories, I come to the final thing I wanna bring up. She stopped dyeing her hair after her powers were restored and she realized she was a mutant. Why?
Here’s what I think: she’s discovered who she is as a mutant and now embraces what that green hair means for her. Her green hair isn’t just a quirk of genetics. It’s symbolic of her identity. It no longer represents something to fear or be ashamed of. It represents her power, her courage, her calling as a mutant.
She never dyes her hair again because deep down, no matter what she says or does, subconsciously she loves being a mutant and standing out as one. Any claims made to the contrary are false. If they weren’t, why would she go around showing off the most visible sign of her mutant identity?
I haven’t seen or heard anything new about X-Men Blue today. I want to write these thoughts down before anything can happen to alter my wanting to write it.
I had a lot of complaints about Cullen Bunn’s writing of Polaris on Blue, which I feel were entirely valid. She was written primarily for Havok’s benefit, and for Magneto’s too for the first half of the series. Rare good spots later on weren’t enough to make up for that.
Everything I said before still applies for me. I think he writes from a male POV. I think that POV means he has trouble writing female characters. I don’t want him to write Lorna anymore because I don’t trust him with her, and I’m glad there are currently no plans for him to do so.
But I also want to acknowledge that there was a small amount of improvement in specific areas of his writing. He started doing better by her relationship with her father. There were rare moments of things where we saw Lorna instead of “Magneto’s daughter” or “Havok’s girlfriend.” Not enough of them, of course. They didn’t go as in depth as they should have, and Bunn missed big options (e.g. teen Jean and teen Iceman). But he did a little bit, which is more than nothing.
The thing about writing is that if a writer cares enough and tries, they can get better. Who a writer is today isn’t necessarily who they’ll be in 3-5 years.
What I’m saying is, I don’t have faith in Bunn writing Lorna today. Years from now could be different depending on what happens in between. This is not a “Hey 5 years passed, let’s give it another go” situation I’m talking about. If Bunn’s made effort to be better about writing female characters, if he’s shown he can understand them as their own characters, then I might be open to seeing another shot of him trying to write Lorna.
This isn’t a simple “if this than that” script. There are no quick and easy shortcuts for this sort of thing, and it takes time. Things like this take time. The important part isn’t getting there quickly, it’s getting there and trying to understand for however long it takes.
That’s my view on things. I hope things change for the better over time.
Quick question for fellow Lorna fans! Or even people who wouldn’t necessarily say they’re fans, but who care about her and wanna give their input.
What do you think a preteen/teen Lorna would wear, before she consciously knew she was a mutant and her mutant powers were restored?
Remember, I said consciously. Subconscious can still play a factor. 🙂 Also remember Marvel has a sliding timescale, so maybe that’s something to consider, maybe not.
Shameless reblog to see if anyone else has thoughts!
To @teal-bandit, do you have examples of what you mean by things that move a lot and emphasize her actions? I’m trying to think of something that fits the description and can’t think of anything.
salarta 