At the time, I viewed that purely in the sense of “Marvel is biased against Lorna and Gail is saying that because she knows Marvel won’t accept any pitches for Lorna.”
In light of how Uncanny X-Men is going to kill characters off, I have a new thought: what if Gail said that because she knows Marvel is going to kill Lorna off soon?
Gail would likely know who dies and who doesn’t because it would affect who she gets to use in anything she writes. Lorna getting killed off would also guarantee no books featuring her for at least a couple years. When Marvel throws away perfectly good characters for poor reasons via character death, they try to make it last for at least a few years. They think the amount of time justifies throwing away a character’s value and potential.
Uncanny X-Men got more of a reveal today. I have thoughts about that reveal and what it suggests pertaining to Lorna. Event info and my thoughts after the cut.
Last month at San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Comics announced that UNCANNY X-MEN would return this fall. Today, the creative team was officially announced as well as an official release date for UNCANNY X-MEN #1 – Wednesday, November 14. The new ongoing series is jam-packed with X-talent – all the writers and artists have previously worked on X-Men characters and stories and will be teaming up for more mutant mayhem!
UNCANNY X-MEN will launch with a 10-part weekly epic called “Disassembled.” Where the series goes from there depends on who is left standing! In this “epic tale of mystery and tragic disappearance,” every remaining mutant on the planet will come together in “an adventure so Earth-shattering, it could very well be the X-Men’s FINAL mission!” With stakes this high, it will take an extraordinary team to tell this story.
Writers Ed Brisson (EXTERMINATION), Kelly Thompson (MR. AND MRS. X), and Matthew Rosenberg (PHOENIX RESURRECTION, ASTONISHING X-MEN) will join the equally X-perienced artistic team of Mahmud Asrar (X-MEN RED), R.B. Silva (X-MEN BLUE), Yildiray Cinar (WEAPON X), and Pere Perez (ROGUE AND GAMBIT). Leinil Frances Yu will provide artwork for the covers.
As a Lorna fan, I didn’t expect she would be included at all. Not after how she was treated on Blue, and how Marvel has no plans for her in October, the month of her 50th anniversary. So, that she’s included is good, for starters.
However, I also have to point out: “every remaining mutant on the planet will come together.” Which raises the question: is Lorna only included because she is objectively still alive, and therefore excluding her would be a blatant show of bias?
There are other things to say on that note, but I’ll get back to that later. For now, I’m going into visual analysis, because that will be easier for me.
Visuals
That Lorna’s not near Havok in this image is a good start. That’s the most important part of the whole visual. Lorna has a long, long history of being visually stuck near Havok to suggest her value is tied to being his (ex-)girlfriend.
But on that mark, it’s notable that Lorna is way in the back while Havok is right at the front. In the past, an argument to dismiss this would have been “Yeah but see Iceman and Angel are the back too, so it’s just random.” Another suggestion was that as she’s a flying character, flying characters are put in the back for visual spectacle.
But see, Storm can fly too, and she’s right up front. Same with Jean Grey, though whether TK flight is used enough with her to count puts that into question. The point is, characters Marvel considers “important” are placed front and center regardless of their power set. Placing Havok in the front, and Polaris in the back, says Marvel thinks Havok is important and Polaris isn’t.
Moving on, I like that she’s in her iconic costume, not what she wore on X-Men Blue or some other team costume. It’s a visual that helps her stand out, especially for anyone familiar with her.
The last thing to note: the giant X breaking up the picture.
This is a theory. It’s probably baseless, but it’s still a theory.
The plan from Marvel is to kill characters off during this event. It is possible that either characters cut in half by the X, or characters not cut in half by the X, will be killed off during this event. Marvel likes to use visuals to tease.
There are problems with this theory either way you look at it.
If it’s characters not cut in half that die – which would mean Lorna dies – then it would also mean Jean Grey, Shadowcat, Multiple Man, Domino, Iceman and many others die too. I can’t see Marvel killing Jean off when they just brought her back, same with Multiple Man, and I can’t see Marvel killing off any of the others given how much use and promotion Marvel’s given them. But really, it’s Jean that screws up this theory.
If it’s characters cut in half that die – meaning Lorna’s spared – then Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Beast, Colossus, Havok and many others like them would die. I can’t see that either. Yesterday on Twitter, I pointed out how a lot of the shit Marvel does to Marvel, they would never pull on characters like Storm. She’s too high-profile, and she has too much weight in diversity and representation, for Marvel to ever seriously consider killing her off. She’s safer than Wolverine and Magneto for that reason.
Basically, Jean Grey and Storm respectively unravel each type of theory.
And now we move on from visuals to what I have to say about the event itself.
Event Details
Right off the bat, there’s something I hate about the premise of this event.
Where the series goes from there depends on who is left standing!
Half-assed character death is one of the shittiest things about comic books. It’s treating death as a tool to use in the following ways:
cull large roster of available characters
make a threat look more dangerous
advance the stories of characters the writers give a damn about
All three of these reasons are bullshit.
There is no reason a roster has to be culled by killing off characters. You never know when a particular character will be relevant and interesting for a story. Killing them off effectively means if a writer wants to use the character, they have to take the time to bring them back and explain how it happened.
Making something look more dangerous is also bullshit. There are plenty of ways to build up a threat that do not require characters dying. Have the villain torture them. Turn their own powers against them. Sow discord among close relations to turn them against each other. Hell, use functional nameless side characters (e.g. “the guy who sold bread to me”). There’s no good reason to kill off established characters like this. Not when they could be sent off to another dimension or something like how Reed and Sue went off to parts unknown for a while.
And then there’s character death to advance the stories of other characters. Throwing away a character’s opportunities and potential just to put a chosen character on a pedestal is garbage. It’s disrespectful. There are plenty of ways to advance a character without killing off another character to do it.
Lorna’s situation
I wrap up with my view of where things stand with Lorna.
I already said above how Lorna was overall treated poorly on Blue, as just a character to promote Havok. I also said how nothing is being done with her at all in October. This event is the only thing we know about any future for her.
All of that is in spite of growing interest in Lorna, in spite of her 50th anniversary, and in spite of how a particular interpretation of her is becoming the most popular character on a TV show. All three criteria should mean that Marvel doing a hell of a lot more with and for Polaris, but it doesn’t.
Combine that with the plan to kill off characters, and I expect Lorna is one of the characters Marvel is going to kill off during this event.
Furthermore, my pessimism following Blue leads me to believe her death will be used to promote Havok and advance his story. If Marvel is putting him on a pedestal while treating Lorna like she’s beneath him and mainly exists to serve his needs, then there’s really nothing to stop them from taking their bias against Lorna all the way.
That’s everything I have to say at the moment. Maybe there will be more as more as revealed or I put more thought into it.
Yesterday, on another site, someone accused me of being hyperbolic about how pissed off I am about how Lorna was treated on Blue, and how much it’s made me loathe Havok.
I didn’t tell the person, but I took great offense to that. Saying I was being hyperbolic was basically suggesting that I’m pretending to be more upset than I am, or that I shouldn’t be allowed to feel the way I feel.
They also claimed I was being “irrational,” which is an insult I’ve had flung at me many times and I’ve learned to ignore it. But claiming I’m exaggerating how bad something looks to me and how I feel about it is new. How the hell do you exaggerate the way you feel? You’re literally putting your feelings into the closest words you can put them in. The only way you can “exaggerate” something like that is if you’re lying about your own feelings.
I think this person wasn’t actually thinking about me when he said it. I think his focus was on trying to dismiss what I was saying any way it took because he doesn’t feel the same way I do. Which again, is something I’ve dealt with many, many times.
But not this way. I’ve been called “irrational” before, I’ve been badmouthed for being “obsessed,” I’ve had people call me things I’m not and smear and harass me in hopes getting attacked like that would stop me from talking. But I’ve never had someone suggest I’m being “hyperbolic” about how I feel. And after some of the personal attacks I used to receive while posting about and supporting Lorna, I find it insulting and disrespectful.
I’m treating this as a one-off situation with this person right now, because it probably is. He probably doesn’t realize how insulting his comments were to me, and I didn’t go into it with him. But I still needed to post about it to vent.
I’ve seen a few of these “Latino vs. Hispanic” diagrams on tumblr but none of them have been correct, so I decided to make my own.
Hispanic: relating to, characteristic of, or derived from Spain or Spanish-speaking countries that have a historical connection to Spain.
The word “Hispanic” comes from the Latin word Hispania, which was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces, now known as España (Spain).
People from Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin American countries alike
are Hispanic, since Spain colonized the Latin American countries that now speak Spanish.
Latino (Latina/Latine): relating to, characteristic of, or derived from Latin America. People from Latin America are Latine*.
These are countries
that were (1:) colonized by European countries (i.e. Spain, Portugal,
France) and where (2:) Latin-based languages (i.e. Spanish, Portuguese, French) were imposed upon colonization.
Many people from Latin America are both Latine and Hispanic, but not everyone from Latin America is also Hispanic.
Check your geography: Spain is in Europe, not Latin America; people from Spain are not Latine**.
BONUS:Spanish: relating to or characteristic of the Spanish language, or a person specifically from Spain.
Not everyone from Latin America that speaks Spanish is “Spanish”, unless they or their family are from Spain.
If you say “that person is Spanish”, you are saying that they are from Spain, not that they speak Spanish. So it is only correct if that person is actually from Spain. Spanish-speaking person =/= Spanish person.
Notes:
Some of these terms are very U.S.-centric. “Hispanic” was first adopted by the U.S. government during the Nixon administration and has been used in the U.S. Census since 1980. The U.S. government also adopted the term “Latino” as a way to identify and segregate mixed white, black, and native “mestizo” or “mulatto” people of Latin America.
Most people in Latin America will refer to other Latine people based on their nationality, so the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” are less often used in Latin America than in the United States or elsewhere.
Even though these terms have specific definitions and their differences should be understood and respected, this is a question of identity. This means that not everyone from Latin American countries want to identify as Latine for a number a reasons, but namely indigenous people who don’t want to identify with their White European colonizers (for obvious reasons).
In addition to the previous point, there are also places in the Americas/Caribbean that are not technically considered to be Latin America due to the non-Latin languages spoken there (i.e. Belize, Suriname, Guyana, Jamaica, etc.), but that does not mean people from those countries can’t identify as Latine. A lot of their cultures and traditions and histories overlap due to their geographical locations and the similarities in European Colonization that they endured.
Thus, it is important to understand these definitions, but move forward knowing that we – especially people outside of Latin America – do not get to decide these identities for everyone, because there are many factors that go into how people identify themselves, and sometimes they are more important than dictionary definitions of terminology.
This also applies to U.S.-born people with Latin American family, but
struggle with how to identify themselves: there is no right or wrong way
to identify yourself. You are the deciding factor of your own identity.
women are most attractive when they’re not even thinking abt it. and i don’t mean that in a “girls look better without makeup” way so much as a “i love seeing girls be their natural selves where they forget the pressure of perfection placed on women” way.
i love the goofing off double chins and the too-loud near-obnoxious laughter, the gruff and scratchy voice in the morning when they’re too tired to bother with sounding soft, and the not brushing their hair bc they can’t be bothered to deal with and what are you going to do about it anyway?
i love the boldness of women who forget that they have been told to be delicate.
this post radiates pure and powerful lesbian energies
salarta 