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hellix-fan · 5 months

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Haters in law commission by cadaverart

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hellix-fan · 5 months

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Some more art of Laura, because I really do like this grungy sorta outfit she rocked for a while 🖤

#Laura Kinney #x-23 #x men fanart #solo content

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hellix-fan · 5 months

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I think this is mostly correct barring one or two things id disagree with. But I think another factor is that liu and later taylor both wanted laura to be an "A-list" and thus had her interact with bigger name characters. So the nxm didn't really fit into that vision for liu, because by then they were clearly already having competition as the newest gen with generation hope. So she wanted to focus on big characters she already liked (jubilee, gambit, the ff, black widow) or daken the character she very much had a soft spot for.

One of the reasons I dislike Liu’s “X-23 (2011)” series besides screwing over Surge/Hellion….

It’s obvious that Liu did her research when writing this- it’s never really a question if she didn’t KNOW the canon; she just didn’t LIKE it…

Laura CLEARLY went on a rollercoaster with Megan…

So why is it that she has zero memory of this with Logan in Liu’s book?

I know people will say that this is simply a tiny mistake…but I would argue it’s Liu purposely going out of her way to undermine Laura’s previous relationship with Megan Kinney and the importance of their bond.

Part of the reason I SAY that is because Liu REPEATEDLY does this, and not just with Laura’s dynamic with Hellion…

THIS statement by Laura makes absolutely NO SENSE when you consider that Ororo, Dust, Anole, AND Hellion all stuck up FOR LAURA and are trying to help her in “Killing Dream”…

The only people really singling her out are Surge and Rockslide…NO ONE ELSE was judging Laura; while you could argue Laura felt like she couldn’t “become a new person” after Scott put her on “X-Force” (despite knowing it wasn’t good for her) and that she felt like being an X-Men was just keeping her from growing…

It still feels a bit strange when you remember moments like this-

Here’s Laura sitting at a coffee shop- more or less “GROWING” as a person.

This attitude of “I had no real friends at Xaviers” continues in Avengers Academy, again with the plot point that AA will help Laura “Grow” more that she ever could at Xaviers…and truthfully this just kind of makes Laura seem uncaring and cold to people who were just GENUINELY TRYING TO BE NICE TO HER….

Liu WANTED Laura’s main relationships to be- Gambit, Wolverine, and Jubilee; and seems to have very little respect for the prior canon established BY her creator-> Craig Kyle….

Liu didn’t LIKE the NXM or even Megan, in my opinion, because it’s not the “fairy tail” version of friendship; they’re not the friends or family who always say and do the right thing, but REAL PEOPLE who try their best with what they have.

All of the relationships Liu features ARE the ideal-> Gambit is the perfect father figure who knows just how to help Laura, Jubilee is basically the Manic Pixie Dream Girl who cheers Laura up from her despair and always says the right thing, Logan is the repentant father trying to make amends, and all the guest characters except for the NXM LOVE Laura…

Liu focuses on the idea that “Growth” equals relationships more or less being perfect all the time and never having any sort of real conflict.

When Laura DOES have conflict with people, like Surge objecting to X-Force and feeling betrayed or Julian feeling depressed and like Laura abandoned him-> it’s represented as “bad” and something Laura must give up if she wants to “grow”, instead of a disagreement that needs to be worked on and talked about.

Another example is when Liu decides to use the trigger scent, for example, she AGAIN ignores established canon because the story of it affecting a large group of people is more important than how the trigger scent was established to work previously….

This isn’t to say I don’t LIKE things about Liu’s run- her Miss Sinister is amazing, Laura’s self harm and history with human trafficking is well handled, and several story arcs in the series are great…

BUT I dislike how little she cares about prior characterizations and canon, heaps on the “Laura is SAD” backstories to an already pretty sad and sympathetic character to make her even MORE sympathetic and SAD (the puppy thing and Surge bullying was A BIT MUCH, in my opinion), and this often feels like it was the start of Laura’s problems with consistent representation, tying her more and more to Logan, and not having a regular secondary supporting cast….

I think of comic book writing like doing improv; when someone gives you a time/place/characters/conflict….you just kind of have to go with it.

When you’re working for a company, that has established characters and canon; you are agreeing essentially to continue that previously established canon when you agree to work there.

THIS is the core reason I STRUGGLE WITH Liu’s run and don’t agree that she was “the best X-23 writer”; I just don’t feel like she was respectful to Kyle’s previous work.

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I often hear people say Liu “healed” Laura, where Kyle/Yost made Laura run in circles; heaping on her trauma after trauma…that under KYOST pen, all Laura was, WAS her trauma…

I really disagree with that take, much like I would disagree with people saying Claremont giving his characters tribulations was “torturing characters”; Laura struggling is what made her relatable. Issues like depression, PTSD, self harm, ect….are all typically life long struggles, something many people struggle with, and not something that CAN be immediately fixed. The reality is, progress doesn’t really follow a clear trajectory; there’s a lot of ups and downs and in-betweens.

KYOST wrote Laura as a complex person, slowly working through her personal demons along with going through a new set of conflicts- feeling attracted to someone for the first time, figuring out her moral stance on killing, ect…Under KYOST, you live with a constant murky ambiguity with Laura; where Laura seems to make a ton of progress in NXM…she then regresses in X-Force. She develops a family with Debbie and Megan…only to lose that family. You’re never really sure if she is going to be able to move past the self harm or the trigger scent affecting her; because the reality with most BAD HABITS and unhealthy emotional responses are-> they are very hard to break.

I don’t agree with the stance that many Liu fans have that Laura under KYOST was “the sad/quiet self harmer” -> Laura is a character that just happens to struggle with self harm and mental illness.

I oftentimes feel like Liu went into this series with the attitude that she needed to “FIX” Laura, she needed to “FIX” the problems KYOST made; you see that in her scraping Laura’s prior relationships because it’s friendships with equally flawed people, having Laura miraculously stop self harming because of the support from Gambit and CO, Logan magically admitting to failing as a “father”, and Laura moving on with her life.

Tom Taylor continues this by removing the effects of the trigger scent, killing Kimura, giving Laura the family she never had, and basically removing any and all conflicts for Laura.

Yet both Taylor and Liu are so focused on “fixing” Laura; that I don’t ever feel like they bother to answer the question-> who IS Laura?

The reality is, life and relationships ARE hard. You can make good and bad decisions at the same time, relationships with people can be equally disappointing and fulfilling, and you can grow and regress in the very same moment.

Liu doesn’t respect Kyle’s writing because Craig Kyle refused to give Laura, “A Happily Ever After”; yet the hard reality is… “A Happily Ever After” doesn’t REALLY exist, that sometimes in life we just have to compromise and learn to meet life halfway.

People don’t often understand you perfectly, or know what to say or do in that moment to help you; that doesn’t mean they don’t care about you…it just means they are human, with their own sets of conflicts and tribulations. In many ways, I think it is a childish notion for someone to desire that…that what you are really asking for, is essentially FOR people to be perfect and for their lives to solely revolve around you.

So that’s why I struggle a lot with Liu’s run and often complain about Taylor’s…because I think it’s two writers who never quite understood just what Kyle WAS trying to accomplish with Laura-> showing that life and relationships aren’t always perfect…but are still rewarding in an imperfect way.

#solo content #x23 #laura kinney #x 23

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