k2

At first I responded to the posts, but then I decided that I don't want to be involved in this discussion anymore, so my comments are officially withdrawn. Have a good day all! :o)

@KingofMadCows said:

@k2: X-23 understands emotions as a means to an end. After all, she was trained in infiltration and espionage so she knows how to emulate, evoke and manipulate emotions to achieve her missions. We have seen her pretend to be a normal girl several times in order to get close to her target and lower their guard. But to her, emotions have always been impersonal.

She may be able to predict what someone feels under a specific circumstance and she knows what emotions she could feign in order to take advantage of the situation but what she has a problem with is what emotions she personally experiences under those circumstances. So she may know how pretending to be sad or happy in a certain situation can affect other people and what it can make them do but she doesn't actually know how she feels in that situation. In fact, her personal feelings had to be suppressed in order for that training to work.

While she has been able to control herself enough not to hurt her friends, she hasn't really experienced any truly strong emotions. She only had a little crush on Hellion and she had a pretty big tantrum when she saw Surge kiss him. Well, what happens if she develops much deeper feelings? Will she be able to control herself if she actually falls in love and has her heart broken? What happens when her own emotions interact with her programming? What if she can't overcome her programming or is unable to distinguish between what she feels and what her programming tells her to feel or pretend to feel? What happens when she succumbs to her programming as a means to fulfill her emotional needs? She knows how to manipulate people and she can use those skills just as easily as she uses her combat training. And since she isn't actually physically hurting or killing anyone, the temptation to use it for selfish gains can be much stronger.

I'm pretty sure having people she loved die were strong emotions. And Logan described Laura's little crush as her entire body 'lighting up' when she heard that Julian was in danger.

She is simply programmed not to feel, but this has never been the case. Already she is breaking through this by allowing herself to think of the lives of the people she is fighting and therefore restraining from killing in some situations. In a conflict between her 'do not feel' training and her 'feelings', she compromises, like when Julian was in danger: she does her mission, but tries to save her loved ones at the same time or after...just like any other hero. In the future when confronted with having to kill her friend Kiden, she refused--even though it presented difficulties in her mission. Domino shot her instead.

I have yet to see where Laura uses the 'emotional training' to manipulate someone, especially for selfish gains. You're not getting Laura as a character if you think she is manipulative and/or selfish. She is not. That is why many people love her. She's been through so much, and yet she is still pure at her very heart. She smiles at children and would die for her friends. She will take any abuse so as to save others, because she puts them above herself. She would not manipulate unless it was the only way to achieve a greater good...and in that case, many other characters might do so as well. She is probably the only person in the X-men without selfish motives.

And if you are going to say 'well her training puts her at risk of being manipulative', then are we to assume anyone with acting skills is also manipulative?

@KingofMadCows said:

@k2: But Hellion has experience with emotions. He knows how to deal with them without hurting anyone, at least physically. X-23 has very little experience with her emotions and does not know how to effectively deal with them, especially with wants and desires that she cannot attain.

That was my point. Experience or no, Laura has never hurt someone while dealing with her emotions--she runs away and finds a safer spot to have a tantrum. There's only one issue in which she hurts someone when dealing with emotions, and that was the Liu issue in which she randomly cut Gambit. I couldn't even figure out what Liu was trying to do with that scene, so I don't really count it as regular Laura behavior.

Under Kyle & Yost, yes Laura may have been confused about emotions, but she didn't hurt her friends, or truly innocent people, ex. Henry Sutton or Megan Kinney. She goes overboard on villains, which is what makes her dangerous. But she always does the right thing--Laura has a simple goodness in her that runs so deep that even the facility couldn't destroy it.

I don't think it's correct to say Laura has no experience at all with emotions, either--even when she joined the X-men. She clearly has had them. She loved many people first: her Sensei, her mother, her aunt and cousin. She learned how to lose them too, how to let loved ones go to keep them safe. She didn't know how to deal with superficial day-to-day emotions, is what I would say...and she dealt with romance as well as any other teenager, if you aren't aware that many teens have trouble with healthy emotional outlets.

And as for Hellion dealing with emotions without hurting anyone physically...wasn't that his problem for a little bit there? Liu and Carey were eagerly trying to convince us fans that he'd turned into an abusive destructive character on the path to evil. He was smashing all manner of things and even getting his metal fingers into murder. Rogue flew into huge super-strength temper tantrums when she had the whole Carol Danvers conflicts. Wolverine had his berserker rages. Wind Dancer destroyed a grocery store with a tornado because she was angry at her father. Face it, this is comics...none of these characters deal with emotions properly, because they all have horrible flaws to give us entertaining reading. In reality, Laura is not much worse than any of these people, and as she has yet to hurt anyone in her little emotion tantrums, I'd say she deals with them just as effectively. Maybe even better because she takes a simpler view on things.

@KingofMadCows said:

@k2: One of the contradictions of X-23 is how much of the programming she received from the Facility has made her more effective at all the heroics. She makes sacrifices without hesitation or doubt. She does whatever is necessary to complete the mission with no regards for her own personal safety. But humans are supposed to have a sense of self preservation. Humans are supposed to have selfish desires. Even the greatest heroes must face the struggle between needs of the self and the desire to help others. Yet, X-23 does it automatically.

If X-23 allows herself to continue developing her own emotions and feelings then it will bring about those natural selfish human desires. Without any experience in dealing with those emotions and desires, she runs the risk of doing something dangerous should she ever succumb to those desires and allow them to override her programming. Look at what happened when she saw Surge kissing Hellion. So while she certainly wanted to protect her friends from external threats by joining the X-Force, she was likely also trying to protect them from herself and the dangers her developing emotions can bring.

It could be that too, but I doubt it. In the example you gave were Surge kissed Hellion, yes--Laura was destructive--but she didn't hurt anyone. And in the Marvel universe, that would seem to be enough...given how many destructive emotional tantrums almost every one of the characters has had...including Hellion himself, lol.

@KingofMadCows said:

The writers have definitely dropped the ball on her development.

There is so much potential with the character. They really should have taken more of a Blade Runner approach to her. I see her as almost an amalgamation of all of the characters in Blade Runner. Much like the Replicants, X-23 was made for a specific purpose but has rebelled against her creators and is now not only searching for a new purpose in her life beyond what she was made for but also learning to deal with humanity in a whole new way.

They really should have played up the conflict between her programming and her own developing personality and desires. For example, she has been taught to emulate, evoke and manipulate emotions to achieve her missions. So she understands emotions much better than people give her credit for and she is able to use emotions to achieve a particular goal. However, the way in which she deals with emotions is impersonal as she is still struggling to develop and understand how she feels. She is able to predict what a specific emotion can achieve under a specific circumstance but she doesn't really know what emotions she personally experiences under those circumstances. I would say that's the reason why she joined X-Force since she gets put back into a position where she doesn't have to deal with her own feelings.

There is also a failure in how they've developed her perception of the world. For most of her life, she was exposed to the very worst of humanity. She was raised by unethical and sadistic scientists. She worked for criminals, murderers, sex traffickers, and dictators. She has experienced few fleeting moments of happiness that were quickly snatched away from her. She should have a very unique view of humanity. She shouldn't just be wondering whether or not she has soul, she should be wondering if humanity has a soul. She should be dealing with the same dilemma as the Replicants in Blade Runner. Should she view humanity as basically immoral and corrupt and allow herself to be dragged down to the same level as the people who created her or should she strive to surpass humanity, to prove that she is better than what she was made for, better than the people who made her?

I didn't think X-force was just a ploy for her to avoid emotions. I looked at it as a combination: Laura had people she now cared about (her friends), who had risked their lives for her, and now she wanted to protect them. She knew someone had to do this work, and it made logical sense for it to be her. She was used to taking orders, and did as Cyclops told her, knowing it would be in the interest of her friends and mutants in general.

K&Y didn't really have the room to elaborate on what Laura was feeling about the team at the moment. At times I felt like they were either forced to put her there, or put her on the team intending more development but then the editors said "You've been doing way too much Laura in your other stories so we want this book to be more team-based." I was often left with a feeling that us readers were seeing only half the stories--we saw what happened but not how the situations impacted Laura, if that makes sense.

@John Valentine said:

@mr_gone said:

I miss that new x men stuff pretty badly as well, i loved it when he led the team with mercury, dust, surge, rockslide, and Talon (laura). Those were some really great stories

They really were. The Nimrod/Stryker stuff was awesome.

I truly miss the NXM series. They are amongst my favorite comics. Not only did it involve my favorite characters, but the stories were good! It was quality reading. I hated the Utopia run for splitting them up.

Also, your earlier post about Laura being lucky to get a guy like Julian was spot on. He's exactly what she needed: an extremely loyal guy who would literally take a bullet for anyone he cares about.

@x_29 said:

@John Valentine said:

@x_29 said:

@John Valentine said:

@x_29 said:

@John Valentine: yes, that is why you fail.

Haha, cool story, bro.

Just go and write some X-23 bondage fan-fic and stop posting in the Hellion forums with these unfunny and overused memes/jokes. If you're going to troll, at least make it funny.

Thats ironic coming from the guy who trolls on other forums ( particularly Storm.) It is also ironic how you are going to tell me to stop using overused memes/jokes when you start your comment with an overused meme/joke.

@k2 Wanna know what i support

Would not be irony, would be hypocrisy at best. Still irrelevant considering they're completely different situations. (Second that that, my dislike for Storm is based on valid reasons, most of my comments are not posted to troll, but to provide something realistic. Her "raindrops" are undoubtedly and objectively worse in what they post/create threads about. In other words, I do not dislike the character because she was involved with my favourite character.... ).

The fact of the matter is that X-23 would be lucky to have a boyfriend like Julian. She's a mucked up, emotionally-retarded killing machine who's been tainted by her past experiences. Sure, she couldn't help it, but she's a product of her past regardless. Julian was perfectly nice to her, helped her try to take down the facility during "Mercury Rising", was willing to go and rescue her when Kiruma had kidnapped her again in X-Force Vol. 3, this was after she'd begun to push all of her friends away again. She did basically nothing for him after his injury, where was she for him? She just went on a road trip, then ended up becoming friends with a questionably creepy Cajun and a dated, annoying, 90s-attitude vampire, before rejecting him when he needed her most. Oh, poor X-23. Hellion's such a dick.....

Good day little one :)

@x_29 said:

Awww I love you too cookie butt:) Even if what you just wrote was irrelevant to what I wrote.

In the second post you admitted to reading what I wrote. So you are now contradicting yourself, sugar plum. But keep trying! You'll get there someday! :o)

@BaBaBoom said:

I considered myself an X-23 fan until the end of Misadventures of Babysitting where she turned down Hellion in a really unpleasant way. I've never expected Laura to have an intimate romantic relationship with Julian but damn that is a bad way to get your heart crushed. So that is when I lost interest in Marjorie Liu's run of X-23. Then, the Circle of Four came out which featured her as part of the team together with Red Hulk, the annoyingly uninteresting Ghost Rider, and my fave Venom. The story as it's self is great but when you're looking for character development you won't find it in here when it comes to X-23. I felt like it's the same character with no development for the past years since her debut in X-men Evolution (though I did kind of saw her smile and give a thumbs up which is on its own a development... I guess.) All in all, I guess I got tired of seeing her with no emotion with the same motif over and over again in every single issue she comes out of.

However, the Avengers Academy tie-in for the Avengers vs X-men did show some promise for character improvement (more so than the entire X-23 on-going) and I hope that my sickness of this character fades away because I truly love this character and I still buy all of the TPBs she's featured in.

I can understand your sudden disinterest. The problem is that last Liu arc was just handled so poorly...the characters were forced to fit into roles, so to speak. Liu sort of invented the problem for the break between them, instead of using already established difficulties (there could have been other plausible reasons for a break up). She made Laura seem very out of character with the previously established history. And Laura's been a bit off ever since...she is indeed being put in a monotone role. The thing with Laura is her personality is bland (given her history there are no questions as to why), but that's always been balanced out with good storytelling, showing how she develops with each new situation. Take the development away...and you have boring.

I haven't read the whole AA arc yet. The development there was so-so. I didn't agree with how the other characters were saying the X-men never welcomed Laura. Clearly the entire Kyle & Yost run was ignored in which Laura became good friends with Cessily Kincaid and Sooraya Qadir. She was very much accepted by Cessily, who had also been kidnapped by the Facility and so had a little insight into how she had been raised. Not to mention Julian, who saved her life a couple of times and eventually expressed feelings for her (yeah in the horrible Liu arc, but Kyle & Yost certainly hinted at it a good bit). My point here is...Laura may not have been accepted by all the X-men, but she certainly had friends. So the AA arc kind of ignored that, from what I saw. And therefore her development is not really going along with previous history....ugh. I like my stories to make sense and at least acknowledge past events.

Hopefully it gets better in the future! :o)

@x_29 said:

@John Valentine said:

@x_29 said:

@John Valentine: yes, that is why you fail.

Haha, cool story, bro.

Just go and write some X-23 bondage fan-fic and stop posting in the Hellion forums with these unfunny and overused memes/jokes. If you're going to troll, at least make it funny.

Thats ironic coming from the guy who trolls on other forums ( particularly Storm.) It is also ironic how you are going to tell me to stop using overused memes/jokes when you start your comment with an overused meme/joke.

@k2 Wanna know what i support

What John Valentine was doing there...yeah. I don't know if you've heard of it before--it's a bit of a difficult concept. In the English language, it is called sarcasm. Here's a dictionary definition to help you out:

sar·casm

[sahr-kaz-uhm] Show IPA

noun1.harshorbitterderisionorirony.

2.asharplyironicaltaunt;sneeringorcuttingremark:areviewfullofsarcasms.

And why should I care what you support? You can support whatever the heck you want, it doesn't matter to me. Not like your opinion is gonna change anything, honey. Oh, look, I've discovered pet names too! Isn't it clever? Just so clever! Not.

@John Valentine said:

@x_29 said:

@John Valentine: yes, that is why you fail.

Haha, cool story, bro.

Just go and write some X-23 bondage fan-fic and stop posting in the Hellion forums with these unfunny and overused memes/jokes. If you're going to troll, at least make it funny.

I support this statement.