Talking Meme: Illyana Rasputin
I'm going to go and try posting every day in January. You've been warned.
ladymercury_10 : Illyana Rasputin
Illyana Rasputin got a raw deal. I know this is X-Men comics and everyone got a raw deal, but she got a rawer deal than most.
For one thing, part of her childhood was hell -- in the sense of SHE GOT KIDNAPPED BY A DEMON LORD WHO WANTED TO USE HER SOUL AS A BATTERY TO FREE HIMSELF FROM LIMBO/SUMMON ELDER GODS. Fun times.
While she's there, she get trained in magic by old!future!Storm who dies. She also gets taught hand to hand combat by future!Kitty Pryde, who is transformed into a demonic hellcat, then dies. As far as I remember, Illyana is psychically linked to one or both of them as this happens.
And then! After she's spend over ten years in Limbo finding the demon lord and losing about 3/5 of her soul in the process of defeating and finally FINALLY manages to get back to Earth, not only has no time passed so not even her own family recognises her, but it turns out she's a mutant, so she's got that shit to deal with.
The above three paragraphs are the plot of Magik: Illyana and Storm the 80s miniseries that is basically Illyana's origin story.
Also, she's carrying her soul outside her body. That giant sword she's using? That's literally her soul made manifest(ish). And for some reason it's trying to turn cover her body with plate armour that grows every time she uses it. Yeah, idk.
Then more stuff happens to her -- she accidentally causes a demon invasion of Earth, becomes Queen of Limbo, gets de-aged to age 7, dies, is ressurected by the demon lord as a soulless demonic version of herself, steals part of someone else's soul, regains her memories, loses more of her soul, regains part (all?) of her soul, tricks the X-Men into defeating the Elder Gods, is imprisoned as a result, etc. You know, average stuff, because that's life with the X-Men.
(I'm not even going to touch on the whole Phoenix Five/AvX thing.)
But for all this, for all that she's had a shitty childhood and is regularly used as the mutant that should turn evil this time in A Shocking TwistTM (see also: Wanda Maximoff), the thing about Illyana is that she never stops trying. She never stops trying to do good, to be good, to be more than a demonic sorceress or a plot device. She just tries so hard to be a good person (but not a nice one -- she's a very 'ends justifying the means' kind of person).
I love her sense of humour and the fact that she probably plays pranks on everyone when they don't suspect her at all. Boom! Canon support for my headcanon! (From the recent Uncanny X-Men run.)
(Art by Chris Bachalo.)
Also, I think her design is really fucking fucking cool, what with the sword and the metal arm.
(Art by Stephanie Hans.)
I love Illyana Rasputin a lot, but I wish she got her own stories that weren't about her turning evil or powermad. I want her to bond with Wanda Maximoff and rebuild a friendship with Kitty and more of her odd semi-friendship with Emma Frost. I want stories about her being the one people go to when they have problems of an occult nature that are not the kind they can bring to Dr Strange. I want her to square off against (and/or team up with) Doctor Doom. I want her to reprise her acquaintance with Dr Kavita Rao and do science + magic together. Shit, she's canonically been Dr Strange's apprentice for years, but you wouldn't even know it if you didn't read the one issue in which it's mentionned/happens off-page. (A LOT of her development happens off-page. Her entire origin story originally happened off-page. That's not fucking fair.)
Basically I want her to have her own stories or even to be treated better by the narrative than she's been in recent years, dammit.
Look. If ever there was someone in X-Men who embodied "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions", it's Illyana Rasputin. That's fascinating and I want more of it.
(My talking meme post is here, in case anyone wants me to talk about anything.)
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/116625.html and has
comments over there.
ladymercury_10 : Illyana Rasputin
Illyana Rasputin got a raw deal. I know this is X-Men comics and everyone got a raw deal, but she got a rawer deal than most.
For one thing, part of her childhood was hell -- in the sense of SHE GOT KIDNAPPED BY A DEMON LORD WHO WANTED TO USE HER SOUL AS A BATTERY TO FREE HIMSELF FROM LIMBO/SUMMON ELDER GODS. Fun times.
While she's there, she get trained in magic by old!future!Storm who dies. She also gets taught hand to hand combat by future!Kitty Pryde, who is transformed into a demonic hellcat, then dies. As far as I remember, Illyana is psychically linked to one or both of them as this happens.
And then! After she's spend over ten years in Limbo finding the demon lord and losing about 3/5 of her soul in the process of defeating and finally FINALLY manages to get back to Earth, not only has no time passed so not even her own family recognises her, but it turns out she's a mutant, so she's got that shit to deal with.
The above three paragraphs are the plot of Magik: Illyana and Storm the 80s miniseries that is basically Illyana's origin story.
Also, she's carrying her soul outside her body. That giant sword she's using? That's literally her soul made manifest(ish). And for some reason it's trying to turn cover her body with plate armour that grows every time she uses it. Yeah, idk.
Then more stuff happens to her -- she accidentally causes a demon invasion of Earth, becomes Queen of Limbo, gets de-aged to age 7, dies, is ressurected by the demon lord as a soulless demonic version of herself, steals part of someone else's soul, regains her memories, loses more of her soul, regains part (all?) of her soul, tricks the X-Men into defeating the Elder Gods, is imprisoned as a result, etc. You know, average stuff, because that's life with the X-Men.
(I'm not even going to touch on the whole Phoenix Five/AvX thing.)
But for all this, for all that she's had a shitty childhood and is regularly used as the mutant that should turn evil this time in A Shocking TwistTM (see also: Wanda Maximoff), the thing about Illyana is that she never stops trying. She never stops trying to do good, to be good, to be more than a demonic sorceress or a plot device. She just tries so hard to be a good person (but not a nice one -- she's a very 'ends justifying the means' kind of person).
I love her sense of humour and the fact that she probably plays pranks on everyone when they don't suspect her at all. Boom! Canon support for my headcanon! (From the recent Uncanny X-Men run.)
(Art by Chris Bachalo.)
Also, I think her design is really fucking fucking cool, what with the sword and the metal arm.
(Art by Stephanie Hans.)
I love Illyana Rasputin a lot, but I wish she got her own stories that weren't about her turning evil or powermad. I want her to bond with Wanda Maximoff and rebuild a friendship with Kitty and more of her odd semi-friendship with Emma Frost. I want stories about her being the one people go to when they have problems of an occult nature that are not the kind they can bring to Dr Strange. I want her to square off against (and/or team up with) Doctor Doom. I want her to reprise her acquaintance with Dr Kavita Rao and do science + magic together. Shit, she's canonically been Dr Strange's apprentice for years, but you wouldn't even know it if you didn't read the one issue in which it's mentionned/happens off-page. (A LOT of her development happens off-page. Her entire origin story originally happened off-page. That's not fucking fair.)
Basically I want her to have her own stories or even to be treated better by the narrative than she's been in recent years, dammit.
Look. If ever there was someone in X-Men who embodied "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions", it's Illyana Rasputin. That's fascinating and I want more of it.
(My talking meme post is here, in case anyone wants me to talk about anything.)
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/116625.html and has
comments over there.