"It was -- it felt good for you, too?"

[crabby_lioness]

I hoped someone else would post the amazing femslash in Uncanny X-Men 526 so I could post Heinberg's Magneto scenes, but as no one else has stepped up to the plate, here I am.  I'm pretty oblivious when it comes to subtext.  Most of the time I just don't see the slash unless it's canon couples, but these pages just screamed "Femslash!"

We start with a young woman becoming a mutant in Vancouver.  All she knows is that she's incredibly sick, her hair is falling out, and her skin is hardening for no apparent reason (although they're all symptoms of terminal illness, so she has reason to worry.)  The X-Men are keeping an eye on her, but not making contact to ease her fears and tell her what's going on until she bolts for the rooftop.  Only then, after she's in full blown panic mode, do they introduce themselves and tell her she's probably becoming a mutant.

She freaks out even worse.

So unless I'm mistaken that's adolescent body horror followed by a controversial labelling, rejection of the label, flying-as-a-metaphor-for-sex and some dodgy poses, followed by acceptance and a public declaration of love.   Anyone else seeing the subtext?

ETA 
 

This is my first post so I'm not sure how everything works.  I think these are the tags:

Comments

[crabby_lioness]

I don't read anything here as saying she's in 'constant, obviously delibitating pain'.

That's what the first two pages were showing.

And as I indicated, it's the miracle cure that bothers me as much as the reasoning behind the suicide.

cessation of constant pain usually results in euphoria in the young and healthy

Even if I could buy that she's got enough going on in her life that what's happening to her could push her over the edge (possible - we don't know much about her)

We know she's an over-achiever, and over-achieving teens do sometimes over-react the first time they hit a major stumbling block, including commit suicide.

shouldn't Hope or someone standing around have experienced some moderate surprise at how easily the situation got resolved?

Hope has too little social experience to know what "normal" is; Cypher also is in no position to comment; and as Nemesis has often said, mutants have a very weird biology.

They're relieved, okay? But they can't say anything more for sure until they get her into the lab Utopia, and they all know that.

[rallamajoop]

I think we're interpreting those first two pages differently. I apologise here if I'm misremembering, since I don't have the comic available to double check right now, but I read them as indicating that the fact something is happening to her that she can't control or understand is bothering her far more than the pain. Warren makes a comment to the effect of (IIRC) "she's still crying to a god who can't hear her [...] this is the face of the next wave of mutant-kind". If her primary concern in those pages is terrible physical pain, then his comment comes across as horribly dismissive, if not outright cruel - hence my assumption that the pain isn't meant to be the focus.

As I keep saying, if she'd jumped off the roof yelling "I can't deal with the pain anymore", then your interpretation would work for me. She doesn't. She jumps off the roof yelling "you can't help a freak like me".

[crabby_lioness]

Over-achievers are quite often control freaks. Having something going on in her body that she doesn't understand and can't control is going to scare her as much as the pain.

Y'all say you want creators to "show not tell", and when they do you complain they didn't tell you blatently enough...