Laura: X-23 Appreciation 2018

[WebLurker]

A.) The current X-23 solo series says she's a clone beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt. I think that solo series overwrite guest appearances and events when there's a discrepancy.

B.) I don't really see how Dr. Kinney splicing her own DNA into the mix doesn't make Laura a clone; we already knew she was a modified clone. This seems to just further explain the modifications.

[Beaubier]

He's also said from the start that he and Yost intended for her to never grow up and remain eternally a child, (which made NO sense in the first place; Logan's powers manifested when he was a teen, and he still grew up.) and that didn't last TO her first comics appearance.

What’s your point? They clearly depict Laura aging up from Innocence Lost to Target X to NXM, so whatever one of their original ideas were, those ideas evolved and they were never married to that particular one. However, as far as I’m aware they’ve never changed their stance on Sarah Kinney’s methods of creating X-23.

The more I think about it, the more monstrous this revelation makes Sarah Kinney seem. What she did was bad enough to begin with, creating a child for the Facility to turn into a weapon. But that Taylor has now spun it into “Sarah Kinney created her biological daughter” just makes her seem an even worse person in retrospect. Yeah she somewhat redeemed herself by realizing her mistake, but that she went -that far- and then lied/omitted the truth about it just puts a really black mark on that character. I expect Taylor wanted us to feel warm fuzzies “aww now she really is SK’s daughter like she says she is” and it’s evidently worked for some readers, it’s having the opposite effect on me.

[Nazrel]

"You cherry-picking apologist" is a LOT more personally-charged than just telling him he's cherry-picking information. And incidentally, I read through the entire text of Sarah's letter before posting the excerpt. He's not cherry-picking anything out of it, as there's NOTHING in that text which directly contradicts the reveal.

The entire thing is a stream of consciousness; when she talks about Laura's creation at the beginning of the letter she was showing her mindset at the time; all she cared about was the science, not that what she was creating was a living, breathing human being. She doesn't go into the process beyond a vague overview. They rebuilt the genetic code. They replicated enzymes. Plugged holes. She doesn't say HOW they did it. Hell, the letter itself jumps right to living two lives, and made no mention of her decision to make a female in defiance of orders:



She talks about her defiance and determination to succeed out of spite. No where does she mention that part of that spite was driven by Rice and Sutter stonewalling her. Would you know that without the context of the lab scenes? Not even those contradict the reveal; all we see is Sarah slaving away at computers and test tubes. There's no real indication of HOW the repairs being are being carried out.

Nothing in the text of Innocence Lost (or even Target X) directly contradicts the reveal. And as Dthirds and I both pointed out, the ending of her letter can very easily be interpreted in support of it.

Except being at odds with the entire stated objective of the project, the change as explicitly spelled out, and the attitudes of everyone involved, the fact she was called a female clone despite the fact she would have ceased to be one at that point; oh, and clear authorial intent.

You could say nothing would have "directly" contradicted a reveal that she made a deal with Mephisto to solve the problem; sure it would have been completely at odds with the motivations and narrative, but nothing explicitly saying it didn't happen.

Also, while acknowledging that comic science, and real world science are often at odds with each other; I though I might point out this seems to be a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gene_synthesis

How the repairs are being carried out doesn't matter, because the objective was to recreate the DNA, not change it; the one change that was being made still used the existing DNA, and it was still initially rejected; even if they did use her DNA it would have been disassembled to the point where the bit and pieces would have been stripped of any semblance.

Now to repeat myself, though this has all been mostly repeating myself, if this turns out to be just some genetic spackling, fine; a percentage or 2, enough to ask "are they a clone?" and you can shrug and say "Basically" that doesn't deviate far from the plot; but you can't have half the wall be spackle.

Edit, further elaboration:

Sarah replacing half of Laura's DNA with her own would be an failure, an admission of defeat, and also defeat the point of replacing the Y chromosome, with an X; the only reason she did it was to keep it as close to a pure clone as possible.

Lets get into her parenthood issues, specifically her total aversion to the idea of becoming one; how does in make sense that a person like that would splice in half her own genetic code, there by immediately losing the desired clinical disassociation from the experiment, with the knowledge that this will be her literal biological child.

[Sighphi]

I think wolverine can make up a team with only his kids, right?

[Ambaryerno]

I think wolverine can make up a team with only his kids, right?

His enemies were certainly able to.

[Ambaryerno]

*Double Post*

So much for the long threads causing problems. :-P

[Mr Abductor]

I think wolverine can make up a team with only his kids, right?

If you include the dead ones, yeah.

[Mr Abductor]

Double post

[Dthirds3]

Now to repeat myself, though this has all been mostly repeating myself, if this turns out to be just some genetic spackling, fine; a percentage or 2, enough to ask "are they a clone?" and you can shrug and say "Basically" that doesn't deviate far from the plot; but you can't have half the wall be spackle.

This is the one point i think we all agree on, its not going to be a 50/50 split. at most she just cut off half the broken on and replaced it with hers(making her 75/25 logan/sarah) so Laura is still a modified clone but can be also considered Sarah and Logan's daughter.

Sarah replacing half of Laura's DNA with her own would be an failure, an admission of defeat, and also defeat the point of replacing the Y chromosome, with an X; the only reason she did it was to keep it as close to a pure clone as possible.

Lets get into her parenthood issues, specifically her total aversion to the idea of becoming one; how does in make sense that a person like that would splice in half her own genetic code, there by immediately losing the desired clinical disassociation from the experiment, with the knowledge that this will be her literal biological child.

again it states in Sarah's letter that recreating Logan's DNA was impossible with the tools they had and its clear a good chunk of her motivation came from wanting to spite stutter and rice having more of her DNA in it would be a big screw you if Laura was a success and was trying to desensitized to do the job. Sarah thinking she was her daughter happened over a long period of time, remember she let Laura out to help Megan then brought her back. one of the few things wee know about Sarah's past was her father was abusive and that led her to think she shouldn't have a family. We need a Sarah Kinney flashback to get our answers

the excerpt stating this.

Replicating the mutant genome proved difficult but rebuilding Weapon X seemed all but impossible. For every enzyme, for every codon, for every sequence we repaired, or even built back from near nothingness, we seemed to be missing a million more But I felt alive, the work, the failure, the challenge It was like a brilliant light, shining inside of me. I felt like my life had a purpose. What a fool I was. I was defiant in the face of my failures. I was determined to succeed out of spite. Weeks passed. I was working on two projects, living two lives. I was used to that. I had kept secrets before. It seems so incredible to me now, that in all that time, given everything that I knew what I was doing and what the end result would bear I didn't give it a second thought. I told myself that you weren't real. I told myself that this was science not life. I was creating a weapon, not a child. I was wrong. When I was little I always believed that everything that happened to me -- I deserved it.

I never wanted a family. My father stripped me of that desire. He took my childhood, my innocence, my life.

[Havok83]

A.) The current X-23 solo series says she's a clone beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt. I think that solo series overwrite guest appearances and events when there's a discrepancy.

B.) I don't really see how Dr. Kinney splicing her own DNA into the mix doesn't make Laura a clone; we already knew she was a modified clone. This seems to just further explain the modifications.

bc half her DNA now comes from Sarah instead of nearly 100% of Logan. She technically wasnt a clone bc she wasnt an exact match of him but now she definitely isnt one. She has a genetic mother and father

[Ambaryerno]

The fact is, yes, it's a retcon. No, it's not what KYost intended when they created her. But as retcons go it's by FAR not one of the most egregious or extreme, (I forget which version of the story we're on; was Jean the Phoenix or was it the Phoenix pretending to be Jean during the original Phoenix saga?) as there's even plenty within the text itself (particularly Sarah's letter, as myself and D pointed out) that can be used to make it work.

You can like it or you can not like it. Frankly, jumping to conclusions after only ONE PAGE is premature. We don't know yet HOW Laura is going to process or react to this. For all we know the questions she's left with in the aftermath is what actually set up her using the X-23 name again, which we know is due to be explored at some point in the future.

[WebLurker]

bc half her DNA now comes from Sarah instead of nearly 100% of Logan. She technically wasnt a clone bc she wasnt an exact match of him but now she definitely isnt one. She has a genetic mother and father

Like how Sonny Burch's thugs didn't use truth serum in Ant-Man and the Wasp?

[WebLurker]

bc half her DNA now comes from Sarah instead of nearly 100% of Logan. She technically wasnt a clone bc she wasnt an exact match of him but now she definitely isnt one. She has a genetic mother and father

Like how Sonny Burch's thugs didn't use truth serum in Ant-Man and the Wasp?

[Havok83]

Like how Sonny Burch's thugs didn't use truth serum in Ant-Man and the Wasp?

No.

10char....

[Ambaryerno]

Had a question answered by Waiting for the Trade. Mine was the first of the evening for this week's Thursday Q&A!