My tweets for next weeks X-Men Monday:
"Do you feel that in the current #MeToo era, stories where women are enslaved & then saved by male characters should be frowned upon or showcased? The consistent abuse that Rachel Summers has had to endure in the past two years with no upward character development is startling.
She has been enslaved by 4 villains in 4 books in 2 years and looks to be discarded after this arc in X-Force. How do these types of stories empower female viewers when the female character is not allowed redemption or salvation?"
I think they honestly just don't care at all about the implications. It goes back to when there was an implication that this was supposedly Rachel's story going to where it was supposed to. They said something like this when Extermination 5 came out. So Rachel's story was to be enslaved again and then die either as a slave or at the moment she is freed and that is the end of her story. I wouldn't mind this so much if she was free in the issue that shows her gain the Phoenix Force, from her own agency, and that they end the series with her saving everyone else. At least that would give her a relatively decent send off. But now I can see this ending with Cable holding her head in his lap apologizing for having to kill her and that is the end of Rachel's story. So somehow Rachel just becomes Cable's story and she doesn't have anything else to offer as a character at all. The whole storyline just comes across as incredibly upsetting and ends with one of my favourite characters destroyed.
It's no wonder I like Jessica Cruz as a character. In some ways she has some similarities as Rachel. She started out as a character that was haunted by a horrible tragedy that gave her serious psychological issues, and she rose above that slowly over a progressive story where she started out enslaved by the Power Ring, but was able through help from others and her own will and agency to free herself from the rings control. She sacrificed herself to the Black Racer so that she could save the Flash in exchange for her own life, and in the process caused the Power Ring to take her place in death. Her sheer force of will in that situation lead to her becoming the next green lantern. In the Green Lanterns series that followed that there was an implication that when Jessica overcomes her fear her will power becomes almost endless and she is often portrayed as one of the most powerful of the Green Lanterns because of her incredible will to overcome her own personal fears. Of course Jessica currently suffers from a problem in Justice League Odyssey because the writer doesn't know what to do with her so she is nothing more than a background character in the book she is currently in.
It all comes down to writers who just don't get how to write women properly. They don't understand how to give female characters agency, and even though they can write male characters with a troubled past, they are unable to the same for a female character ever.
I hate what is happening to Rachel, and now that I know she goes into the finale as a slave, I now realize she is going to end the entire series with no agency at all, and no control over her own fate. They would never do that to a male character in the same way. Even with some of the characters who were twisted by the Axis, they still had some of their own agency, they were allowed to express their own rage.
This is so similar to when Polaris was enslaved by Malice, she remained under Malice's control for several years and it was incredibly upsetting that she never had the agency to free herself.
I really don't think they are going to kill her or leave her on the future/limbo.
whats even crazier is that they have female editors who are very much involved in the X-books and could've prevented the further abuse.
The writers and editors have no idea what to do with the character which is why we are seeing her getting mind controlled all the time. It would be easier for them to kill her off or remove her from X-Men for time being. Best case scenario, she gets sent off to a different group of heroes but it is highly unlikely that she would be a part of X-Men post HoXPoX
I don't think the editors have much control over what happens to characters. Writers pitch stories and editors don't seem to be making all that many changes - likely because they want to keep writers happy that they are able to do pretty much what they want but with minor changes based on what characters are or aren't available or plots in other current books.
The problem with Rachel always has been removing her from story arcs, especially crossovers, since she could too easily end the plot in a single issue. So either she has to be written out somehow or incapacitated. Incapacitated has been the trend. So I doubt the female editors at Marvel have any problem with what's going on with Rachel since they see the main issue - Writer A wants to do a certain plot and needs to explain why Rachel can't solve the issue in a single issue and the plot can stretch out over a 6 issue arc.
The problem for me is I don't know today who Rachel is? She's been so uninteresting for me since her return. I related to the young traumatized Rachel of the 80's, I related to the confident Rachel of Excalibur. Since her return, there have been few times where I found her relatable and interesting, when she came back in the middle of the 00's even Claremont had lost touch with her.
But as always, no character is permanently damaged and it just takes a good writer for rachel to rise again.
This treatment of Rachel remembers me the treatment of Carol Danvers in the beginning of the 80's.