Illyana Rasputin: Magik Appreciation 2019

[sungila]

I've argued in this forum regarding Illyana knowing about the Phoenix Five before it happened, but several here disagreed.

But it seems far too 'convenient' to me that Cyttorak & Phoenix powers both lifted up and dropped down Piotr simultaneously, leading to her "There Are No Snowflakes In Hell" speech.

Continuing that with others to "Villians It Is" in AvX: Consequences including Scott, Emma, and Magneto, as additional broken ones, just seems too coincidental to me to be credible.

"Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action" is a military axiom. In terms of Mutants learning what wielding enormous tainted powers feels like, Illyana is becoming surrounded by other wounded fallen angels at a suspicious rate.

As far as the Fallen status currently, Moira is paranoid about Destiny; Tempus is under control mind-melded into part of the Resurrection Squad, but as a Cross-Time Traveler, Illyana should be a Clear and Present Danger to Moira & Xavier, especially with her "Extraordinarily Sophisticated Mental Shields", which apparently allow her to convince telepaths that they can read her mind, all while manipulating them.

Moira seems to have a powerset that is a 'lite' version of what Illyana used in the Elder War, trying out various solutions until she finally obliterated the Elder Gods with Zero X-Men casualties. Replaying scenarios until winning is assured ("Groundhog Day", "Edge of Tomorrow", "Next" etc) is close to an unbeatable superpower, whereas Destiny has told Mora she's limited to 10.5 iterations: a pretender compared to Illyana, who might have been playing for centuries (Sociopathy would be an inevitable side effect of seeing everyone on Earth devoured a thousand times by Cthulhu and Associates.)

It's difficult to regard the possibility of facing an Illyana at any given moment in any given panel in any page with such an awareness. However, just as difficult not to. But it's this, and it's so very much appreciated GORM (your careful reading, curiosity and expert analysis is awesome and inspiring and awe inspiring and impossibly heartbreaking) - it's this that is facing anybody, truthfully, completely in any given moment. It's too big to wrap your arms around, too huge to cram into a hello or handshake...another person and everything else that isn't you...that saved you, that came from behind under over and ahead of you to offer you this world...fragile as it is...undoing and perfecting as she battles...and should she or anyone meet your gaze...and still, and yet, anyway...to be as brave and human to say, "Hey"

Maybe it's a thing to do...or could be...to maybe look in the mirror...to maybe have a Yanna moment...aligning a shard of a second when it's over...when you won...just you a-shard-a-second...maybe you have to clear the smoke, soot, or vapor from the glass...

And try, in that second of a fraction of a motion made open reflecting...to say Hey you...and smile...

Sometimes when I make eye contact with a crow and I get that the crow gets an uncomfortable feeling that I 'felt' it looking at me...it's an odd sort of awareness and affirmation of seeing and being seen...and sort of rude for not looking up, when I did...more welcomingly.

Impossible and true.

To always be ready to see the reason for everything. I think that could actually make a sensitive life make more, um, actual sense.

Thanks as always GORM.

I guess it's that she's not there, maybe, the reason why she's not a threat...she's not set...unsettled...she's finished the part that's making the part that would if it could consider her part in the part where she's actually using this part for, well, who's standing next to her (for instance) and what happens when you begin there instead?

[WallStreeter]

I've argued in this forum regarding Illyana knowing about the Phoenix Five before it happened, but several here disagreed.

But it seems far too 'convenient' to me that Cyttorak & Phoenix powers both lifted up and dropped down Piotr simultaneously, leading to her "There Are No Snowflakes In Hell" speech.

Continuing that with others to "Villians It Is" in AvX: Consequences including Scott, Emma, and Magneto, as additional broken ones, just seems too coincidental to me to be credible.

"Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action" is a military axiom. In terms of Mutants learning what wielding enormous tainted powers feels like, Illyana is becoming surrounded by other wounded fallen angels at a suspicious rate.

As far as the Fallen status currently, Moira is paranoid about Destiny; Tempus is under control mind-melded into part of the Resurrection Squad, but as a Cross-Time Traveler, Illyana should be a Clear and Present Danger to Moira & Xavier, especially with her "Extraordinarily Sophisticated Mental Shields", which apparently allow her to convince telepaths that they can read her mind, all while manipulating them.

Moira seems to have a powerset that is a 'lite' version of what Illyana used in the Elder War, trying out various solutions until she finally obliterated the Elder Gods with Zero X-Men casualties. Replaying scenarios until winning is assured ("Groundhog Day", "Edge of Tomorrow", "Next" etc) is close to an unbeatable superpower, whereas Destiny has told Mora she's limited to 10.5 iterations: a pretender compared to Illyana, who might have been playing for centuries (Sociopathy would be an inevitable side effect of seeing everyone on Earth devoured a thousand times by Cthulhu and Associates.)

Telepaths can read magic's mind. She's not immune to telepathy. A powerful enough psychic attack can take her. Of course she can lower her shields as well. When she let Emma read her mind, she showed her the truth. Of course Magik did this to meet her own ends, but she was telling the truth of what had happened in one of those futures.

With that said, she did know of what the Phoenix would do. She told Black Widow what she had seen.

They didn't have Phoenix powers, but due to circumstances Moira and Xavier are fallen angels as well. Perhaps Illyana is all about unifiying mutants.

[Pallas]

I really wish Illyana will use her magic, for once. I like the disks and the sword fights but she has so much demons she could summons and spells she could cast.

I'm not saying I'd like another Dr. strange, (even though I wouldn't mind an arc in which Strange takes Magik to some magical adventures in which she learns to use her magic better) but she has so much stuff she could use but doesn't! We want to see her cast spells more often!

[Snoop Dogg]

me irl

https://twitter.com/SienkiewiczArt/s...69680219070466

[Jumpyshark]

me irl

https://twitter.com/SienkiewiczArt/s...69680219070466

That is just ridiculously cool. It totally could also be an album cover!

[Snoop Dogg]

That is just ridiculously cool. It totally could also be an album cover!

Illy would definitely vibe with Murray from the Dio albums. She'd introduce him to Kitty to have him flex all over Lockheed.

[Jumpyshark]

Illy would definitely vibe with Murray from the Dio albums. She'd introduce him to Kitty to have him flex all over Lockheed.

Lockheed would definitely like heavy metal.

Now imagining that The Last In Line's cover was inspired by Limbo in the Marvel universe.



(Has there ever been a Marvel riff on "We were totally lied to by our album covers!")

[G0RM]

Telepaths can read magic's mind. She's not immune to telepathy. A powerful enough psychic attack can take her. Of course she can lower her shields as well. When she let Emma read her mind, she showed her the truth. Of course Magik did this to meet her own ends, but she was telling the truth of what had happened in one of those futures.

With that said, she did know of what the Phoenix would do. She told Black Widow what she had seen.

They didn't have Phoenix powers, but due to circumstances Moira and Xavier are fallen angels as well. Perhaps Illyana is all about unifiying mutants.

My primary evidence of Magik's "Extraordinarily Powerful and Sophisticated Psionic Shield" is from Uncanny X-Men v1 #164, where Xavier uses just those words to describe them, as Illyana sits across the table from Charles, challenging him to read her mind.

The real trick was both concealed and revealed when she said:
"I remember you touching my forehead one night as I fell asleep and the next morning, when I woke up, I could speak perfect English."

How did Xavier 'teach her English' if her thoughts and memories were shielded?

Do you really believe that she never learned English during her seven years in Limbo, during which she learned dozens of magical and demonic languages? Did Storm & Cat neglect to teach her? Were Belasco & S'ym speaking Russian to her for her convenience for years?

If not, how did she convince Charles that he 'taught' her English if she already knew it?

As discussed in "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (a free online text and audiobook which I cannot possibly recommend enough), genuinely sophisticated Psionic shields don't simply 'block' psychics, they actually hold complete, but simulated thoughts and memories, so that the telepath *thinks* they've read your mind, but they actually come away with exactly the misinformation you've intentionally planted. (The arts of deception, spycraft, and cryptography run infinitely deep, but carry the cost of any possibility of trust and pay the price of Coventry.)

In TNM v1 #15, some details of her shields are partially revealed after Emma mind-blasts her while Illyana is spying on the Massachusettes Academy in astral form. Clouds of dozens of "Psychic Familiars" start pouring out of her eyesockets, ephemeral phantoms that change size and appearance, and disperse with a touch, but can 'sting'.

My interpretation is that Illyana 'wears' dozens, if not thousands, of demonic Familiars within, layered as 'decoy' minds to fool the unwary, images of plausible but false thoughts and memories, growing denser, more painful, and harder to read as the telepath tries to dig deeper: a mirror maze, a labyrinth in which only fools dare to tread. (I assume her current shields are many, many times stronger now than when she was 14, but she notably doesn't use astral forms anymore.)

Gods and Hell Lords are notoriously difficult to telepathically read, the energies of their Divine/Demonic souls being beyond mortal reckoning.

It has been suggested here that Illyana dropped her shielding after recovering her bloodstones, being the ultimate false-front against Emma and all other mutant telepaths during the Elder War through Phoenix Five, but then becoming child's play for the Cuckoos, Xavier Jr. and Rachel to stun and read thereafter.

I hold to my "Illyana Throws Fights" theory, pretending to be overcome as easily as a disposable Doombot, so that the rest of the Mutants don't shrink into irrelevance: mere ants beneath the Darkchilde's cloven hooves.

In the same way she threw an AvX fight to Black Widow until the last moment, Illyana chose to spend months in the bomb jacket as penance, survivors guilt of being the only one left to tell the tale of demonic invasions that consumed Earth, many, MANY times.

Moira probably has lots in common with Magik in that way, although I suspect Illyana has wandered countless Dead Earths, poking through the ashes, long after Moira would have died and been reincarnated ("Arkham Asylum" by Dhalpin3 & Lord Grise includes a scene suggesting that Illyana salvages treasures from Cross-Time DeadLands, grave-robbing worlds killed by nuclear & biological warfare for their ownerless wealth and abandoned artifacts of beauty and power.)

Belasco was demonstrated to be immortal against the centuries and any injury short of the SoulSword; it seems self-evident to me that the HellLord who curbstamped Dormammu by devouring Limbo, and survived the Earth's destruction by the Elder Gods and Legion dozens, if not *millions* of times, is more immortal than Belasco, Dormammu, and the Elder Gods put together. I don't think she can really die, perhaps not even by her own hand, without Limbo Itself resurrecting her (it is Canon that Splinter Realms always reincarnate their Hell Lords to rule over them until, and even after, another Challenger replaces them, like a dysfunctional couple getting back together over and over again despite infidelity and abuse.)

But Illyana doesn't want to be seen that way, she doesn't want the Great Responsibility of her Great Power. She occasionally obliterates Space Gods and Demon Empires, invasions from space, time, and other dimensions, but mostly she jumps around with a sword kicking ass and taking names, having fun with people who think of her as "The Nice One."

(I love the epilog of Secret Warriors: Moon Girl's unbirthday party. I don't want to spoil it, but in just a couple pages Rosenberg utterly captured "The Nice One" who can slap down Mister Sinister, but who wants everyone else to get their time in the sun. The fact Rosenberg also did Dead Souls astounds me, although I feel it was mostly smoke and mirrors, meddling in Xi'an & Tran's relationship to repay the favor for their help with Legion. {Maybe it was Karma's split soul specifically that allowed her to act as Fixer for Legion Omega, and Illyana clearly understands complex brother/sister relationships, killing and possessing them with infernal energies etc. Ditto with Guido & Rahne "Sorry I killed your kid to become Satan Himself while I was soulless" etc... Broken, fallen angels, or to quote 'Eleanor Rigby': "Oh, the Lonely People, Where Do They All Belong?". Maybe with Illyana, the Loneliest One.})

[G0RM]

Lockheed would definitely like heavy metal.

Now imagining that The Last In Line's cover was inspired by Limbo in the Marvel universe.



(Has there ever been a Marvel riff on "We were totally lied to by our album covers!")

Have you seen Lockeed's 'Reflected Form' in the Black Vortex storyline? Like the Darkchilde, I suspect Lockheed also disguises his True Form from the sight of others...

On return from Secret Wars, his new crush showed herself to be a Kaiju in Japan, so I suspect he can change size and form, being the James Bond of another stellar civilization, first spying on the Brood, and now monitoring the Celestial-infected Earth.

(Sweet album art. I love the Hard Rock compilations on YouTube dedicated to clip-art of Illyana's cursed existence, although I find Blue Oyster Cults "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" from Heavy Metal to be the actual Origin point of Claremont's UXM #160, covering a little girl's temptation and triumph over Ultimate Evil using her magic sword and with a little help from a friendly dragon. https://youtu.be/bIUKlVEvyTo )

(Goldballs, Tempus and others spoke about about its Hellish nature, and 'Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men' podcast has voted Limbo to be the "Most Metal of All Dimensions".)

[sungila]

me irl

https://twitter.com/SienkiewiczArt/s...69680219070466

It's important to have friends.

Kitty Pryde.

The way out of Limbo, because sometimes in Illyana's story I get too cold and unblinking....I throne a seat in a flame...I forget I'm seeing...unseeing...and that can atrophy a foot into a hoof, a hand into a cut fist melding into the blade a shiver of mirror a shard...and a wound surrounded by a plague of sulfurous infection...so islandeded and away that the very antibodies of being with people stunt into stuttering rhyme and can't say...simply, "there is a way"

Because there is.

Kitty.

But how do you say.

After all this.

Stay. I'm like seven Kitty. No really. And then start crying...no, really...no.

And mean yes.

Friendship is very important.

If Kitty knew it wouldn't work.

Illayna isn't wrong.
Nobody would or could possibly stay forever like that.
And when she actually says it, look at the place...look at the price...who could, who possibly...just for her forever, just for her? Who?

And it's sad to say it...nobody and no...it's not true that it's 'you'...no...that mean ol' first you love yourself thing...yea, see how a person can split in two...because to be both shores and not the river or the crossing...nope...the side with the big people is like, get over it...and their right...they did it...right?


When a child's reasoning is demeaned as "magical thinking" - when that child resorts to conjuring and power...when her movements are warded by responsive demons who hurry off to serve her command...when she doesn't mean it...but what she means doesn't matter...

No. There's nobody like that. Nobody could stay and hang out and the demons want too much.

Kitty is very important.

Lockheed isn't a pet.

He's a dragon.

Magical thinking huh?

Why not pull a sword out of the your soul and/or the air and rush through the 4th part of a mini (middle school) so that you're all of a sudden finished with that hard part...you know? Educated...special...you know it all...etc...

She won't stay over.

Wake up.

Grow up?

That sort of thing people say to people....

That sort of thing a kid says to a mirror, I mean a doll...

When she's trying to you know, grow up...

Kitty is important.

More important than the things I write or say about it or her or her or anything really.

Which means you are important.

Sorry. But you are.

Don't think about it.

You know, as you walk through walls for somebody, don't call it 'walking through walls' - just, well, it's what friends do.

Don't make sense of things.

Silly.

With friends...it's okay, to play...(doctor let's say) that's how...um...you be queen and I be king, heroes right...kids talking about the rules of the game and the reasons...okay...agreements...I don't know what that does...but that's how it is...um, I think...

[Andru]

me irl

https://twitter.com/SienkiewiczArt/s...69680219070466

Oooooooooo this is great!

[pandafarmer]

Dio's album covers were the most heavy metal things out there. My favorite part was when you flipped over the logo it spells out "DEVIL."

[sungila]

Deafheaven's post-metal albums are challenging listens.

Anybody in the thread ever hear Liz Harris' Grouper projects?

We do know Illyana loves music. Pop music.

Maybe I've got this all wrong.
How's Taylor Swift's new album?

What's streaming the post-hipster channel?

Lana Del Ray was like 'yesterday' though right?

[Fokken]

Taylor Swift's new Album Lover is a musical rendering of the relationship between Yana and Kitty.

There.
I said it.

[G0RM]

Speaking of Kitty and Lockeed, today's Marauders #1 doesn't include Illyana in-panel, but the other two are in fine form and Magik is much on their minds.

Kitty whines "I can't just be Illyana's backpack. I mean she could portal me around, but am I really so useless now?" while Lockeed is just the cutest little dragon, Oh yes you are, yes you are the cutest widdwl dwagon... (Seriously, he really is.)

So at least one mutant has Magik envy, but apparently the others are still under Magik's spell of adequacy, not realizing how irrelevant that are with Our Lady of Darkness on the scene.