Originally Posted by
Ambaryerno
I absolutely hated this. Liu completely screwed Hellion over.
Everyone in this arc was "Poor Laura, bad, angry Julian needs to stay away from her" while Wolverine and Gambit are shitting all over him for Karima despite them having done far, FAR worse and never been punished for it. All of Julian's issues got chalked up to him being a dick, while Laura was a traumatized victim over her past. It completely ignores he's a kid who got booted by his parents, TWICE, (including them literally just up and moving without giving him a forwarding address) watched 99% of his friends and peers get depowered then a substantial number of THEM get BLOWN UP. He lost his hands and the best anyone could do for him was pump him full of painkillers (and that's from actual dialogue) and tell him to man up about it. His not-quite girlfriend sneaks away in the middle of the night and leaves him alone to deal with all of it himself without even saying good bye. When Karima attacks Utopia, he watches EVERYONE get taken out, leaving him the only person in a position to act. For a moment Karima reasserts control, and she BEGS HIM TO KILL HER before her programming takes over again, so Hellion does literally the only thing he could and grants that request, and literally EVERYONE treats him like he's now a monster and villain as a result, while Cyclops locks him up with Wolverine for not being repentant enough over doing the only thing he COULD do to save everyone (the kicker: Karima WASN'T EVEN KILLED).
And then when he tries to reach out to the ONE person he could reasonably expect to listen and understand, she literally turns her back on him and tries to walk away.
Yes, Laura was not really in a position to do much for him (though it wouldn't have killed her to just sit with him and listen. That's all he was actually asking for). And yes, Hellion trying to restrain her when she him was crossing a line, and the things he said afterwards were uncalled for (though frankly, with Liu's Robo-Laura you can't exactly fault him for thinking it) there's no dispute about that. But how the X-Men treated him while handling Laura (who had done FAR worse things, whether she had a say in it or not) with kid gloves was thick with hypocrisy (ESPECIALLY from "King of the Hypocrites Why Are the X-Men Looking To ME For Moral Guidance?" Logan).
This isn't about shipping. The entire arc just served to highlight that Laura is an absolute **** friend. She never tried to help Kiden and her gang get off the streets. We've seen her interact with them precisely once in the main universe since NYX, when all it takes is a single line of dialogue "I offered them a place at Xavier's school/Utopia/Wherever but they refused." She walks away from Julian when he's just trying to reach out to SOMEBODY for help coping with what he's dealing with and has every reason to expect that the person he considered his best friend — and who reciprocated that feeling and more — to be there for him. She hasn't even talked to Dust, Mercury, or any of the Avengers Academy kids (granted she's got good reason to with Finesse, but still) in almost 10 years now.
That arc was the one time I've ever found her utterly unsympathetic.