Originally Posted by
salarta
I think opinion of Lorna, generally, has actually improved over the past decade. And I think the massive bulk of it has to do with people being more aware of who Lorna should be based on good depictions of her, rather than who Marvel regularly tries to make people think she is.
When I first found out about Lorna in 2009, one of my clearest memories was someone on 4chan responding to my wanting Lorna to return from space by saying she should stay in space to "keep her away from characters that matter." Over the past decade, with the case well made for what she offers, I think she's breaking out of the stereotypes. Faster within fandom than within Marvel. I fondly remember years back when this board did a Polaris week - something she didn't necessarily "need," and I don't think any other characters got, but I greatly appreciated it. Now whether the same people are still around or not, I can't really say. But I think overall, fandom appreciates her more today than in the past.
As for actions if Lorna doesn't win, I can fully understand where you're coming from. I've been boycotting all things Disney since 2019 due to how horridly Marvel's been treating Lorna in the comics. I agreed to still read comics with Lorna in them IF she's treated well, but Marvel rarely achieves that. I do want to note, though, that I think it's very valuable to continue being involved and pushing for better for Lorna even if dropping Marvel. Silence makes it easy to dismiss the lost fan.
The "arguments" I saw from X-Factor fans who insisted Lorna shouldn't join X-Men because she's "better on X-Factor" pretty much amounted to a lot of not really knowing her history, or wanting to pretend her history doesn't matter. That's why I call them X-Factor fans rather than Lorna fans. Their goal seemed to me more like it was based in what's best for X-Factor, not what's best for Lorna.
It's reminiscent of one person in particular from a year ago who claimed Lorna's been team leader just soooooo much that she doesn't need to be team leader "yet again," when in reality All-New X-Factor was the first and only time she's actually been the intended team leader of something. Only few other times starting in the 90s involved briefly filling in while the real leader was out.
I wish I could simply give kudos to Marvel finally having Lorna's origin story told in X-Factor #243 (44 years after she was created, vs Havok having his told decades ago) or Lorna finally leading her own team (46 years after she was created, vs Havok getting to start in the 90s), but Marvel never really took that anywhere and seemed to me more like it was a thing to check off their list so they can say they did it. No real sense of wanting to move Lorna forward following those actions. Just "Maybe it'll get the kids to shush up a bit with their fandom." We still don't know what life was like for her growing up as a teenager. We don't even know what her foster parents look like. Do they even have first names? Are we sure they're not just pod people and Lorna grew up in a lab?
I don't count space as her being part of the X-Men because it was designed for them to set up shop in space as the Starjammers, not the X-Men, an offshoot group so out of touch with X-Men comics that they couldn't even take part in X-Men events.
I also don't count her being around the team as being part of the team.