Originally Posted by
OldManLogan
You have nothing to apologize for, you weren't disrespectful at all. Besides, if anyone is bothered by your posts they can just skip them.
As I said before, what was funny to me was the trolling* falling on deaf ears, specially in light of the recent drama on the X-Men #5 thread.
*For the record, I'm not questioning your comment that you weren't trolling, I believe you, that was just my assumption when first reading the thread.
I know this is a tongue in cheek comment, but Emma is a fictional character whose snarky remarks are directed at other fictional characters. Posters/Fans are a different deal.
Believe it or not, I don't go around saying 'Bub' all the time just because Logan is one of my favorites, just like I don't think you enjoy putting words on people's mouths just because Jean does (just kidding, just kidding).
Also, stating "facts" can be counted as trolling if it's intended to get a rise out of someone else. "Facts" between "" because just being printed pages doesn't make them facts, as they can be easily taken out of context (the one where you sorta praised Emma for example, her powers were broken at that time, but you can't tell that just by looking at that page).
Wait, when you say not absolved you mean actually being put on trial for those crimes? Because if that's what you mean that's just an unrealistic expectation. With the sliding timescale, no one can really serve time unless they either break out of jail (which would make it worse) or are revealed/retconned to being innocent afterall (in Emma's case, it would be a retcon, and I hate those). Besides, she was in prison for a while, and covers suggest she'll go to another one soon (though covers can be misleading).
Now if we're talking absolved figuratively, in a way that makes sense in comic book stories? She definetly wasn't absolved in any way at all.
1) In the stories themselves? She's spent more time with the X-Men than against them, yet trust issues are a constant plot point on her stories.
Plus, during the time she was a villain, every crime she commited against any of the heroes she ended up defeated - some of which are depicted here in this very thread - even ending up in a coma twice. She never commited a crime without consequences for her when she was a villain. Ever since Generation X? That's when Emma started to get the spotlight, so from them on, her crimes stopped being the "villain doing villain things" type and started being more of the "making the hard decisions" kind.
2) By the fans? There are people that still consider her a villain, despite the facts that (a) her redemption arc happened almost 30 years ago and (b) her contributions for the franchise are far bigger as an (anti)hero than a villain. Few characters can say they defined an entire decade like Emma Frost did in the post Morrison years. That is a far bigger contribution than whatever minor role she played as a villain.
And this here is where we must draw the line. You have every right to feel that way, I don't know your experiences and what you look for in the characters you like - what makes your favorite characters tick for you. But that's not the same for all other fans. I don't know, for me personally, while Nightcrawler is one of my personal favorites, in general I tend to gravitate towards the heroes that stay on that gray area, sometimes slipping to either side of the fence. Comics for me are escapism, so Wolverine cutting loose and going on a killing spree when he is triggered is cool because I know I can't do that - but boy, do I wish sometimes I could cut loose too. Or a recently reformed Emma going all "Ugh, so I can't kill people anymore? *sigh* OK I'll just put a telepathic trigger on these fools' heads so that they'll vomit when they hear these 3 random words." Characters like Kurt (and I'm using one of my top favorites heres to avoid any bias) feel like the norm to me, they're acting as I'd expect decent people to act.
I'm not OK with the normalization of child abuse (or animals by the way) in real life, but there's reality and then there's comic books. All the children Frost abused were the protagonists of their respective stories , I knew before finishing the story that the experience would only make them stronger. Firestar is actually a good example, she wouldn't be a hero without Emma, who was just a villain used as a catalyst for Angelica's development as character. Once writers got interested in Emma herself, and stories started treating her as a character and not just an obstacle to be surpassed, then things got interesting, because then their interactions started to be about developing them both, instead of using one as a stepping stone for the other. That situation is not comparable with child abuse in real life at all, as we know there are real, serious and damaging consequences for child abuse, while the consequences for Angelica were a cool superhero origin story and learning to handle her powers better.
And finally, because I feel my jab earlier was unnecessary, to be fair with Jean I don't have a problem with her as a character, for me she just represents the overreliance on nostalgia and old, classic storylines, since she's one of the characters that got favored a lot by the deal with Fox. As far as comics stories go she's cool on my book. I'm a child of the 80's, so I was a teen during the X-Men's boom in the 90s, and back then the classics didn't have that much of a pull. If during the 90's Marvel treated the X-Men as they did the past decade, we would've had "Dazzler and the X-Men" before what we got with X-Men TAS. Whenever I see people putting stories like Days of Future Past or Dark Phoenix on a pedestal and wanting to prioritize those over the current storylines I'm like "you guys are SO missing the point of what made the X-Men the big success they were back then". In the 90's, Marvel's focus for the X-Men was the here and now whenever we saw then out of comics, sure the classic storylines got their due, but the characters, the costumes, the interactions and the whole setting used, those were all current at the time.