ysabetwordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2014-05-29 12:32 am
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2014-05-29 12:32 am
Entry tags:
Different Kinds of Strength
This quote, from this article, made me drop my brain. Spoilers for X-Men: Days of Future Past.
"But there’s also been no outcry at Kitty’s absence from the meat of the action because no one misses a character they hardly know."
What. The actual. FUCK?
Kitty Pryde saved the whole world, human and mutant alike. She did this by sending Wolverine's mind to the past. She sent him decades back, when her previous efforts were a few days to a week, maybe a month at most. That is beyond exhausting; it is life-threatening. And then she kept doing that after Wolverine unconsciously stabbed her, while she was bleeding to death and crying from the pain. We know she was bleeding out because Bobby explicitly remarked that she was losing too much blood.
In my mind, this is heroism equivalent to Tony Stark carrying a nuke through the wormhole. Kitty knew she was dying; they all did; it was their last stand and their last chance. She did her job anyway. And this is somehow not enough for people? What did you want to see her do, fire a machine gun with her magic snatch?
Fuck that noise. There's more than one way to be a hero and Kitty was IT in that movie.
"But there’s also been no outcry at Kitty’s absence from the meat of the action because no one misses a character they hardly know."
What. The actual. FUCK?
Kitty Pryde saved the whole world, human and mutant alike. She did this by sending Wolverine's mind to the past. She sent him decades back, when her previous efforts were a few days to a week, maybe a month at most. That is beyond exhausting; it is life-threatening. And then she kept doing that after Wolverine unconsciously stabbed her, while she was bleeding to death and crying from the pain. We know she was bleeding out because Bobby explicitly remarked that she was losing too much blood.
In my mind, this is heroism equivalent to Tony Stark carrying a nuke through the wormhole. Kitty knew she was dying; they all did; it was their last stand and their last chance. She did her job anyway. And this is somehow not enough for people? What did you want to see her do, fire a machine gun with her magic snatch?
Fuck that noise. There's more than one way to be a hero and Kitty was IT in that movie.
Yes...
That's true too. I'd be happy to write more examples of that.
"Not the Absence of Fear" has a close parallel with Clement hanging onto healing energy even though the injury at hand is way past his current ability to fix.
"Valor's Widow" deals with a different kind of quiet sacrifice, although she does get a lot of respect from it.
I've got one poem, "The Ones They Leave Behind," about a boy watching his sister leave with a paladin. He's part of the support crew who keeps the crops growing and the livestock fed while somebody else goes off to save the world. Because if it weren't for people like him, they'd have nothing to come home to.
>> Which is horrific, because that really is heroism: doing your duty for the sake of the work and not the fanfare. <<
Agreed.
Re: Yes...
I was just thinking, it's hard to write about such things because it usually is the "behind the scenes" people that we don't always think of. But there's plenty of people to write about on the homefronts if we just put our minds to it.