Raven Darkholme - Blog Posts

As a kid that came from a 'She loves me, she loves me so much it hurts. I just wish she was a better Mother so loving her back didn't feel so hard' relationship with my own mom I latched on to Kurt and Rouge so, so hard as a kid. I felt their pain, their conflict, but every time I saw Raven... I couldn't help but love her, couldn't help seeing my mom in her. It doesn't help that Mystique is actually her favorite right behind Storm. It's my own inside 'joke', my mom will always love me just like Raven will always love Kurt and Anna but she was never the mother they needed her to be, especially when they needed her the most. Maybe I won't always feel like her little Nightcrawler, but for now, I don't mind it so much, I have my own Rouge after all (even comes with their own Gambit) and he's the best big brother in the world.

I think the ideas that

“Raven is a bad parent”

And

“Raven loves their children”

Can and should co exist. I will never sit here and say Mystique is a good parent, but I think acting like they don’t love their children is just being willfully ignorant of their characterization since the 80s.

I see a lot of people try to claim Raven doesn’t care about their kids. I actually think they care a LOT, it just, doesn’t deter their actions. And they’re not a good parent, don’t get me wrong, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love Kurt and Rogue and I think trying to claim they don’t actually does away with a lot of Raven’s character nuance.

A lot of the tragedy and depth of their relationships come from the fact that Raven DOES love their children, but it’s not enough. And Kurt and Anna Marie know that, and that’s part of the tragedy of it too.

I’m not a Mystique defender, but I am a Raven Darkhölme characterization realist. A lot of people flatten their character to add more sympathy to Kurt’s story especially, which feels kinda iffy to me. But that’s for another post.

From a storytelling perspective, it adds so much more depth and tragedy to all characters involved to not make the relationship so shallow and one sided as “Oh Mystique doesn’t love them”, and even to juxtapose Raven’s relationship to them with Irene’s is a whole other thing I may talk about one day. But like, you do the story injustice to flatten it down to just “Oh Mystique sucks”

Tl;dr - Raven Darkhölme is a shitty parent but they do love their kids. And that’s the whole tragedy of the thing

Happy Hare, where have you buried all your children? Tell me so I say

You can't keep them all safe. They will die and be afraid.

Mother, tell me so I say

Completely random headcanons that make no sense and are completely out of character for (movie) X-Men characters :

(If it's just the character then it's probably from the old timeline, aka the first movie, X2, The Last Stand, all that jazz.)

First Class Proffesor X - Once got so drunk that he made out with his reflection, yes he used the mutant pick up line on himself, he couldn't read anyone's mind for a week because all anyone could think about was that

First Class/During Days Of Future Past Magneto - Decked the shit out of a human kid once because they talked some shit and he doesn't feel bad about it to this day

Post Days Of Future Past Iceman - He naturally gets compared to Elsa after the movie comes out, it haunts him because one of the kids convinced him to dress up as her for halloween.

X2 Rogue - Because of her mutation and what happened in the first movie, she gets really bad anxiety about not wearing gloves, she can't even stay in the same room as someone with them off

Storm - Sometimes her hair gets all static when she's thinking about things and if you touch her when she's mad you'll get a shock, the kids like to rub balloons on her hair and stick them to walls when it happens.

Wolverine - Prefers crunchy food, whenever he eats anything soft he cringes and instinctively spits it out, may or may not have spat in someone's face, scott but that was probably on purpose, once or twice or three times.

First Class Mystique - Sometimes she turns into people she doesn't like and mockingly impersonates them in the mirror, she also uses it to practice her acting but overall it's just to make them look dumb

X2 Pyro - He has a staring problem, you can't call him out on it either because he just acts like he has no fucking clue what you're talking about

First Class Beast - He tried to shave his facial hair off after his serum backfired and had to wear a cone on his head for about a week

Apocalypse Jean Grey - When she's bored she'll grab a random object and just spin it around with her mutation, sometimes people have walked in unexpectedly and got hit in the face by a book or cup

Cyclops - Bites into celery fucking raw he doesn't even wash that shit

Days Of Future Past Quicksilver - He forgets that sometimes he shouldn't use his mutation in front of others, but he's usually so fast nobody notices besides the sudden gust of wind

Nominating Scott Summers as the most Weezer character

I've always found it funny how official sources always refer to Mystique as Kurt's mother. Like- that's not how gender works but I'm not a shapeshifter so what do I know.

Anyways I think she's terrible and I love her.