Mystique Xmen - Blog Posts

Charles: just be yourself!

Alex: be myself? i have one day to win over Sean. how long did it take before you all started liking me?

Erik: couple of weeks

Mystique: six months

Hank: jury’s still out

Alex: see? “be myself” what kind of garbage advice is that?

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