Ok, so I'm browsing Romy tags in tumblr, BlueSky and ao3 as a way to distract myself from the end-of-vacation blues... 'It's kinda quiet recently' I say to myself sadly...
But then, what do I see? 👀
A new story by kaebear89? Oh sweet! And the premise looks cool!
And, wait, what's that? Ludy_Ling posted a missing scene of 'he reaches over and he touches you'??
I go back to scrolling and- OMG Base_and_Co updated XIII???
Ludy_Ling, Base_and_Co and kaebear89 thank you!! I feel so blessed you fed me well tonight 😍 You guys are amazing! 🙏 You made this girl so happy you have no idea! Take care 😘
Behind the Curtain: Interview with Romy Writer Ludi-Ling
House of Cards actually started out as a random smut scene that burgeoned into something far, far more.
@ludi-ling goes meta in our final interview about her writing process; how the Romy fandom’s changed over the years; alternate universes (AU); and the role of smut for Romy fans. (Spoiler alert, our heroes are hot.)
No surprise that it’s a pleasure interviewing Ludi. I kept sending her more questions (25 total!) because her responses fascinated me and inspired me to ask more. It’s a rare person who writes visceral, startling prose and can also talk about her work with clarity, intelligence, and an affection for her characters that doesn’t occlude good writerly judgment.
The superlatives don’t end there. Anyone who knows the community knows that Ludi is a friend to her readers and to her fellow writers. As we all enter a heady 2019, reading Mr. and Mrs. X together, Ludi is someone to cherish.
If you haven’t read our other interviews, please check out:
Part 1 of interviews: X-men Origins
Part 2 of interviews: Going Dark
As a scholar of fan studies, do you believe Romy fanfiction fulfills needs that Marvel never can? What needs might those be, for Romy fans?
Certainly I think that fanfic is built on the premise of filling in the gaps, scribbling in the margins (to quote the seminal fan studies scholar, Henry Jenkins!) and fixing perceived wrongs. Comics are unique in that regard because the characters and stories within them continue for years and even decades. Comics continuities are convoluted and complicated, and there is a constant churn of writers working on them. Many fans have followed characters for far longer than the writers, and may know the characters more intimately than the professionals. Comics are full of retcons and contradictory takes on the characters. And I think fanfic is an important medium for allowing fans to “fix” that, to negotiate it. Because of the ongoing nature of comics, and because the futures of the characters are always going to be nebulous and subject to the whims of Marvel and the writers indefinitely, I think it’s going to continue to be important. Romy may be married in the comics, but there will still be plenty to write about—kids, divorce, a reconciliation . . . who knows? ;)
What do you think Romy readers seek out when they read fanfiction? If it’s wish fulfillment, what kinds of wishes are being fulfilled? If it’s looking for “gaps” that the comics skip over, what have you found to be the most common sorts of gaps?
I think Romy is a very interesting example of the “wish fulfillment” function of fanfiction. Because part of the mystique of that ship (no pun intended) is that they can’t touch, they can’t consummate their relationship . . . And fanfic is a way that fans can get them to touch, to work out that angst. I think that one of the staples of Romy fic is the sexual tension between the two, and how they resolve that; the push and pull between them. Sometimes these take place in epic, superheroic backdrops, sometimes in AUs, where they have no mutant powers and where the tension between them is born from other factors (such as already having significant others, or being enemies, or in illicit lines of work).
What draws you to AUs? Your stories aren’t a case of fanfiction filling what’s “between panels”; you tend to shift characters and relationships to entirely different settings, whether it’s a Strange Days–like world or another genre, like a Southern gothic procedural. Can you talk about AUs and how they play out in your imagination?
What I’ve always liked is world-building. One of my first large-scale writing projects was a fantasy trilogy called The Legend of Elu. Most of the fun I got from that was actually building the world, the kingdoms, the mythology, the theology, the languages, the history of that story. That definitely bled into my fanfic.
Now I tend to write canon stuff as one-shots, and novel-length stuff as AUs, because they give me more space to play with world-building. That was something I realised I enjoyed more when I wrote Threads. Writing all those little worlds in a series of one-shots felt too “small.” HoC was originally an expansion of the Threads tale Touch and Go, but it grew into something else, and since then, I’ve preferred to go the AU route for the longer-form stories. :)
We’re living in peak Romy times—I think we’re still reeling from the wedding! Let’s say you had the power to go back in time and drop a pin into an earlier moment in the Romy timeline that you felt truly represents what Romy means to you (which isn’t the same as when they’re happiest!). When and in what universe? Why this choice?
There are so many iconic moments from Romy’s past, but, for me personally, I always go back to their time in Valle Soleada (in X-Treme X-Men). That’s not because they’re happy per se, but because I think that that period was the perfect example of how great they worked together on every level, and was proof positive that they were a good match. I often say it, but I will say it again here, because it’s the truth, and y’all can fight me to the death over it—if there was a time they would’ve got married and I would’ve bought it 100%, it would’ve been in Valle Soleada.
On Tumblr, it seems a large contingent of Romy fans are women in their 30s who discovered Romy at a tender age, thanks to the animated series. This includes you and me! There are exceptions, of course. What’s it like for you to have been in the fandom from the early aughts? What changes in the fandom have you noticed between 2003 and 2018?
I really joined the fandom at an exciting time for Romy—they’d just got back together properly after all the turmoil of the Trial of Gambit. X-Treme X-Men was a treat for Romy fans, and Claremont wrote such a great dynamic between them. As fans we were all excited and happy and well-fed on all that Romy goodness.
So it was weird (not to mention disappointing) when the 2004 reboot happened, and Marvel did everything they could to tank Romy. Which is one thing, and I can stomach it if [it were] logically and well written, but it was just so terribly done that I think many of us just tapped out of the fandom completely. I’d say 2005–2018 were fallow years for the Romy fandom. Most (if not all) of the fan friends I made at that time completely left the fandom. For myself, as someone who enjoys writing AUs, it was the perfect time to branch out from writing in canon and fitting Romy into my own world.
Who are your influences? What writers do you feel a particular affinity for? Are there writers whom we might be surprised to discover informed your work, but you feel have, despite appearances?
I was heavily influenced by the dark, modern fairytales of Angela Carter about the time that I was writing Queen of Diamonds and Threads. She had a really magical way with words—her prose was lyrical, sensual, and unbelievably rich. She was a huge inspiration, but later I moved away from her tone, firstly because I felt I was doing a poor imitation of her, secondly because it wasn’t really appropriate for the direction I wanted to move my fics in, and lastly because I was becoming self-conscious of my insane verbosity and wanted to pare down my prose. That’s something I’m still working on!
At some point during the writing of House of Cards, I finally got round to reading Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I think it was Douglas Adams who convinced me to move away from Carter’s beautiful but too-flowery prose. I loved the way his narrative just sizzled. I’m bad at capturing that energy—but I do think that from HoC onwards, I’ve tried to learn to be more economical with my words—which is hard for a florid soul like mine.
Threads—structurally at least—was influenced by Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller, and later, by David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.
Let’s say you can pair your fiction with other works of art—of all forms, films, paintings, music, etc.—as if you were pairing wines to foods. What other pieces of art might you say go along with yours?
Wow! OK—that’s hard. Threads I’d probably pair with Cloud Atlas (the book, not the film, which I haven’t yet watched). HoC—I don’t know that there’s any one thing I would pair it with, but you can bet a load of post-apocalyptic stuff was thrown into that stew, along with a bit of The Matrix and probably some Inception.
52 Pickup was influenced a lot by Asmus’s Gambit run, cos I really wanted to write a heist fic with Remy and Rogue rather than Remy and Joelle (who I freely admit kicked ass). But if I had to pair it with a piece of media, it’d be with the video game Remember Me, which dealt a lot with themes of how memories inform our identities, and the ethical concerns of having memories essentially become “documents” that are uploaded and shared digitally through the cloud.
This is a good segue to talk about high-low culture. We may not want to believe in a hierarchy of culture, but we can certainly talk about the differences between fanfiction and “regular fiction.” When you read fanfiction, do you approach it differently than you would regular fiction? Are your expectations for form, reading pleasure, or anything else different? If so, how so?
Interesting question! I don’t know whether I approach it differently per se, but I think that readers have different expectations of fanfic. Hopefully we all read “regular fiction” for the same reason we read fanfic—for pleasure. But I don’t think there’s really a binary between regular and fanfiction. I think both exist on a continuum. There is a lot of “regular fiction” (I prefer to call it “profic” or “professional fiction,” because I think that’s where the binary between the two exists) that is actually very close to fanfic, and vice versa. By that I mean that there is plenty of fanfic that is epic in scope, deals with serious themes, and might be considered “classics” if they weren’t fanfiction.
And there is also profic, like romance, that is more similar to fanfic in terms of the kind of functions that it serves. There is an illicit pleasure to reading romance—for example, it’s not the kind of thing you’d openly read in public! There’s a similarity between that and fanfic, and I think, as readers of fanfic, we anticipate some level of illicitness when we approach it—even if the illicitness is only in the format (i.e., it’s fanfiction!), not in the content.
Fun question: What role do you think explicit smut functions in a fic? How do you deal with smut in your work? There’s an interesting moment that’s not in HoC, in which you write about Gambit and Rogue’s first time having sex in his point of view. It’s a separate chapter that exists as its own entity on your fanfiction.net page. Notably, it is much more explicit than the scene in Rogue’s perspective. Can you talk a little bit about this decision?
Well, I do think that fanfic is a safe space for writers to explore their sexuality (and I think that’s a huge part of the reason why fic is looked down upon), and smut plays a significant role in that. And smut certainly plays a part in my own fics. HoC actually started out as a random smut scene that burgeoned into something far, far more. Generally, I do try to make the sex scenes have a purpose in the plot (’cos I’m kind of anal about plot structure!), but in the particular case of Slow Burn and the other HoC vignettes, those are more self-contained one-shots where I could explore things that I couldn’t explore in the main story. So I could indulge in the smut a bit more! And let’s be honest—Gambit’s dark sexuality makes it thrilling to write smut from his perspective—of course his “thoughts” are going to be more explicit! ;)
But I also think that it’s interesting to write their individual perspectives on their sexual encounters, because of that tension between their characters. Rogue is the quintessential virginal Southern Baptist gal who’s inexperienced; whereas Gambit is the sexually aggressive alpha male who’s probably never had a woman turn him down in his life. That makes for a very combustive love affair between the two, and makes it fun to write that love affair (and all the smut in-between) from both their points of view.
LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUSNESS THAT @ludi-ling DREW FOR ME. LOOK AT IIIIITTTTT!
This is exactly the mental image I had in mind when I was writing this part…!
“Ah’m fine, hon. Go back t’ sleep,” she’d shushed, leaning down to brush her lips lightly across his forehead.
He’d smiled dreamily and hooked the back of her neck to bring her mouth down to his, turning a light-hearted gesture into a deep, sensual kiss. Mentally, she’d cursed her innate altruism, the Avengers, the X-Men, and the world at large for having to walk away from this moment of happiness after years of eschewing her own desires.
Even after he’d gone limp she kept her mouth pressed to his, counting to five between measured breaths, giving herself enough time to make it back to headquarters. She doubted Gambit would suspect his temporary coma to be anything other than purely accidental. Besides, she’d reassured her guilty conscience as she held him one last time, he needs more rest anyway.
What are your thoughts on the inexperienced virgin meets sexy bad boy trope that Romy exemplifies? Sounds like a tacky romance novel, but over the years they evolved into so much more. Or did they?
I don’t have an encyclopedic depth of knowledge about Romy, but here goes:
I think the virgin v. bad boy trope is very powerful. It’s the socialmodel many of us grew up with, in which the sexually ideal woman is a virtuousvirgin and the sexually ideal man is experienced, alluring, and does notcommit—which makes him even more alluring, absurdly.
You can see quickly how this model benefits the man: he can have whateverwoman he wants and he is not expected to be responsible for unkind behavior.The only power the woman has to say yes or no.
Theoretically. We know that women often have no control over their bodies,and if you grew up in church like me, this was told to your face every Sunday.
However, this trope is subverted by Rogue’s powers in two key ways. Rogue isnot willing to remain a virgin. She wants intimacy; she wants freedom to chooseher mates. Therefore, 1) in a bizarre inverse, she has no more control over herbody than most women.
But! 2) Because of her power, Rogue is a virgin who cannot be violated.Though she lacks control, she possesses the invulnerability I imagine manywomen would trade their traumatic experiences for.
Therefore, no matter how much Remy showboated around her, no matter how hardhe pushed, Rogue retained the true power of saying no. The fact that shehas to put on a collar to make love to her husband is the ultimateconsent.
As for Remy: What’s a bad boy to do with a literally untouchable woman?
To gain access to her, he must break the bad-boy mold. He has to change. Hehas to get to know her. Listen to her. Bear the brunt of her frustration. Notrun off whenever things get rough. Be satisfied even without sex.
I dunno why teenage boys adore him, but I can see why women do.
In this way, Romy takes on a well-worn trope and explodes, subverts, jacksit up. From the very get-go, I think. They’re the perfect couple for the #metoomovement, and I think their love exemplifies how something truly liberated andprogressive can emerge out of old, harmful traditions. Not bad for two kidsfrom the deep South.
Thanks for asking. <3 This was a sneaky way for me to describe preciselywhy I love Romy.
Earlier reviews that Ludi & I have been batting back and forth linked here, with a most welcome guest post by Jessi:
1. Faces (by me)
2. Callbacks (by @ludi-ling)
3. Jim Lee & Pere Pérez (by me)
4. More on faces, and ‘sex creep’ Remy LeBeau (by @ludi-ling)
5. Faces and ‘creep factors’ (by @jehilew)
On sex creep Remy LeBeau:
If I’m not misreading, Ludi and Jessi, you’re both saying Remy’s behavior is generally sexy; that he is within the parameters of good behavior because Rogue’s implicitly given him permission to talk this way. As Ludi wisely says, “The whole conversation is a way for them to negotiate where they’re at in their relationship.”
I still find this a tad problematic. He may have intuited Rogue’s feelings correctly, he may be testing her boundaries, but at this point in time, there’s no indication that he is at all worried about her feelings. To me, he sounds like the type of guy who corners an inexperienced girl into reacting the way he wants her to—even if he isn’t actually that guy.
But I’m gonna blame it on the writing. Gambit is supposed to be charming. Jessi hits the nail on the head: “You can tell he was not written by anyone who is even remotely smooth with women here.”
So I’m glad that Thompson sweetens Remy’s dialogue. This scene is practically a perfume commercial. Lee and Lobdell, etc., obviously could not write sexy and sweet, and so we’ve wound up with creepy (to me).
Reader, thank you for reaching this point. If you’re a Gambit fan, you’ve probably unfollowed me. But! The post below is a deep dive into Gambit’s . . . portrayal.
Ludi: So, Ms. Narwhal, what did you think about those transitions from down-time to the proverbial ka-pow? I’m interested because some of my most favourite X-Men issues were the down-time ones. Uncanny X-Men #337 - which is almost entirely focused on the X-Men having breakfast - is one of my favourites of all time.
I’m sidestepping your gorgeous question about breakfast, sadly, because I’ve changed my mind about where the art stumbles. After turning through the gorgeous TPB, I realized that it stumbles at the flashbacks. Which is weird, because the flashbacks were some of the most heady, charming parts of the series. And the art is definitely at its most ambitious.
It’s clear the team decided that they would imitate the visual styles that these original moments were rendered in, whether the original penciller was Mike Collins or Jim Lee or Andy Kubert. What a rad challenge for Pérez and D'Armata to flex their art muscles and have fun.
Let’s applaud the team for this. Thompson was ambitious in deciding to revisit of scenes from up to 20 years ago—can you imagine another writer wanting to touch Antarctica?! And Pérez was ambitious in his mimicry of styles that haven't aged so well. He’s done it with wit and verve, as below (and in my earlier post comparing Pérez’s and Lee’s versions of Rogue).
On the left is Andy Kubert’s 1994 rendering of Remy at Scott and Jean’s wedding, done in the “edgy” style of the decade: lots of hatching, high-contrast shadows, viewed from a very dramatic angle. Remy poses in such a flamboyant way you’d think he just blew Magneto up. That’s 90s for “dashing.”
Pérez updates Remy with a look that’s as fresh as Thompson’s dialogue. Same hair and arching eyebrows, but his smirk has a smile now, and he looks playful rather than self-serious. Too bad Pérez couldn’t retcon that awful tie!
It starts getting interesting when Pérez quotes Gambit’s facial structure from still earlier. The left is a detail from Gambit's first appearance in 1990, in Uncanny X-men #266, by Mike Collins. The middle is from an X-men Team card of the same year. And on the right is Pérez, clearly taking a cue from these precedents, down to the smoke drifting out of Gambit's eyes. His nose is even sharper. It's a fun reminder of how Gambit used to be portrayed—as someone capable, dangerous, and not a matinee romantic lead.
However, this “facial quotation” means Pérez runs into some trouble when we return to the present day. Somewhere between 1990 and 2018, Gambit got a nose job. The decision to play with different styles means that Gambit doesn't look like the same person throughout the miniseries.
These panels precede that glorious kiss in #3, and Remy looks so earnest, so chipmunklike (with that new nose), that it’s hard to believe he could have ever been the naughty, fast-on-his-feet thief we see in #2.
So the decision has pros—it’s clever, it’s charming—and it’s got cons. One con is that if we don't like the referent artist, then we're not going to appreciate the imitation, either. But the bigger con is that the style differences can be so jarring that it seems Rogue and Gambit are being played by a bunch of different actors.
This only gets weirder when clones are introduced.
This panel is from #4, and tbh, I don’t know who these people are. These are not clones, but Rogue looks like a soccer mom, and Remy’s a chrome robot. Though I’ve developed an argument to account for some wildly different facial features throughout the miniseries, I am unsure what’s going on here. Maybe there’s a comic in which someone used Jennifer Aniston as Rogue’s reference. (I have a theory Jim Lee used model Stephanie Seymour for Rogue and Jean.)
Like Gambit, Rogue undergoes the same treatment throughout her flashbacks, though it’s more evident in her body and body language. Hopefully this post makes it clear enough that when you glance through them, you might see what I’m talking about.
Ludi, I know you had some thoughts about the ways Rogue's and Gambit's faces were rendered too, as well as when they were engaged in some important stuff—like the kissing. Were there moments you felt the characterization of our heroes wasn't as successfully conveyed? Or any big centerpieces you thought really nailed their histories?
We would like to invite anyone who wants to chime in about R&G to write a post, which we’ll link to as part of a chain. And we will comment the hell out of your posts, too. ;-) @jehilew @cmoineau @pastellarts @90sxmen4ever @bustedflipflop @awesomeamberlady @xevg and anyone whom I might have missed! Please PM.
Bullied Gently reminded by @ludi-ling that posts may be as short as a single sentence. Essays not required!
CREDITS
Marvel Universe Series I Trading Cards by Fleer (1990)
X-men Team Card (detail)
Rogue & Gambit #3, #4 (2018)
Pencils: Pere Pérez
Colors: Frank D’Armata
Uncanny X-men #266 (1990)
Pencils: Mike Collins
Colors: Brad Vancata
X-men #30 (1994)
Pencils: Andy Kubert
Colors: Joe Rosas
It’s a great time to be a Romy fan: @1979semifinalist’s Mr. & Mrs. X #1 released today and was touching, fleet-footed, and hilarious. I think it’ll exceed R&G in ambitious storytelling.
It’s a great time to be an X-fan in general. X-men Red is going strong; X-23 is a superb follow-up to All New Wolverine. The world is shite, but the comics be good.
Here begins a conversation that Ludi @ludi-ling and I shared over email and chat over the art and writing of the Rogue & Gambit miniseries.
Ludi: So, of all the thing to talk about in this run, what made you settle on discussing the faces?
I’m going to take a page out of your book and compare the old with the new. Your post really illuminated how much we look at the past at the same time we read the present. The use of flashbacks, the manifestations of the past—via the clones—demands that we read holding multiple texts in our minds all at once, from Romy’s deep bench of artists and writers.
I came into Romy in the 90s, and Jim Lee was the foremost artist in portraying my headcanon of Rogue. I have problems with Lee’s art, but when the man wants to, he renders the hell out of an emotion. So whilst reading Pérez, I was delighted when I saw the same and more.
Left: Picnic, 1992, Jim Lee. Remy says, “If I had a list of things to do ‘with your own two hands’—stirring gumbo wouldn’t be on it.”
In response, not only does Rogue drop the plate but covers her mouth. She looks pleased—and cautious. Shy. The skeptical eyebrow arch! This is a virgin confronting the fact of sex. This is the dynamic that makes the sparks fly (for me!): Remy’s aggressive sexiness* coupled with Rogue’s virginity—both bodily and emotional—plus her past life as a villain; plus his not-so-past criminal mystery life.
Poor woman is within a few panels of meeting his ex-wife and tussling with his future adopted son. The LeBeaux don’t mess around.
Two to twenty-six years later, Pérez’s Remy approaches her with the garter. She responds with the most conflicted series of emotions in the R&G miniseries …
<<insert Hermione monologue on the profusion of Cho Chang’s feelings>>
… captured on a single face in a single moment. Wide-eyed adoration, wide-eyed joy. Whereas her smile is polite, her down-turned chin shy. That eyebrow is nearly identical from 1992, if less disturbed and more disbelieving:
“I adore you and you like me?!”
All in one face. Bravo, Mr. Pérez. That’s stellar work.
As a reader, I don't necessarily go to superhero comics for subtlety or complexity on a domestic scale; I expect melodrama and galaxy-high stakes. But of course X-men is different, and the best X-writers were always able to switch genres deftly. I definitely rank Thompson up there with Claremont and the rest of my obsessively curated pantheon.
That said, I’m not sure if the R&G art switches as effortlessly. This is no aspersion on Pérez, but there are moments I feel that the transitions from these quiet domestic moments to the comical to the kapow-punch! aren't as convincing as they should be.
*Gambit’s aggressive sexiness is creepy. This line is kinda iffy to me—what do you think, Ludi? Creepy, sexy, or *shrug*?
And more importantly, what do you think about the faces and body language? Were there moments that succeeded or fell short for you, through the run? Do you feel differently about the storytelling the facial expressions and body postures convey?
CREDITS
X-men #8 (1992)
Plot, pencils, finishes: Jim Lee
Script: Scott Lobdell
Colors: Joe Rosas
Rogue & Gambit #4 (2018)
Writer: Kelly Thompson
Pencils: Pere Pérez
Colors: Frank D’Armata
Somehow, at the end of this crazy journey, our heroes marry.
@ludi-ling and I are inaugurating reviews-in-dialogue of the miniseries Rogue & Gambit (2018). Please tune in for each review! I will focus primarily on artwork; Ludi will cover writing and art, or whatever her heart desires.
Our posts will be a conversation with each other, so please check out both our blogs to keep up to date.
We hope you enjoy!
SAME PANEL, DIFFERENT GALAXIES
As Kelly Thompson points out, facial expressions are particularly crucial in a romance: “[The] script is pretty clear on needed expressions/emotions—especially because emotion is so intrinsic to what works or doesn’t work about the concept in R&G.”
Which makes for a series of extraordinary faces.
That is, facial expressions and body posture, and how they do so much storytelling—about our heroes’ hearts and where they stand. Comics is the perfect medium for a romance: we can perceive multiple narratives occurring at the same time: we hear the story through the dialogue and plot, but see different stories unfold on their faces.
We watch how each character receives new information and reaches conclusions utterly on their own. In almost every instance, their faces reveal how they’re on vastly different emotional journeys.
Which is really fun, hilarious, or tragic when Rogue and Gambit share the same panel. Same panel/planet, different galaxies.
With one panel per issue, I’m going to examine how these lovebirds go from being “it’s complicated” to “committed.”
ISSUE 1: No one’s got weddings on their minds. At the start of the series, Rogue and Gambit are as far away from each other as possible.
In this painful conversation on the beach, Rogue frets over their emotional baggage. He confesses it’s heavy for him also, to which she replies: “So why don’t you just let it go?”
Her eyebrows rise in emphasis, as if to add: “Can I get away with saying this incredibly heartless thing?” Her thinned upper lip suggests a sauciness; she knows she can’t, but she’s going to sting him anyway, just to protect herself.
This is possibly the best image of Remy in the run. Ludi calls him “aquiline” here. His contracted eyebrows, narrowed eyes, and jutting chin indicate he’s all business. His outstretched neck, dropped shoulders say he’s being a sincere motherf*cker.
But he won’t put up with the bullshit she’s flinging.
Hats off to Thompson, because “I don’t got super-strength, girl,” is one of the most poignant remarks in the series. All the labor of loving someone alone, and he’s exhausted, he wants her, dammit.
ISSUE 2: A perfect snapshot of their dynamics. Gambit and Rogue, level with each other: no one loves one person more than the other; they’re mutually in love.
However—as we know—Gambit’s ready to move forward into the unknown. He looks back, perfectly serious, with knit eyebrows, the same crease in his brow as in issue 1. Rogue’s body reads as if she’s ready to move forward, but her wide eyes and pursed lips indicate she needs reassurance. This is Rogue to a tee—a bundle of mixed messages.
Her raised eyebrows are plaintive, not saucy: “Do I have to do this for us to work?”
Yes. He’s not going to wait forever. The man is going through that screen with or without her.
This panel also reveals other aspects of their personalities: Gambit is hyper-competent and hyper-confident. His flexed shoulder and sprawled position say he’s ready for any physical threat.
The only thing stopping him is la belle dame sans merci.
Our belle leans back on her haunches, her shoulders bunch by her ears—this is genuine insecurity. Her uncertainty, so clearly telegraphed, is particularly girlish, and evokes the childlike innocence of someone who holds on to the past real tight.
ISSUE 3: Rogue and Gambit agree! We’re going somewhere. Look at their posture!
Rogue’s sittin’ like a little lady. Tight, controlled—hands folded over one knee, legs crossed, elbows in. Uneasy as hell. Her contracted eyebrows and leftward gaze say guilt—so does that one strand of errant hair lifting off the left side of her head. She radiates dread. That conversation about Antarctica’s coming up, and she doesn’t smell like roses.
Still, her guilt speaks to her integrity: she won’t pretend ditching Gambit was OK.
But this guy . . . mofo’s so relaxed he’s got one arm thrown over the seat. His tilted-back head and wrinkled brow suggest both discomfort and curiosity: he doesn’t like their problems, but he’s willing to talk and learn. This mutant’s made peace with his sins.
This is an optimistic panel: They don’t look happy, and yet their defenses are lowered. They’re susceptible to change.
ISSUE 4: (lower image): All has changed! Our heroes have traded memories and traded powers. They gained profound insight on each other—debatably, Remy more so than Rogue. (Did he need it? Well, why not? He’s been swimming in her head way more often.)
They wear each other’s eyes, Rogue in black-and-red, Gambit in green. Notice how she also wears his usual shit-eating grin; he appears a tad more cautious. Happy, but hanging back a bit. Quite the role reversal for the two.
This is the emotional high point of the series; our heroes are so united they’re each other.
ISSUE 5: I couldn’t close without a kiss. I chose this panel (and not the very last kiss of the series) because this tells the more complex story, with their past kisses floating around them.
For all that combat, Gambit is fit as a fiddle. He’s upright, as if to say, “I knew this was coming if I played my cards right.”
Rogue is transformed. She’s a multitude; enacting the very essence of her powers.
Having absorbed and controlled Lavish’s victims, Rogue is the master of her mutation. Her many new attributes—rainbow wings, fiery hands, spikes, horns—make a symbol of how she's mastered her fears, too.
That she kisses him now, in the full manifestation of power, which heretofore gave her so much angst, speaks to how much labor and effort she’s made since all that backpedaling in issue 1. Transformation of her body, of her heart.
Everything may not be fully resolved or perfect, but no one’s running now. “I’ll always find my way back to you,” she vows.
LAST THOUGHTS: Our heroes needed therapy, mutant-assisted memory loss, and telepathy in order to meet in the middle. That’s how broken sh*t was. Some of us have been frustrated that it’s taken them 26 years—thanks to some bad writing and editorial decisions—but Kelly Thompson has made that long wait all seem plausible. Fighting your own memories as only superheroes can. That’s true romance.
CREDITS
Rogue & Gambit 1–5 (2018)
Writer: Kelly Thompson
Pencils: Pere Pérez
Colors: Frank D’Armata
Stay tuned for Wednesday, when @ludi-ling posts . . . ! EDITED TO ADD: Post here!
I’m naturally more drawn to moral greyness because it reflects my own character.
What follows are intimate thoughts from Rogue & Gambit (Romy) writer @ludi-ling, on the recurring themes of darkness, trauma, and isolation in her fiction. Where they come from, why, and how they manifest in the romance between Rogue and Remy.
“I was a zombie for three days reading this!” or “This fic should come with a fluffy bunny to comfort me” are typical comments on your work in the pages of fanfiction.net.
Your work is known for darkness and intensity—betrayals, pyrrhic victories, and Christ-like sacrifices that fail. Yet these are earned; the work never feels cheap or shocking for the sake of shocking. What draws you to such darkness?
Honestly—it’s my own past that draws me to that darkness. I was constantly bullied as a child; I lost my dad at 20; I went through some rough family stuff through my teens; I’ve been fighting depression for most of my life. Life often felt like a struggle in my younger years. That bled a lot into my fiction. Fiction was my outlet, my way of navigating the pain in my life.
As time has gone by, as I’ve matured and come to terms with my past, and become a much happier person, I do feel like my stories have “lightened.” But you know—I don’t think that impulse to write about people’s struggles will ever die.
I often think—How do we learn what happiness is? By learning what it is to suffer. Suffering isn’t only in macro-level shocks and horrors (though there is that); it’s in the little struggles we go through every day. The little hurts. Getting through those little hurts and struggles casts into greater relief the little joys we experience throughout our lives. To appreciate times of happiness more. I do try to write stories where the trials in Rogue and Gambit's lives are ones we can relate to more personally as well as on an epic, superhero level—so that when they do find joy, it's all the more profound.
And you will notice that, in general, I always give my heroes a happy ending. They deserve it after all they’ve been through. :)
A specific theme that runs through your longer works is past trauma. . .
In House of Cards, it’s Rogue’s lone survival of the destruction of the mansion. In 52 Pickup, she is unmoored from her identity and history. In the remarkably grim Queen of Diamonds, trauma is everywhere: childhood abuse, Rogue and Gambit’s survival of Vargas. In each of these narratives, our heroes’ present isn’t much brighter, either. Can you talk about trauma in relation to your writing?
Absolutely, I believe that trauma is a driving force for my writing, and, I would posit, many writers would say the same. I have battled depression since I was 20 (probably younger, but that’s when I was diagnosed), and writing has always been a therapeutic exercise for me. Not merely as a form of escape, but as a way to articulate, understand, and release some of my own trauma—even though it is very different from the traumas Rogue and Gambit and other characters have gone through.
Rogue and Gambit have both had traumatic childhoods, and probably have issues around abandonment, among other things. In many ways, I relate to them because of the pain they must’ve endured at various points in their lives. As humans, we may not be able to relate to the traumas of being a superhero, but we can certainly relate to the traumas of being abandoned, of not fitting in, of failing, of despair, of being hated and scorned, of losing the people we love. These are universals—and they make us into what we are in the present. In the past, there are times I’ve hurt so bad, and my way of making sense of that is to try and unpick and unravel that. Fanfic is a way for me to take a step back and look at that, examine it.
You portray Rogue and Gambit as the ultimate single children. They’re always solitary, often estranged. Their voices are deeply internal. A particularly striking moment is in Twist of Fate, when Rogue “adopts” Rachel Grey, another character known to be alone, despite having (complicated) siblings. I happen to know you have a sister and brother you’re close with—so can you talk about the solitude that runs through your work? Is there something true to life about that for you?
I come from a very close-knit family, and I have two siblings whom I am very close to. But as a person, in myself—I am solitary. It is hard for me to describe, but I have actually always felt estranged from the world. I have never felt like I truly fit in anywhere, or that others really understand me. So I suppose it is no surprise that estrangement is a theme in my writing. Loneliness and isolation are things I’ve constantly tried to come to terms with in the past; but there is also the need to belong, to connect with others.
I think, despite having a family, Gambit has always been very much aware that he is different; yet the LeBeaus took him in and loved him, and so his eventual exile was an extra kick in the teeth. He learned to stop trusting others and to be suspicious of those who would extend a helping hand. Rogue has always been isolated, but has always wanted to desperately to belong to something, to have the kind of family that Gambit had, big and warm and loving. Her isolation is self-imposed—a fear that getting too close to people emotionally might entail getting close to them physically—but I don’t think that stops her from wanting that closeness, deep down.
In a recent Tumblr Ask, you wrote: “One of the things that bugs me about [HoC] in retrospect is that [Rogue] is a more passive character—things happen around her, and she often has very little agency. . . . Writing 52PU was my ‘reply’ to HOC—to write a Rogue who was kickass and very much in control of her own destination, despite how damaged she was.”
Have you found yourself “flipping the script” from one project to another in other ways? Did you find yourself flipping the script with Gambit’s character, in the same way you did with Rogue, at any point?
If I’ve ever flipped the script, I don’t think it’s ever been entirely a conscious decision until 52PU. The things that bother me now about QoD and the HoC series is that Rogue is more of the damsel in distress to Remy’s knight-in-shining-armour, and while that narrative has its place, it has become glaring to me. I wanted to write a narrative where they could both stymie and save one another equally.
In QoD, Rogue is a literal damsel in distress, and Remy has to save her. In HoC, while Mystique calls Rogue “one of her best operatives,” in fact, most of her successes are down to Gambit himself. After I wrote the series, that really irked me—thus resulting in Rogue being more empowered in 52PU.
About flipping Gambit’s character—that is an interesting thought, but I don’t know that it’s something I could do, mainly because I’ve always felt I’ve written Gambit as I see him—more or less anyway. The closest I’ve come to turning his character on its head was in 52PU, because there were so many times that Rogue outsmarted him and gave him a run for his money. This gave him less agency at times—but it felt far more satisfying because they had to learn to work with one another instead of against one another, and in the end the relationship between him and Anna felt earned.
You’ve intimated that writing in Gambit’s point of view interests you more—if in part because it allows you to explore his moral “grayness,” as opposed to Rogue’s straight-up heroism. I might be putting words in your mouth. Can you give us the breakdown of what it’s like for you to write in Gambit’s POV, and then in Rogue’s?
I’m naturally more drawn to moral greyness because I suppose it reflects my own character. Rogue is more altruistic and certainly more idealistic, which I find admirable but naive. I am not a very optimistic kind of person! Remy’s stance—pessimistic realism and cynicism—is definitely more the way I see the world. But he always has this streak of nobility that shines through all the more for the darkness in his character, and that makes him all the more attractive to write. Because of these reasons, I find it far easier—or rather, more natural—to write from Gambit’s POV.
Not to say that Rogue’s is hard, just that hers is a voice that isn’t quite my own. I wouldn’t say getting into her mental space is difficult per se—as a writer, I think you have to have some mental flexibility and empathy to allow yourself to walk in a character’s shoes. In a way, you “embody” the character. Their thoughts, their emotions, their motivations—they all become yours.
I suppose it’s a little bit like being an actor. Some characters’ roles are just more enjoyable than others. Give me Scott Summers, and I could probably write him but be bored to hell while doing it, lol. With Remy, though . . . it’s just fun all the way. ;)
Stay tuned for the third and final installment of my interview with Ludi, where we go meta and about her writing process and the Romy fandom. If you don’t follow her on Tumblr @ludi-ling, you’re missing out! You can also find her work in Archive of Our Own.
The first installment of our interview is here. Please drop a nice word or two for Ludi in the comments!
