I've been a very stupid webmistress.
I was getting so comfortable, attending my last Peace Corps-related conference, reading Wicked (the novel that spawned the musical), and thinking to myself, "You know, the website can wait; Siryn isn't going anywhere."
That was Marvel's cue, therefore, to share some news about X-Factor that made me nearly shit my pants.
In issue 21 of Volume 3--an issue that I didn't manage to find in my comics-buying binge in the states, but of course the recap page in the next ish fills us in--Layla Miller and the robot briefly known as Nicole find a discarded, positive-reading pregnancy test, and Layla doesn't know whose it is. It gave me a bit of a jolt for a few minutes, but then I figured it was supposed to be a part of Josef Huber's plot to get rid of Layla, and forgot about it.
That's why Marvel's here, of course, to poke me with sticks.
The link above reveals that issue 28 will, among other things, bring us back to that little bit of plastic and chromatography paper which the girls found in the trash.
Wolfsbane's heading off for X-Force (the new one, having nothing in common with Siryn's former team except for Warpath), but can't tell X-Factor what's going on. Fine. I think this is an unsustainable situation, and folks will have to find out where she is and what she's doing, eventually, but for now, okay. Stuff's gotta be shaken up; 'tis the Marvel way.
Layla's still caught in some time-space continuum Limbo; I want her back. She's kind of like Hermione Granger; annoying to her fellow characters, but I simply adore highly intelligent young girls, and Layla is an exceedingly sharp little tack. But I'm sure we'll get back to her later.
The part where I nearly soil myself, however, is the part where X-Factor Vol. 3 #28 reveals to us who's pregnant.
Looking at the roster of X-Factor, we see three men, whose powers as revealed so far do not include the ability to grow female reproductive organs, so that leaves us with the four females. Of those four, three are old enough to have any Earthly business getting knocked up and were not present in the scene of finding the pregnancy test and speculating as to its owner, and two of them were seen having sex at least once in the last few months before the pregnancy test was found.
Which means--well, first of all, it means whoever the mother-to-be, we already know who the father is! Congratulations, Madrox!
Anyone who's read X-Factor Vol. 3 knows this much: Multiple Man got piss-drunk and shagged Siryn, while a randy dupe came out and did Monet, who thought she was having her way with the original Madrox. And this is the part where I shamelessly paraphrase the movie Waitress and say, "Madrox, this is why you should be careful about getting drunk in the midst of heady times; it leads you to do stupid things, like have unprotected sex with ovulating operatives!" In the same issue as the test was found, Wolfsbane got her freak on with Rictor, but obviously, that was much too early to find out if they conceived a child.
The point is that Siryn has a 50% chance of being pregnant. The other 50% belongs to Monet. I'll have to come back and update this section in a few more weeks, after someone who gets the series on time tells me what the Hell happened. Until then, I'm going to indulge in a pastime I developed--or rather honed to an Olympic event--in Harry Potter fandom and show you all my Madd Predictionary Skillz while we're still waiting for the big reveal.
The 50-50 split certainly narrows it down, doesn't it? Keeps it simple, right? The reason I'm making such a stink about this topic on this website, then, is that I'm afraid that Siryn will be the one who's pregnant. If she isn't, then it still affects her a little bit, because she's getting to be good friends with Monet, but if she is, then y'all KNOW I'm all over it.
There may be several reasons to suspect her over Monet, but the only one that isn't screamingly nebulous and begging to be shot down along with all my other prejudices is this: the inside art shown at the link above. That is what really makes the difference for my argument. The scene that shows Monet depicts her as, to quote the character, "insufferably smug." Of course Monet is usually insufferably smug, but I think an unplanned pregnancy would take that smirk off her face for at least one issue. We can't tell what she's saying to Rahne, obviously, but her confidence is clearly unruffled, her mind unpreoccupied. Siryn, meanwhile, is shown going to confession.
We've known for years (the earliest explicit confirmation in my collection is the Fallen Angels LS) that Siryn is Catholic, like the overwhelming majority of northwestern Irish, but she's never appeared to be among that small number of Marvel mutants (like Rahne, for instance) who are especially religious. When was the last time anyone saw or heard about Terry going to church? When did she last confess her sins? How long has it been since Siryn consulted a member of the clergy, or said or did anything that suggested religious devotion? Fighting evil doesn't seem to lend itself very well to a life as a good practicing Catholic. And now, in issue 28, she's seen going to confession, and she looks scared. Not just penitent or humble like any honest mortal should be when visiting the confessional, but uncertain, worried, insecure. Take a look, also, at the choice of stained glass art on that page.
Why on Earth is she going to confession now, of all times? What did she do during or before the Messiah Complex that was so much more desperately confession-worthy than anything else she did since the last time she confessed her sins to anyone holier than her crazy-ass cousin Tom? Perhaps the reason, then, is that she's going to the priest for more than a routine ritual of penitence; her bearing suggests she may be looking for something more. Not just absolution, but guidance, perhaps? Reassurance? Or perhaps it's a case of "Lord forgive me for what I'm about to do." Asking forgiveness for the trouble she's about to cause?
The Fanfic Goddess knows I've gotten Terry pregnant more times than I have any right to do, and often with the same child--a daughter named Maria. I think it would be really interesting to see her as a mother, but now, and under these circumstances, I can't say it would make me a happy fan. Let's be optimistic and say it'll take me more than a day to get used to the idea. When I wrote Terry having babies, it was usually with Warpath, but it's not just the shipper in me that rebels--you think a little thing like a Madrox baby could stop me from shipping how I please? I'd like to see her have a child within the context of at least a semi-committed relationship, with a guy who really loves her--preferably who really loved her before accidents happened. I want her to get a child out of an encounter at least slightly more substantial than an impulsive, inebriated (on the father's part) hook-up that quickly led to disappointment and an in-team catfight. Not that there's anything wrong with spreading one's legs with a drunken colleague when spirits are running high as kites, and then being Just Friends, but, people! Contraception is your friend! Especially considering the misunderstanding that Theresa suffered following the tryst, it would really suck to end up pregnant from that.
What would annoy me most of all, mind, would be if the pregnancy means Siryn has to leave X-Factor and disappear from the series. Now that would piss me off; I'm growing out of years of holding a grudge against JF Moore for a story he wrote nine years ago, and it would be especially distressing to see her get written out of another book, while I'm enjoying PAD's handling of her so much. I think PAD's much more confident and favorable in the way he writes Siryn than Moore was, so I don't want to think he'd get rid of her, but then again the decision might not be in his hands. I like to think, also, that working with X-Factor lends itself slightly better to parenthood than fighting with the X-Men or X-Force (any incarnation), but it can't possibly be a tempting place to have a baby. We see a handful of characters who still manage to practice their religion while fighting evil and negotiating moral ambiguity, but if it's hard to be a practicing Catholic, just imagine how hard it is to be a new mother in that context. How many visible women has Marvel written, anyway, who were also mothers? Aside from Mystique, who was a BAD EXAMPLE, Moira MacTaggert, who was a non-combatant and her kid was freaking PROTEUS, Jean Grey, who did all her child-rearing in a dystopian future separate from the bulk of her career with the X-teams, Dazzler, who had to leave the X-Men along with Longshot because of her pregnancy, and the Scarlet Witch, who caused the freaking Decimation through her motherhood issues, what kind of precedent does Siryn (or Monet) have? Is there anyone aside from Crystal Maximoff? How has her super-heroine career gone since she had Luna? (I really don't know.) Most of the super-hero fathers, meanwhile, are either ignorant to their children's existence for years, or haplessly inattentive to their offsprings' childhoods. In addition to Magneto and Professor X, just look at Banshee.
I'll give PAD and the relevant editors this much: whether it's Monet or Siryn who's now in the family way, they're doing something largely untested, risky and tricky to pull off believably. The age-old Women's Movement question of how to balance a career and family life is as relevant and cross-gender as ever, and that's not even getting into all the Pandora's Box of emotional dynamics just begging for something to jump the shark. If the girl keeps the baby--which she probably will--then Madrox, at least, will probably try to maintain some kind of rapport with the mother and child, and if the book does that, and does it without turning into a farce or descending into soap-opera nonsense, then it'll be a job well done.
The hammer will fall, either way, in about three weeks. Then we'll find out--and when I say "we," of course I mean you all will find out and someone will tell me--which of X-Factor's remaining women are in delicate condition. Either it will be Monet, in which case I will come back here, admit my error, and breathe a sigh of relief, or it will be Siryn, in which case I will run screaming around the Internet cafe and then come back here for some more cracktastic prognostication. No matter who the pregnant mutie is, I want Layla Miller to come back and play midwife, because that would be HI-larious. Work with me, everyone: Mama-to-be gets caught in a snowstorm or other crippling circumstance at her due-date, goes into labor with no company except Layla, who spends the next g0d-knows-how-many hours keeping her relatively calm and flapping her wings to get a warm, clean, safe arrangement together, and when the little one arrives, everyone is happy that Mama is so tough Layla is so weird. Can you feel it?