Fireworks Are Scary · 12:26am Nov 1st, 2015
It is a fact that anyone who is in contact with me learns before very long - usually not long after the Lich thing, the starship obession[1] and my literally undying hatred for Vampires[2]. Jubilee is my favourite character in anything ever. She was singularly responsible for getting into not just the X-Men, but superheroes as a genera PERIOD, through medium of the 1990s X-Men animated series. The fact that, in recent years that they took her powers away and turned into a vampire is... something of a sore point with me.
(In fact her apparent absence from the regular line-up post Battleworld was the final, final straw that has made me give up on Marvel Comics, nearly twenty years after she single-handedly got me into them.)
Jubilee, though, these days, tends to be only be remembered by either her dedicated fanbase (*raises hand*) or casually as "the girl with the lame fireworks power."
Let's just stop there, for a second, shall we?
Today, I went to what is a bit of current tradition. One of our family friends owns an allotment, and every year about this time, he does a combination Halloween/Bonfire Night party (since the two fall within a week of each other, this is not thsat uncommon in the UK these days, with time and weekends not being as free form anyone as in decades past). It is attended by our clan, his clan, a few family friends and often a few of the neghbour's lads. It's a bit of a do; a barbecue, followed by a pretty extensive fireworks display. My Dad's mate gets his firework from a friend of a friend and very discounted rates and what we get is essentially equivilent to a event display.
(Tonight it was reckoned it was equivilent to about £1500's worth.)
The safety regs had changed this year, so my Dad's mate had had to put up a floodlight (powered by his portable generator), as they now said that the set-up area for fireworks of that level has to be illuminated. And needless to say, every one is located plenty of distance back (25-30m (75-90') from the set-up area (the bit of allotment between ther teo is even cordoned off!)
As I was watching the Things Explode With Pretty Lights, I idly recalled something I'd read a day or so that had made a humorous job at Jubilee's original power set being lame. And I thought "people who say 'it's just fireworks' clearly haven't sat and thought that through, given how dangerous fireworks actually are and what they are made from." Since if we take it at face value, you are talking abut someone who is essentially shooting fracking gunpowder explosives at will (and yes, black powder is still the main propellant for fireworks)[3].
And it makes you realise why firework safety is so important, because you realise how little all those safety regulations actually mean to people, because (like many things) they really don't GET the forces involved. How easy it is for them to forget what you are looking at is not really harmless, pretty illuminations, but a controlled explosion.
Case in point: my Dad often goes to help set up and set them off, and he says it amuses him no end that this stuff comes in basically whacking great metal blast-proof boxes labelled up as "explosives."
Sort of puts even Trixie's fireworks displays into perspective doesn't it? She'd actually probably been more effective against the Ursa Minor if she'd actually directed her fireworks at it.
So here's some (slightly belated) Halloween food for thought: bearing in mind what I've just been saying, imagine what it would be like to have one of those rockets or bangers you've been watching exploding right in your face (and I sincerely HOPE you only ever have to imagine) and then consider what facing an actual Evil Jubilee would actually by like.
'Cos I dunno about you, but that scares the CRAP outta me.
[1]Have I mentioned I have over 1200 starships and the number regularly grows?
[2]Which predates the Stephanie Meyer craze by decades; I hated 'em long before it was cool and long after it will cease to be.
[3]Of course, if you actually look into it, it's actuall energy plasmoids, but if we're going to do into those exact details, we also then are at the point where we are also then talking about how she can theorhetically detonate matter at the sub-atomic level (i.e. like a FRACKING FUSION BOMB) and have gone a bit beyond casual dismissal of her powers as "lame fireworks" at that point.
Evil Sue Storm is also terrifying, and they keep doing it because apparently they can't stop coming up with new ways to kill people with her powers and they want a character who will actually do those things instead of just threatening it.
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I'm sure that them trying to get her back into That Outfit (you know the one i mean) probably has nothing at all to do with it...
But that's often the case with the Evil versions, isn't it? Most powers can be used in way more dangerous ways. They sort of made a crack about it way back in Buffy/Angel once, where they commented on why Angelus was smarter than Angel; without in character realising it was as simple as him not being smarter, just removing the breaks from the moral breaks that would make stuff unthinkable to most people...
Ironically, excluding some of the most obvious offensive powers make-ups. Evil!Cyclops or Evil!Wolverine wouldn't be much different to their regular selves, save for a higher willingness to splatter people...