My favorite X-Men character is Rogue, particularly the 90s version. In that phase of her characterization, she had just absorbed the powers of Avenger Ms Marvel, but something happened where she permanently had the powers of super strength, durability, and flight in addition to her power/memory absorption.

So her main power is that by physical touch, she can absorb the powers and memories through someone's skin. Her power has three complications:

• She cannot turn it off so she has to wear clothing at all times to avoid absorbing the powers and memories of someone by accident.

• Her power hurts whoever she touches. This can be fatal. Her power first manifested as a teenager when she kissed a boy and put him into a coma. The process is akin to taking a person's soul or personality away from their body.

• And if that's not enough, her power can hurt herself. Absorbing powers and memories can easily overwhelm her. They can affect her mind, her personality, and her sense of self. She carries the mind of Ms Marvel for some time, with the very real threat that Rogue could be killed or mind wiped from the inside.

To me, Rogue is a walking metaphor for navigating trauma, mental health, invisible disabilities, and loneliness.

She cannot touch others despite desperately wanting to. Her good love interests are characters who try to reach out and be with her even if it's hard. People who want to help her and who are willing to meet her where she's at.

In this time period, she has super strength, flight, and durability. She basically gets the powers of Superman. And due to how gender codes everything, she was coded as less feminine during this period. But the thing was, she didn't want that or see herself as that at all. She had tomboy traits, but because she's not strong and durable all the time, she is treated like her pain doesn't matter as much. Like imagine how fucked up it would be if people stopped reacting to you getting hit by a car. It's like 'yeah, I didn't die, but you didn't even flinch when you saw me roll over the hood of that minivan.' so now not only is it dangerous for people to get close to her, she's seen as needing less help in other areas of her life.

I like stories where Rogue has to come to terms with her powers not working or making it hard to be close to people. I was at disappointed when they took away her Ms Marvel powers and let her control her powers completely. Some things don't have a cure and I thought it would have been cool if she made a romantic relationship work with where she's at.

But her main power is so interesting too. Not only can she copy powers, but she can copy memories and she doesn't get to discard them whenever she wants. Echoes of those thoughts stay with her. To make herself more useful to the people she cares about, she's basically subjecting herself to psychological harm. She's literally making herself go crazy to help the X-Men.

Her character is clever too. She knows all this and then she keeps this in mind when choosing a power to copy for a given situation. Touch Wolverine and she can heal herself but gets anger issues. Touch Nightcrawler and she can teleport but turns blue for a day. Or she can attempt to absorb the current opponent and risk hurting herself or others by doing a lethal drain. If she holds contact for too long, she'll just have a mental copy of her opponent layered over her own mind. If she's not careful, she can take magneto's power and then use it on her friends because that's what magneto would want.

I love characters like rogue and it makes me really sad to see what current writing is doing to characters