Analzying Dani Moonstar: Favoritism and Apathy as a Teacher

[SingLung]

Reading back the full runs of the recent volume of New Mutants and New X-Men (which I plan to do again today), I'm starting to wonder if Dani is cut out to be a teacher. Yes, she's made a lot of progress, but I think she's made two big screw ups, and their connected.

First, and the most obvious, is Kevin Ford. Obviously she needed to do something to stop him from outright killing Pierce (ironic considering in her early New Mutant days she would have been in his shoes had she the chance) and using her powers was her last resort, but she used her powers to long and to strong, scaring him away from school, and killing almost all of his trust in authority figures, and barely puts up much of a fight to get him to stay (or even say she's sorry for scaring him so bad), and even when she comes to get him back, it's almost more of an afterthought then anything else, almost like it's "Oh, I need an extra seat for my team, maybe that one kid...uh whathisface, the one I scared off, yeah he'll do", and rather than use her SHIELD connections (and to be fair, she may not have any left) to try and protect him when government agents come to arrest him and put him on trial for a rather complicated murder scenario, she just lets him ride with a "Oh well, nothing I can do, just let justice take it's course". He still has no family that's been mentioned, so presumably someone made the necessary paperwork to make him a ward of the school at some point. She just never seemed to truelly care for him....or maybe it's because she tranferred that to someone else.

Dani was guilty, she just scared off a boy who had no family and needed a lot of guidance and help. But then Josh comes along, and he too is a boy with no family and in need of guidance and help. What does she do? She lavishes him with praise, she does all she can to make him happy and stable, and she becomes his guardian when he has no family. Now obviously I know she did this 99.9% because she's a good person, but what about that 0.01%? It was guilt. She's transferring her guilt over her big screw up (her first as a teacher) with Kevin over to Josh, going overboard to make sure her mistake isn't repeated. I wonder really, if Josh were somehow brought in for charges on what he did as a Reaver, would Dani do what she did with Kevin, and let him be, so that a trial could go on as needed, or would she do everything in her power (and those of her squad) to set him free?

I'm sure Nunzio and/or Christina (who I noticed post here) will probably debunk me, but I just wanted to share my opinion.

[LoneWolf21]

I don't know, was Dani really as bad as that?

[Sean Whitmore]

Good points, SingLung.

I'll add to that the way she treats David. He has made it clear from day #1 that he was only there to keep his family safe from persecution and hone his ability. He had no wish to be a super hero. So what does Dani do? Give him a costume and a codename, stick him in a team, and have him perform battle exercises against other teams.

To be fair, this may be Xavier School policy and thus not Dani's fault, but we've seen tons of students in this and other X-books who don't have costumes or codenames.


SEAN

[xakko]

To be fair, this may be Xavier School policy and thus not Dani's fault, but we've seen tons of students in this and other X-books who don't have costumes or codenames.

But also, to be fair, the folk at Xavier's know that self defense is critical among mutants in a world where they are hated and fear.. you know the refrain.

Dani wasn't sure about the role she was asked to take... she was pretty much conned into it by Xavier, who knew that caring for the next generation would appeal to her. She's learning the ropes, and I think deserves a little leeway here.

And yes, I think if Josh were in the same boat as Kevin, she would react the same.

[Sean Whitmore]

But also, to be fair, the folk at Xavier's know that self defense is critical among mutants in a world where they are hated and fear.. you know the refrain.


That's very true. And I loved the scene where David showed up Wolvie in karate class. :)

I just think that "Danger Room style" training with costumes and team dynamics and goals and such seems a little too "super hero boot camp" to me.


SEAN

[Nunzio DeFilippis]

Hey all,

I'm not here to debunk anyone. Just to join in on an entertaining discussion of something we wrote - which I still get a kick out of.

Dani absolutely knows she screwed up with Kevin. But her mistake was not in using her powers on Kevin. She had to - remember, she tried to pull him off of Pierce and he reached for her. Kevin tried not only to kill Pierce, but he absently (because his power was hungry) tried to kill her.

No, Dani's mistake was in not checking up on Kevin right away. She was angry with him for what he tried to do, both to her and Pierce. And she let him stew all the way back to Xavier's and once he was there. He was on his own until Xavier told Dani she needed to check on him.

Now, I will object to your characterization of what happened afterwards. She did apologize to Kevin, and she did try to convince him to stay. But when he was determined to leave, she had no choice but to let him go. Xavier's is not a prison, nor is it boot camp - kids can leave whenever they want. Remember, Xavier said as much when she talked to him afterwards. And while normally when a kid goes off like that, the school must alert someone, who could they alert? He had no family, and the authorities wouldn't have understood what happened with Kevin's dad.

(Also, to be fair to us, when we wrote the script, Kevin left the school and Dani went after him, until he finally told her to leave him alone at the train station. But Marvel refused to let us have a scene at the train station. Not sure why).

I think there's a huge validity to describing her overprotectiveness of Josh to guilt, but remember, she screwed up with Josh a lot too. When he blew up the infirmary, she took it personally and reacted as an angry friend of Amara's, not as an advisor who should have talked it over with the kid and doled out a reasonable punishment.

After his family abandoned him, Dani certainly stepped up, but she continued to ride Josh hard, and didn't clue him in about her guardian role for a while. So it was hardly as if she ran into the relationship and just coddled him.

As to David, there was never a kid (of squad age) shown in our book who was not on a squad with a codename. Every kid had a squad except the youngest ones. So she didn't force anything on David, it was school policy. And she knew enough to know that the training would challenge him and teach him knew things, and told him to trust her. And he did figure that out at the end of Choosing Sides.

Anyway, you could say Dani favors Josh, but in my mind, she's always favored David just as much. They hang out at coffee shops and talk... they're very close.

She's also close with Sofia.

So, I don't think she favors Josh all that much.

She definitely screwed up with Kevin, though, and Emma was quick to remind her of that as often as possible.