Triggerscent as an Allegory For Date Rape Drugs

That's a heady line to read.
Really, sit back and think about it for a second.  Let it sink in.

It's hard to think whether or not it was intended as such.  Back in 2006 when it was added to her origin, was that intentional?  Early usage in the initial tale is hard to tell.  The follow up with Target X it becomes a little more hazy as to whether it was intentional or not, but the symbolism does start to show up.  Over time it starts to become more pronounced.

When this scent crosses X-23's path, she literally blacks out and then wakes up to everyone being dead per her own words.  The time loss is there.  The unknown actions.  Not knowing what has transpired.  The location disorientation.  There are a lot of parallels that can be drawn upon.

Instead of letting herself become assaulted though, she becomes highly aggressive.  So while it carries hues of the same stories you hear from date rape victims, there is a different connotation.  Triggerscent makes all of X-23's anger, frustration, and fury come to the surface.  It boils over and she has minimal to no control over her actions in harming others during it.

But she's still powerless in a different way.  She's still being used because of an induced state.  While induced she may be evoking all the fury that a victim of such an ordeal wishes they could to avoid what happened to them, she's dealing with guilt over what may have transpired still.  It's a moment of powerlessness still.  In a way you could say she embodies all the anger and frustration that a victim handles but not only is it in the moment itself, it's also still there in the wake of it.  There's still the guilt even though it's not her fault.  The remorse.  The avoidance.  In many ways, the story in Not Forgotten itself is taking this aspect of her and using it to empower her.  Using it against the very captors that inflicted her with this burden.

When you take this into consideration, it makes what happened with Finesse and the lie Finesse told Laura all the more heartbreaking in how she used X-23 during the Final Exam story arc of Avengers Academy.  Maybe this yields some perspective into the various traits of Laura and the different directions writers have taken her.  Every writer that has handled X-23 at a different period in her life has done so with different focuses because of where she was at emotionally in that point of time.  It's not that the character has been written poorly by anyone.  It's that dealing with what she has, from start to now, might be more than any one reader may realize or able to fully comprehend.

Whether it's Claremont and X-23 still dealing with all she's lost early on so she's only displaying what others think or expect of her, or Yost & Kyle with her robotic unfeeling aspects still learning about emotion and understanding herself, even with displays of pure arrogance and strategic superiority knowing she's right in what she's saying but unable to understand the emotional implications others are trying to plan around.  Her solid pursuit of a mission or a goal over all else as something to focus on and direct herself, to then that being taken away by the very man that's supposed to help her.  Becoming lost and confused stuck in her own head and trying to find her own path in the wake of that under Marjorie Liu's pen.  Starting to open up again but then feeling used and distraught by the very teammate she's grown closest to under Gage's writing in Avengers Academy.  Being turned back into a weapon for a sadistic man's joys by Hopeless' hands in Avengers Arena.  To finally trying to live life differently and avoiding thinking of the past as much as she can, even if it means altering how she speaks of events when others ask under Bendis' writing.  All of these writers have brought different traits forward from what the character herself has gone through and how she's trying to cope with it but still has more piled on.  All of these writers have given X-23 nuance and helped show different sides of her as she tries to grow, slips a little, and then works to stand back up again.

X-23 is a complicated character.  She's rich with symbolism and angles to approach.  Some are even darker than what many of us may ever want to admit to.