Even allowing that accepting the mutation does not necessarily mean accepting the whole person, there wasn’t a lot of “accepting the mutation” directed at Charles, was there?
This is part of why I find Charles such a strong character. He is constantly telling everyone, Erik, the kids, even Raven (although more so when she’s younger) how groovy they are, how to train, how to hone, and we never see a single scene where Charles is practicing or anyone says ‘wow, Charles, that’s really amazing!’ Charles mostly gets ‘zomg you’re a spy!’ or ‘stay out of my head’ or ‘why are you using your power to pick up chicks’ and yet he’s still probably the most confident of the set in his skin. He seems to love himself, and others, even while being rejected. That’s strength.
Charles being so comfortable in his own skin and with his own powers is one of my favourite things about him. I love it when authors can convey that in fic. On a less positive note, I find the lack of acceptance of telepathy even amongst mutants in XMFC really interesting (and will someday write an AU about it, because that’s how I deal).
My own headcanon about Charles is that he genuinely sees no contradiction between being comfortable with one’s ability, even joyously loving it, and at the same time keeping it discreet. After all, he would’ve already known through Raven how fearful and uncomfortable it can make people. Understandably so, to be honest, given that I wouldn’t want a telepath rooting around in my head even though rationally I know that most of what s/he will get is mundane crap. I’ve always sort of tilted my head sideways when I read fanfic that makes a meal out of Charles’s rose-tinted glasses and unworldly he is — he is an idealist, but it’s not one that’s born out of ignorance. Quite the opposite, I would think (having led a materially comfortable life is not the same thing as being completely shielded). It’s an idealism that’s born out of Charles dealing with the knowledge the best he can, within a framework that’s shaped by his life experiences. He knows people can be horribly cruel and petty and awful, but he also knows the vivid taste of how incredible and wondrous they can be. What makes him an idealist (and terribly arrogant, really) is that he thinks he can influence people towards the latter if he just works hard enough at it.
I think this is also at least partly why he honestly doesn’t understand Raven’s vulnerability and anger (aside from his male privilege etc. etc.). In his mind, why can’t one accept oneself and still err on the side of discretion, at least until people can persuaded not to cart oneself or one’s sister away for unspeakable things? After all, it won’t be forever. And I think he assumes Raven — his oldest, closest friend — understands this. In XMFC, Charles did really well with saying the right things to the kids he trained, but failed the people he’s most emotionally intimate with: Raven and Erik. I find this interesting, and quite telling: I think that being a telepath, Charles unconsciously assumes that his emotional intimates, who love him and whom he loves in return, would naturally know and understand his intent.
I actually really enjoy thinking about the consequences of telepathy, especially as pertaining to Charles. I don’t think I’ve really gotten around to writing about it yet, but B5!Charles doesn’t really understand the boundaries between love and desire. 72 Hours!Charles is a lot more emotionally settled two years after the beach incident than I think he would otherwise be, because he’s responding to his students’ need for a stable parental figure (he’s probably vaguely aware that he should be angrier, but the child who’s crying her heart out because she’s hurting mommy with her mutation can’t wait around for him to deal with loss and grief at a slow pace). He’s shaped by their wants and needs, as much as they are shaped by his ideals.
Can I just lick this? Let me out the ways. First: B5!Charles two of my favorite things.
Second: I want to see fandom deal more with this, I just can’t deal with this naive!Charles stuff. Arrogance? Sure. Ignorance/Naivety? Um… How? I actually read *somewhere* but hell if I can remember where now that really it’s Erik who’s the idealist and it’s Charles who is the pragmatist.
I was considering it today, really, the very start of the movie where Moira comes to see Charles after he graduates. He discovers that he’s *really* not alone (Emma, Azazel, Riptide, and maybe Shaw are all mutants) that they are possibly planning badness, and he goes ‘well the best thing to do is to find the guys with the biggest stick (CIA) and prove that mutants are awesome and puppies.’ He could have easily gone in more alone, but he glomps the resources of the CIA to uses them to get what he knows he needs: ‘safe’ mutants, defenders of the USofA. When he loses the CIA support from ‘Director Platt’ being killed he says ‘well that’s nice, off to train to continue to prove our worth and stop Shaw’
Meanwhile, Erik is very much stuck in a rut of ‘you know what, fuck the haters, if they don’t like you.. fuck ‘em… and stick a coin through their skull, because people should love you blue and naked and if they don’t they are wrong!’
Erik sees the world in the lens of should and ought (people should accept us, we ought to be able to be ourselves openly) which is very idealistic, while Charles sees what is (Raven would be hurt or killed, people would fear them if they were out and not immediately useful) more pragmatic.
I cannot claim credit for the original idea, and I wish I knew who I’d seen it from, but Erik is an idealistic villain, his fall into villainy is largely predicated on people failing to conform to his overly-high expectations of them: immediate and unequivocal acceptance of people who are demonstrably dangerous for no good reason other than ‘because they should’.
I doubt anyone got it from me, but I said something like that a while back: “In fact, I think it could be argued as well that in XMFC, if you look at their actions and not their rhetoric, Xavier is the cynical one and Magneto is the dreamer. Xavier’s in there trying to get a seat at the table with the existing power base, while Magneto’s alternative is to pit himself against 99.99999% of the world.” I wouldn’t call Erik idealistic, though; with his background, he believes people will never rise to what they ‘should’ do, so fuck ‘em. Erik vs. Charles is more like pessimism vs. pragmatism, maybe. Though I guess Erik’s idealistic in the sense that he seems to think if mutants take control, somehow it’s not going to be the exact same damn thing dressed up in capes and tights.
If you look at comics canon, even though everyone talks about “Xavier’s Dream” of mutant-human harmony and his utopian optimism, Xavier’s trufax actions tend to be deeply pragmatic: get as many mutants as we can to come live at a secret stronghold! Equip and train them to defend each other and fight! And then there’s stuff like the Xavier Protocols, encrypted instructions that Xavier created for the X-Men telling them how to take down mutants who become a deadly threat… including himself. Yeah, that Xavier, what a head-in-the-clouds dreamer.
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