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[rotates to do the 69]

Technologically-challenged lush. Does have a name, but you can call me tonight.

This blog is run by a bird. It contains bad text posts, and sometimes hot mutant yaois.

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keire-ke:

codenamecesare:

ninemoons42:

luninosity:

kaydeefalls:

THIS. It frustrates me no end when writers try to characterize Charles as some kind of hopelessly naive idealist, while Erik is the one who knows how the world really works or something. No. I think the problem is that people often conflate idealism with optimism, when they’re actually two distinct ideologies. Charles is an optimistic realist — he sees the world for what it is, sees both the best and worst aspects of everyone’s minds, but he maintains hope that in the end, most people will choose to be the better men. Whereas Erik is a pessimistic idealist — he’s constantly disappointed when people fail to live up to this impossibly perfect ideal he’s set up in his head, so he preemptively lashes out because he’d rather destroy all the humans before they have the chance to fail him, again. I’m not saying his pessimism isn’t often justified, given his personal history, but goddamn, he does not give an inch, ever. Someone who’s never known mutants even existed before in their life instinctively responds with fear? KILL THEM IMMEDIATELY, THEY WILL ALWAYS HATE US. Um, what? Charles doesn’t believe he can magically change everyone’s minds — and prejudices — overnight, but he’s determined to work toward a future in which that’s possible; he has no illusions about the time and effort required to make it work. Yes, he has a tendency to err on the side of caution, but that just underscores how pragmatic he really is. 

So, yeah. THIS.

YES THIS. I will add that this is why Charles is a hero, while Erik is…something else. (I don’t know that I’d call him a villain, but that’s a different discussion; I’d call him a tragedy, perhaps.) Charles knows exactly how awful the world is capable of being—through telepathy, but also from his own upbringing—and still chooses to look for the best in people, and even if he’s sometimes arrogant or high-handed or just plain wrong, that’s an astounding act of courage, every damn day.

Agreed with Luni: just looking at the basics of his backstory, Erik is not a villain. He has to be one of the unluckiest people on the planet. 

So, incidentally, is Charles. They just happen to be unlucky in wildly different ways.

And yes, if you really wanted to get down to it, it’s Erik who wants the world to run according to his ideals, and it’s Charles who wants to run the world according to a way that lets everyone win.

This has always been my contention. In First Class, if anything Charles is downright cynical. Anyone who’s willing to pal around with the CIA in 1962 is tacitly saying “Yup, I’m willing to get my hands dirty to achieve my goals.”

And if the CIA hadn’t run into the Hellfire Club and come to seek Charles out, Charles still would have been working to achieve recognition, acceptance and equality for mutants. It seems Charles was starting gradually, by first getting his genetics degree and informing the scientific community about new forms of mutation. If you view Charles’s thesis in that light, it’s interesting that he specifically warns about conflict between the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. I’m sure once the existence of mutants became known, Charles’s remarks about how a new form of humanity outclassed their predecessors would have seemed quite pointed.

Incidentally, science has proven Professor X both wrong and right, in a way. In recent years, new analysis of fossil records and the genes of modern humans has revealed that contrary to the old assumption that Homo sapiens overcame the Neanderthals, there’s evidence that in many places, Homo sapiens lived alongside Neaderthals and had children with them: “the DNA of living Asians and Europeans is on average 2.5 percent Neanderthal.“ So his 1962 thesis used a mistaken model, but the current understanding of our ancestors affirms Xavier’s contention that it’s possible for different varieties of humans and mutants to live successfully side by side.

As for Erik, I’d love to see how he’d react when he creates a haven just for Homo sapiens superior, and mutants promptly started oppressing each other— both due to old prejudices along intersectional axes, and on whole new discriminatory bases, like scorn for unlovely physical mutations and non-useful powers, suspicion toward empaths and telepaths, and tribalism between icers, pyros, ‘porters, tekes and blasters. I’m sure something like that’s happened somewhere in the comics (because everything has! maybe in House of M, or one of the Genosha storylines?) If anyone happens to know where/when, drop me an ask!

A great big helping of this! sauce with THIS! dish please, to follow a performance of Thisespeare’s A Comedy of THIS, starring sir Patrick Stewthis and Ian McThis.

Especially on the “new society - new prejudice” thing.

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    Totalmente. Cada palabra.
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