I just saw the actual words ‘We know Magneto’s story intimately. It has been told often. He was a victim once. And then he decided that Genocide was okay. ‘ used by someone trying to assert that Magneto is a bad bad naughty villain and not a victim at all except oh that one time
I
I have no words
I’m really glad someone else called out that bullshit before I did. People just whittling down 50 years of characterization to “And then he decided Genocide was okay” like???
Max I didn’t realise you reblogged it with that gif I’m dying.
But yeah what ahuraboltagon said. At the risk of coming off as Taking Fiction Way Too Seriously, I also find it sketchy as hell to say something like ‘he was a victim once’ to describe like…living through the Holocaust…and general oppression…that persists through his (and other mutants’) entire life…y’know.
I think people forget that it wasn’t only the horrors of the Holocaust that made Magneto the way he is. He survived that and he escaped, he made a life for himself, married the love of his life and had a daughter. Then humans burnt down his house. They wouldn’t let him save his child from the blaze. They held him down and beat him while his only child was burning to death in their family home. His rage overcame him and he used his powers to get revenge, and in horror, his wife fled. His daughter died, and his wife disappeared. He survived the genocide of his people and tried to live a normal, happy life afterwards only to have that taken away from him by humans again. It’s the repeated tragedy and pain that broke (or made) Magneto.
None of this justifies the things he did in later life, of course, but it offers an explanation. I don’t think people really understand when they say things like that OP. If you survived all of that… do you think you would be clear headed? Do you think you wouldn’t be clouded by despair and rage? Do you think you wouldn’t be unstable for a long, long time? No.
All in all: don’t try to summarise the long history of a man you don’t understand. His story can’t be so easily explained in that way.
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.
Before you keep on with this mess, let me explain you a thing.
Scott Summers started off believing in the Ways of Charles Xavier because Charles Xavier was more of a father to him than his own ever had been, and because Charles preached a great thing. Charles Xavier? That man sacrificed his whole life for his cause, for his X-Men. I know Charles is not the sweet wittle bb he’s sometimes painted to be and he’s had relationships and all, I know Charles has fucked up to be certain, but I will always love Charles Xavier because he is an amazing man and he is a man who believes in perseverance. Charles Xavier understood that you cannot expect people to suddenly change their ways, that you need to dip a toe in and test the water before you hop straight in. And Charles believed, he believed until the man HE CONSIDERED LIKE A SON killed him. Magneto said it right: “There’s no cosmic force that wanted to make the world the way you wanted it—there’s no other thing out there that wanted you to kill your fatherfigure for defying you.” I’m certain Charles knew that Scott could kill him, but he believed he would not. He believed in his dream until he died. He believed in Scott. And you know what? Charles Xavier was a wonderful man at the end. He could have reveled in the world remade by the Phoenix Five, but he didn’t, because it wasn’t morally correct. If you force people into things, they will resent you.
You know who Cyclops is trying to emulate? Magneto. But he has none of Magneto’s ability to properly make people fear him or inspire the same loyalty. He’s making mistakes Magneto wouldn’t make, or ones that he has and were proven to him as mistakes. You know how you tank your cause? Threatening people to get it realized. Threatening an entire race with war. He did not “sacrifice everything,” he chose his lot. He did not “sacrifice” his relationship with Emma, he destroyed it by trying to kill her. If anything, he’s pushed mutants back with his threats and all of that. He’s gotten too big for his britches and someone’s gonna have to knock some sense into him. The biggest thing he’s done for mutants these days is put a target on their backs. So don’t come at me with that “poor little Scott” shit.
there’s something violently appealing about a canon, and by corollary, a fandom that doesn’t idealize the idealists….
Charles/Erik in the X-Men verse and particularly emphasized with XMFC, is “real” at a level that popular drama often isn’t. From the beginning, it’s a verse where love doesn’t conquer all, where ideals fail, an hope disappoints. There’s an inbuilt level of awareness in the fantasy of X-Men that’s terrific and horrific only because entertainment (especially summer blockbusters) tend not to want to laugh at heroes or cry over villainsshush,Loki/Hiddleston-dom. The acting choices Fassbender and McAvoy makes a difference in the characterization- in fact, it defines Erik and Charles. In XMFC, the brave can be foolish and the wise ignorant.
I think sometimes, Charles Xavier must get so frustrated with language. Any language, all language. It’s so easy to be misunderstood. He can know every nuance and connotation of what other people say, he can know what they really mean with their words, but he can only very seldom share the same with them.
Take the phrase ‘survival of the fittest.’ That doesn’t mean survival of the most fit, it doesn’t mean survival of the best or superior organisms. What it means is, survival of the most suited. The organisms that are most suited to thrive in their current environment long enough to survive and pass on their genes. And that’s it! Take that organism out of that environment, put it somewhere else, and it could easily die off in moments, where its ancestors might have been more versatile. There’s really no superior or inferior form of life, only organisms that are more or less suited to their current contexts.
And look how many words it takes to unpack all the misapprehensions that accompany that four-word phrase. No wonder (some versions of) Charles talk(s) a lot, it takes words upon words to get across what he might understand from a few seconds of mindreading.
“Charles’ often damagingly self-sacrificing nature” more about your thoughts on this please?
- Anonymous
I’m not really very good at extended meta posts, anon, but I’ll give this a go!
Some of my thoughts on this are from XMFC specifically, and a little is taken from comics canon too, just to give some boundaries. I’m not a comics reader, but there is some canon I’ve picked up through osmosis here and there, so people please feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong canon-wise.
A lot of this is my personal headcanon, btw. YMMV.
I’ve always felt that while Charles is essentially a good person he also invests a lot of his self-image in being a good person - it makes him feel that he has value and character and is a worthwhile person, that he is worthy of love, and of earning love. Having been raised by a mother who didn’t care much for him and a stepfather who hated him, with a stepbrother who hated him, Charles takes a lot of pride in being good and being better than them. He’s responded to his upbringing by determining to be different from the people who raised him, and I feel like he feels he needs to earn people’s affections by being good - that he has to work to be loved, that it requires virtue, and that maybe he is never - quite - good enough to really love.
(After all, he has no idea any more how Raven really feels about him, because he promised to stay out of her head. There is nobody whose thoughts he’s allowed to read who loves him. And Charles experiences his relationships with other people first and foremost through his telepathy, supplemented by the rest of his senses and faculties.)
So part of that belief manifests in trying to do the right thing for other people even when it is seriously detrimental to himself, because that is what makes him a good person in his mind. He takes the hit so others won’t have to, but he doesn’t give them the choice to take it. That’s the really damaging part - they might have chosen differently otherwise.
One example of this would be when he holds Shaw for Erik even though it means suffering through his horrible death - we see him screaming but determinedly keeping his fingers to his temple, when frankly he could have let go at any point once the coin was in Shaw’s head. We’re never given any indication that Shaw would release his power on his death unless Charles holds it in, and there’s very little likelihood that Shaw could have attacked Erik once there was a coin in his frontal lobe, whether or not it had yet taken out vital life-supporting systems (which, from an anatomical point of view, are mostly at the back of the brain and the brainstem.) And yet he doesn’t tell Erik any of this, though he must have known beforehand that this would be the result.
Possibly the strongest example from the film is the way in which he tells Raven to go and doesn’t ask her or Erik to stay despite his being in agony and unable to feel his legs - Charles is a geneticist, which means biology, and he’s not stupid. He knows what it means. And yet he doesn’t tell anybody until after they’ve already left - Erik taking with him the one person who could get him to a hospital fast enough to maybe save something (and without having to physically move him) in the form of Azazel, taking away the only family and support he has in the form of Raven, for whom Charles is also sacrificing himself to give her the freedom he thinks she needs - Charles doesn’t inflict that guilt on Erik any more than he already has, he just lets him go and suffers the consequences. And he doesn’t let his own sister know how badly he’s injured.
In fact, this characterisation of him is why I think he might have nudged Raven to go. He wanted her to be happy more than he wanted to give her the choice to stay with him and help him through his injury, and without considering how she will feel when she finds out what happened to him (or, if I’m right, how she’ll feel when she realises what he did.) He puts more stock in sacrificing himself than he does in the long-term effects of such self-destructive love.
This is a line that we have repeated in fandom to the point where it’s a joke […] the central meaning of the words has been lost.
[…] What Erik is saying here is that he will never have peace of mind. He will never be happy. And he’s accepted this. And he’s ready to live with it.
And THAT is the great tragedy here. That Erik can’t have Charles’ faith in other people because he doesn’t even have that faith in himself. I just. UGH. WHY ARE THEY SO TRAGIC? D’: D’: D’:
Erik, why such a fool that you couldn’t see what was right there in front of you? Charles saw nearly everything about you and didn’t bloody flinch, he was able to accept you, he offered you something good! Why would you reject him?!
Pearlo and I were just talking about this a couple of days ago. The way the beach divorce happens, it’s really very plausible that Charles and Erik each think the other was the one to actually sever things between them. Erik says “I want you by my side”! For someone as guarded as Erik, that’s putting himself way out there. And from Erik’s point of view, he makes this huge effort to reach out, and Charles regretfully tells him, no, sorry, the one person who said he saw good in you and wanted peace and happiness for you doesn’t think you deserve it anymore. Get lost.
But to Charles, of course, Erik’s the one who leaves him. Charles has just gone through 4 devastating experiences— 1, he held onto Shaw while Erik pushed the coin through Shaw’s brain, which Charles felt, and who knows what that did to him. He recovers from that, and 2, he discovers that the humans he tried to ally with have decided to kill all the mutants— facing his own death, and the fact that his students, his own sister, and Erik are probably going to die with him. (While the destructive mutants will escape, courtesy of Azazel. Way to think it through, CIA.) 3, he watches his friend save them all… and then decide to slaughter the forces of two nation’s armies. (Justified? Arguably. Wise? Well, let’s see, you could make those missiles fall in the ocean in a show of power, keeping a few around you to underline that you are someone Not To Fuck With, and leave… or you could show you’re a threat that can and will destroy two fleets, and earn yourself an A-bomb. How many of those can Erik juggle?) And 4, of course, Charles is shot in the back. Call it 4.5 that Erik immediately tries to kill Moira and Charles has to turn the blame back on Erik to get him to stop.
And at the end of all this, Erik is saying “I warned you” and “turning on each other” and “We want the same things” when Charles definitely doesn’t want to kill a hundred boatsful of soldiers, so he has to answer painfully that no, they don’t. They don’t want the same things. That’s just the truth, and Erik knows it, or he wouldn’t be wearing that helmet. Charles doesn’t say ‘No we do not, so fuck off.’ He just says “No, we do not.” If they’re going to stay together, they’ll have to reconcile those differences somehow… Charles doesn’t articulate that, but again, cut him some slack, he just faced death 4 times in a row within like 15 minutes and he’s still critically injured. And Erik just leaves him there.
;_________;
Reblogging for commentary, because those are some epically true facts right there. Ugh, way to break my heart, guys.
YES. SO MUCH MISCOMMUNICATION. I thoroughly believe they both felt like the rejected one and had no real idea of what they were doing to the other. I could weep in sheer frustration. WHY.
oh. The eyes. God, Charles, your eyes … And Erik, you’re so in love it’s not even funny. Down to the flickering jaw (?) muscle thing in your 2nd image. fffffffffff.
^^This comment. Exactly. Why exactly was someone somewhere saying there was no smitten!Erik in this fandom? I’m pretty sure 90% of the fics out there feature this exact trope.
word. He does seem the type to clench his jaw and Flex It because of All the Feels. … *swoons*
Yes! I was surprised too, because most of the fic I’ve encountered feature smitten!Erik. I’d say there isn’t enough smitten!Charles—at least that I’ve found. But aside from that, yes, ALL THE FEEEEEELS.
Who convinced Erik that he was all pain and anger with no good inside of him at all?
Shaw, the Nazi torturer, who probably told the Jewish boy that he killed his own mother.
Who then convince him, through Erik’s pain and anger is all that’s between him and ascension in humanity.
Shaw again.
This scene gifs doesn’t make sense unless you consider that Erik’s been thoroughly brainwashed and Charles, despite accusations of his careless privilege, is actually successful in recovering Erik from his trauma and the brainwashing. He convinces Erik that serenity was a weapon, that there’s goodness in him and that he, Charles Xavier, believes in all of those things, believes in him.
How many people ever believed in Erik as more than someone that can be used?
And this is why Charles doesn’t tell Erik that he can’t feel his legs. He rather that Erik walks away and leaves him as a leader with a purpose for good of mutant kind than as someone who will believe that he breaks everything he touches and revert back to thinking himself as only pain and anger.
