Cesare

stickthisbig:

codenamecesare:

Throwing a question out for consideration.

Charles says “Killing Shaw will not bring you peace.” Later, when Erik’s preparing to kill Shaw, Charles says, Please, Erik, no. Is he pleading for Erik to spare Shaw’s life? Or is he asking Erik not to kill Shaw while Charles is holding him still and (apparently) feeling what Shaw feels?

What is Charles’s alternative solution to the problem Shaw poses? We never hear him offer another idea for how to stop this dangerous. powerful person who’s out to destroy the human race.

IDEK, man. Honestly, I think it’s a Joker-Batman problem. Like, I really think Charles thinks he could control or contain Shaw or bring him to justice, and if that doesn’t work then there’s not another viable option, because murder is out. Which, that’s idiotic (I believe in due process, but not wrt supervillains), but Charles is very intelligent and not very wise- and past that, you can say a lot of things about (movie!)Xavier through the years, but I don’t think you could call him jaded, not exactly. And Charles wants the best for Erik, which, in Charles’s mind, is not a whole lot different than Erik having the same opinions as Charles.

Heh. Which is true, and kind of a difficult aspect of Charles, I think. He’s clearly arrogant (and oh how I love the way he says “I’m sorry?” when Erik calls him on it) and thinks he knows best. At the same time, being very anti-genocide and generally anti-killing-people myself, I can’t help thinking… about this, he is right! Surely if there’s anything you get to be dickishly self-righteous about, it’s taking the argumentative position of hey, how about we don’t murder people.

(I think one of the things that always put me off Professor X in other canons is that, in recent decades at least, it seemed like writers wanted Xavier to come off as all wise and Zen, and tried to avoid having him appear self-righteous, and it just made him seem like a cipher. It’s been my impression that all the plotlines about his flaws deal with Xavier having a “dark side’ that he represses so hard it can only explode out of him in psychic ragebabies. Whereas the things that actually are creepy about him are passed off as standard Marvel supergeniusosity, like how Reed Richards is this appalling terrifying guy but you’re just supposed to nod and go with it because he’s so smart and such a big hero.)

So. Hopeful but not smart. Especially because I really think being shot is the first really bad thing that has happened to him in his whole life (because I don’t think he was close to his mother or stepfather, and his dad would have had to died when he was little, and, let’s all be honest, he doesn’t seem to give that much of a fuck when Darwin dies), and that’s after Shaw dies.

“first really bad thing that has happened to him in his whole life” = you think XMFC Charles doesn’t have comics!Charles’s abusive family background? I could see that being different in XMFC canon. It’s true there was no Cain/Juggernaut anywhere in sight…