Stop writing your extrovert as someone who never shuts up and is exhausting to be around. That's a bad extrovert, not extroversion. A well-written extrovert thinks out loud, they don't know what they feel until they're saying it to someone. They use conversation to process. What looks like oversharing is actually them figuring themselves out in real time. They need the other person there not to listen but to exist. The other person being in the room is what makes the thought happen. Write that. It's fascinating.
I used to do a lot of fandom based rp and I really miss it. This ship has infected my brain so I figured I'd try on this tag first.
I'm out of the loop a bit. I was writing with one other person for years so we just did our own thing, but I'm learning the new lingo.
I'd say I do a semi-lit style but really I'm happy to mirror whatever. My last long time partner liked script style and I had no complaints. I'm fine with being patient about responses but if we're both having fun (and have the time) I'm groovy with tagging back and forth all evening.
Grownups only. I'm 35+, demi, trans dude. I'm cool with smut but plot and feels is my main interest. I'm the slow burn sort.
I have no concrete plots, just an itch to write with someone. I know the pair from pretty much every X-Men universe. X-Men '97 is hot atm, I know the movies, the comics have a host of options, Marvel Rivals has a lot of possibility, too (thank you xxPlastic-Cubexx). I'm not even too picky about which one of them I'd play. I know them both.
If you want to preview my writing, you can find me on AO3 as askaniblue.
Drop me a comment or message if you're interested.
I still wonder how much Erik actually knows about Charles. We know that Charles knows basically everything about Erik, but what about the other way?
I mean, obviously, Erik can read Charles the best, they can see each other (and to be loved is to be seen), but it's Charles' past I'm unsure about.
I would say that he doesn't know too much, maybe Charles only made a comment or two while they were playing chess in the mansion. Something like "Oh, yeah, my stepfather wasn't exactly nice." or something like that..?
I wouldnt be surprised by this, because Charles seems to me like the kind of person that will tell you not to compare your traumas to others' but then he'll be like "It wasn't that bad so it's not worth mentioning"
No, this is key. This is the core to a LOT of Charles' problems with literally everyone. He was raised to put his needs, his pain, his wants so far in the back he hardly acknowledges them. He was shown by every adult around him that his pain was entirely unimportant and all that mattered was how he could be useful to them. And this is how he navigates the world.
Someone once said "when you give up being loved, you'll settle for being useful" and Charles wraps his entire self-worth around how useful he is to others. This is why he gets so fucking shitty when people don't need him: it feels like rejection, it feels unsafe.
So of course he tells absolutely no one about his own trauma because why would he? That's not important.
On a recent post of mine about how damaging making Charles a villain has been to the X-Men story, I got many responses like below.
And so... *climbs on soap box*
Charles Xavier Twisted
A dirge scored for unoriginality, instant gratification SJWing, ableism, watsonialism, power scaling, daddy issues, and disappointment
The user from the tags above is not alone in blaming Charles' downfall on ableism, but the destruction of the character of Xavier came about for (unfortunately) a clusterfuck of reasons.
Ableism is often brought up first by many because isn't it so very convenient that the one most known disabled comic characters has been treated this way? Magneto, who murdered a LOT of people is welcomed as a hero, but Xavier's sins are unforgiven. (How sad, given that he himself is canonically forgiving to a fault?) And while I don't think it's THE reason, I think of it as a foundational reason for his downfall.
Many writers just didn't know wtf to do with a disabled character past their disability. Plots with Charles often either revolved around his disability or they found (not so) clever ways to remove it temporarily. The infamous Jean Grey panel was written not to introduce a plot line of a love triangle, but rather was solely to show that Charles was a pathetic cripple that no woman would ever love. When he did get to be in a relationship, artists would find clever ways to minimize his disability. And he's bald, which authors often use to point out that women would never want him, while artists rarely make any attempts to make him attractive. They even erased his baldness in the Fox movies before making it an injury rather than his natural mutation. Another way to make him a victim.
The second foundational reason is The Xavier Problem, as coined by Marvel execs. Put simply, "We gave the team this great, wise leader who is a stupidly powerful telepath. How are they ever going to have scary enough challenges?" The Xavier Problem is why they invented sentinels (what can a wheelchair bound telepath do against giant robots?) as an example. They also liked to kill him off a lot and send him off world for this reason. Basically, Xavier was viewed by writers as a hurdle, not an asset. This, I think, created resentment especially in writers after Claremont who wanted ACTION and DRAMA!
And these two base aspects made him easy prey for the next factors.
Amongst many younger people in minorities there's an angry "I shouldn't have to minimize myself to make you comfortable!" sentiment. They rage at any concessions because "I should be able to just LIVE!" and I'm not saying they're wrong. As a minority myself, I GET IT. No, you SHOULDN'T have to make yourself small for anyone. No you SHOULDN'T need to not hold your date's hand because it upsets someone. It fucking sucks! But getting a full beer can thrown at your head from a moving car sucks more. Dying is the suckiest of all, in fact.
Concessions and pandering to the majority can keep minority people alive. Point blank. But the current combination of social awareness and instant gratification seeking makes people react to anyone suggesting any concessions as weakness and betrayal.
I, a trans man, was in a support group for trans people and said that after a lot of thought, I had decided to continue to present as female to my grandparents for my wellbeing (and detailed exactly why). The THERAPIST running the group turned to the others and said "What are some other things we tell ourselves to convince us not live our truths?" I was shamed and belittled for choosing safety. If you're not loud and proud 100% of the time, risking your safety for "truth", you're the problem.
*nods to Xavier* Sound familiar?
People will post pictures of the Morlocks and say "Oh look, Xavier only picked the pretty mutants for his team. He didn't want the ugly ones. Hypocrite!" And yes, he DID pick the pretty ones. Of course he did. Do you think Rosa Parks just HAPPENED to be wearing her Sunday best, looking pretty and demure and oh-so photogenic? Do you think it's a coincidence that the black people who sat at diner counters and refused to move were dressed nicely, clean, pressed clothes, button up shirts, ladies with their gloves on, and all of them young, nice looking and harmless? Those people were chosen for those actions, they trained for them, so that the photos in the paper would show the right story. There would be NO room for the reporters to spin them as hoodlums and trouble makers. (Look at how they vilify every black person gunned down for no fucking reason and know it takes so little for a minority person to be turned into the enemy.)
Now look at the first X-Men team: 5 white, attractive teenagers, only one of which wasn't fully human passing, and that one looked like a fucking angel. And those fine young people where being heroes. It was very intentional. He was playing the same game as the irl civil rights leaders. The X-Men were a PR campaign to get humans used to the idea of mutants in a comfortable way. His next team he widened that, brought in other races, and even had a very non-human passing member (but still attractive and damn charming).
But young people can't see this method as anything but weakness and betrayal. This is the exact reason Magneto is beloved now. He screams for immediate change and zero concessions, and that appeals. That's "living your truth".
This pairs nicely with another habit with millennials and below: Watsonian judgement of "problematic" characters. In the age of digging up old tweets and uncovering of past legit crimes, people have gotten used to looking at a person's past and (rightfully) "cancelling" them for their actions. *points at Neil Gaiman* This is a great trend to drive out harmful people from places of acclaim, but it just doesn't work with comic book characters because A they're not real people and thus CANNOT be held accountable by the irl world, and B they are written by dozens and dozens of writers in their "lifetime".
They have no freewill, they're not choosing anything, and consistency in comic writing is a fucking joke. The infamous Jean Grey panel is no more damning than the Superman kiss with a 15 y/o Lana, but Xavier haters will hold that up as PROOF that he's a pedo. And no. You have to look at the full picture of a character to make those judgements.
And now we come to my last piece of the puzzle: modern writers hate mentor characters. Really, it's across the board. Every key mentor character I can think of has been retconned to having some dark secret. They retconned Reed as having a cure for Grimm all along but not using it. Yinsin's (of Ironman) memory was tainted by a murderous son and his death rewritten. Superman's bio-dad has gotten the "plotting earth conquest" revamp a few times. They even tried to blacken Alfred's eye by giving him a daughter he'd abandoned to take care of Bruce. (When this didn't turn fans against him, they just killed him off.)
Any character a writer can project his daddy issues onto is immediately on the chopping block. Take a look at most comic lines and watch for the mentor who was secretly shitty all along. It's sad how often it crops up.
And my, oh my, does it all add up for Xavier.
One by one the writing trends of the last 20 years aligned like the astrological chart from hell to damn Charles into oblivion. The kind, careful man in the wheelchair who just wanted hope and acceptance didn't stand a chance. And, even worse, I don't think we'll see his character recover until these trends change.
The hate for him is real. Whole tiktok accounts farm it for views. The retcons are extensive and corrode every inch of his character. Every flaw has been cranked to 11 and every good trait has been made a lie. Old fans like me and fans who came in from the Fox movies can hold onto who he was, but Marvel leadership has made that past into something closer to fannon than anything else.
For years I set myself on fire for others and in the end I was left spent charcoal. They poked at the embers for a while but when they couldn't coax more warmth from the ash, they wandered away.
for a while there was a little problem where if someone could own something, they wouldn't need to buy it again - which is obviously very sad and problematic (bad for the economy). with the world-changing discovery of subscription-based billing models, we have entered a glorious new era of infinite purchases forever (good for the economy).
pirates represent an even bigger threat now than ever before - rather than depriving the innocent IP holders of one purchase, these scoundrels are now preventing infinity purchases, stealing an amount of potential future revenue that is truly incalculable because the limit doesn't exist. if you pirate one single movie or album video game, you have pulled off a heist with an effective financial value of literally billions of dollars in perpetuity. modern online criminals put archaic bank or jewelry robbers (with their paltry one-time payoff) to shame.
Charles Xavier has got to be so annoying to the X-Men. It's always him sitting with a wistful sigh, "waiting for/missing/visiting an old friend," because he wants to flirt and giggle over a chess board as if said old friend didn't try to kill them for the 8th time that month, or is currently in another plastic prison?
And no one says anything about it either, like some sort of unspoken rule. He's just really in love with a glorified fridge magnet and that is something they have to live with.
In defense of their enabling, they are all very damaged people. I take it as them accepting this is Charles' damage and they just build around it like the rest of their dysfunctions.
Had a brief encounter with a MAGA today at work. I was on register and he came on through, a beacon of red nastiness in my otherwise very liberal workplace. Nothing of note happened. I was professional if not a bit cool. He paid and went on his way. That was it.
Inwardly I mocked him. This old man had bought piles of merch from our scam artist in chief with real money. Loser. Then I saw him pull out a EBT card and wow, you kidding me, guy? Oh and he had a veteran pin on his MAGA ensemble and I saw the VA card in his wallet. And damn dude, all these services you're probably relying on and you voted for the guy who promised to take it all away. Pathetic.
And I was doing a good job of just sneering at him inwardly till I looked up and saw him getting his bags to go.
He wasn't walking all that well.
He had one odd shaped shoe that could be from foot issues from diabetes or maybe a service injury.
And both shoes looked old. Real old.
And the snide fell away as I realized, he really was pathetic. In the literal sense. This old man had allowed himself to be taken in by Fox News to the point that he saw so many enemies all around him that he proudly voted for someone who would ruin his life. Spent his own limited money on hats and shirts and pins and god knows what else. He fed his own hate so far, he's happily cutting his own throat cus he know the blade will hit others with his swing.
