#but ah yes#Mutant And Proud: Unless You Are A Telepath Because Then You’d Better Not
CHARLE
THIS
like, I have intense anger toward Erik and Raven about this, but also anger toward the writer/director/etc who seem to want us to feel sympathy for Raven here; seriously, people, yes, Charles can be an utter arse for other reasons, BUT DO YOU NOT SEE THE BIGGER ISSUE
ALL OF THIS !!
This is so strange to me, because my feelings are so different from the previous commenters! For one thing, in this particular gif set, it’s very clearly a scene where Charles is intending to sneak in to Raven’s mind without permission. That’s not Raven being paranoid, and it’s not her attacking him for, say, naturally picking up on surface thoughts without specifically making an effort to intrude. That strikes me as a super valid thing to be upset about, particularly in the larger context of Charles’s paternalistic treatment of her.
On a more general note: I honestly don’t think it is inherently hypocritical to be pro mutation and also have boundaries and limits. Your abilities, no matter what they are, are justifiably limited where they infringe on another person, right? Charles purposefully and intentionally reading Raven’s thoughts when she doesn’t want him to isn’t the equivalent of Raven being in her natural form; it’s closer to Raven transforming herself into Erik and talking to Charles without him knowing who she is.
(On a side note, I’m not sure where Erik comes into it at all? There’s a theme in a lot of XMFC where Erik is afraid or anti telepathy and I’m not really sure where it comes from, because I don’t really see it in the movie. The helmet is pretty clearly not him being against Charles’s telepathy for its own sake, but just because he doesn’t want Charles to stop him from doing shit he wants to do. There’s also the conversation outside the CIA base, but that line seems way more about Erik’s theme of thinking himself a monster and his mind so dark and awful, etc, than being against telepathy, especially considering how he seems to have no problem or hesitation with Charles’s mutation the rest of the movie.)
The thing I find frustrating about Raven and Charles’s relationship vis a vis his telepathy is that Raven asks him not to use one of his senses on her, and then holds it against him when he’s insensitive toward her– and never seems to see the contradiction there. If you ask someone who relies on their vision never to look at you, they aren’t going to be able to understand what you convey with facial expressions, and you have to be aware of that when you communicate with them. If you ask someone who relies on empathy/telepathy never to use it on you, they aren’t going to understand your emotions, and you have to be aware of that when you communicate with them.
Raven has every right to tell Charles to stay out of her head and to expect him to respect that. She is wrong to tell him to stay out of her head and then expect him to understand her when she has closed off one of the main ways he understands people. And yes, all this is complicated by the fact that Charles is chauvanistic, controlling, and patronizing toward Raven, and that’s on him. OTOH, we have no way of knowing if he would treat her differently if he was able to perceive her fully with his mutation and understand her better.
(I’d also question whether in these gifs Charles is really trying to ‘sneak in’ to Raven’s mind considering he makes his telepathy gesture of fingers-to-temple, which we know he doesn’t actually need to do in order to read minds, and would therefore refrain from, if he was really trying to sneak? Also am I wrong, isn’t he asking ‘Why not?’ telepathically, so really not concealing the attempt? I thought he was just automatically/unconsciously lapsing into telepathy because it’s the most natural way for him to connect and he’s out of practice curbing it because he’s been without it for so long.)
The films themselves are unclear about how Charles’s telepathy subjectively works for him and what his normal, passive level of psychic perception is, but I suggest that canon movieverse Charles, who spent years concealing himself and Raven, probably habitually used a level of telepathy that we would consider ‘active’ or ‘invasive’ out of hypervigilance, making sure no one thought anything was out of the ordinary about him or Raven.
Also, while XMDOFP tells us Charles’s telepathy emerged when he was 9, in the comics he was psychic from birth, and I think splitting the difference, it makes sense if Charles has probably been empathic his whole life but only learned to interpret his telepathic perceptions as thoughts at nine or so. DOFP also shows that under some circumstances, Charles has trouble keeping other minds out, suggesting that his natural passive level of perception may be total openness to others’ thoughts.
Upshot being, telepaths would be, very literally, neuro-atypical. For Charles in particular, there’s reason to believe he might rely very heavily on or require his telepathy to function interpersonally. (He’s without telepathy by choice for part of DOFP; he’s also not really functioning, what with the constant drinking and reclusiveness etc.) People around him may not want him to read their feelings or thoughts, and they have the right to their boundaries. But they should understand that if they ask him to close his eyes to them, he might accidentally trip over them sometimes. Raven tells Charles to close his eyes to her and then blames him when he stumbles. No accommodation or allowance for how his mutation affects his perceptions. To me, that’s the part that seems to contradict ‘mutant and proud.’
*slow clap*
(via just-an-anti-social-nerd)
