#x.txt

[onehunnit]

everyone say thank you yunho fansites!

[bikenesmith]

i am (never) a victim: charles xavier + self-blame

As a Charles Xavier obsessive, I’m hard-pressed to find analyses of his 616 self that see him as a person rather than a politic — either inside or outside of the text. Charles, while a central part of the X-Men mythos, often takes a narrative backseat to his charges. When it comes to Charles, comics fandom is often more interested in either (rightfully) maligning his milquetoast neoliberal philosophies or, on a less fun note, perpetuating “creepy disabled man” stereotypes. It’s difficult to find people who are interested in seeing him as the messy, complex character he is, and the high barrier of entry to comics makes it difficult for those who are already doing that work on the film series side of things to transfer over. So, of course, you can probably infer that I was very pleased with Kieron Gillen’s Immortal X-Men #10.

first essay up on my shiny new writing site! discussing my fave bald blorbo re: immortal x-men #10, childhood abuse, the trauma of growing up telepathic, and victimhood.

link here! be sure to subscribe to the newsletter!

reblogs very much appreciated 🫶🏿

[orange-orchard-system]

New factive just discovered she has a double in the system and immediately went off to go do the Spider-Man meme with her. This is what plural joy is all about baybee

[nevadas-night-time-novelist]

I have something sad to admit… I’m in love with

My little Tony Ravioli ❤️❤️❤️ my skrungly

His hair isn't even on straight, hes a disaster and I am going to pelt him into the ocean for the crime of being

[monosaccharide]

i don't want to do the extended essay

[xyfanficarchive]

laughing at all the kinky experienced daddy dom henry fics like do y'all really think he gets that much game. this man grew up and lived in a lab until his thirties and you think he can dirty talk like that?????? that he instantly knows the exact right way to use his fingers and how to eat someone out????? hes so touch starved he'd probably be c*mming in his pants before you even get his belt off lmfaoaaoaoa

[pissboycharles]

it gets increasingly funny to me when people have this beef or radicalised idea of lewis, that he's "egotistical" or an asshole. when u can spend 10 mins looking at his insta and its literally 1. full of positivity even for those who hate him 2. comments that he makes himself from his dogs account 3. him supporting charities and talking about important issues 4. him literally posting on his story like he's a fanboy

[muzzledcorpse]

Proshippers continue to be dumb as fuck

[dreamworldstims]

Sorry, I haven’t had enough energy to do much, I promise I’ll update again at some point!!

[onehunnit]

Trial and Error: First (ish) Impressions

- not one song under 3 minutes we're bringing the pop back into k-pop god BLESS

2) We Don't Stop: This song is hip hop and rock in one and I think really solidifies xikers' niche in 5th generation as experimenting with different hip hop and rock genres in one. The post-chorus is actually genius bc of how they pace the song, like it gives us time to breathe before throwing all this craziness at us

3) Red Sun: The way I will be working out to this song... we always expect anthemic songs from Kq groups and this is it. I feel like I'm about to take down my enemies in a cyberpunk dystopia.

4) Supercalifragilstic: CLUB BANGERRRRR CLUB BANGERRRR ain't none of them can be at the club but they KNOW. I am a TSRONG believer that every bg should have at least one club banger and this one is xikers'. Im not too well versed in genres but this is definitely a subgenre of house/edm 😁

5) Every Flavor Jelly: they put yechan in front of a mic and said "go crazy" and bro took it personally. ALSO BRIDGE 😭😭🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 IS SO HEAVENLY

6) Break a Leg: God, teen rock BOP. I don't even know the lyrics but I feel so goddamn emo I have tears in my eyes on the train. They will always know how to close a fucking album. Jesus fuck. Okay. Im actually gonna cry.

I am just overly impressed by how ROCK SOLID this release is! Everything is so tight and seamless and there are no/negligible weak points. Xikers has not even had their first year anniversary yet they have such a strong understanding of their selves, individually and as a group. Even when they go into different genres its successful because they don't lose their selves. At all. There is such a strong sense of identity and authenticity in all these songs and it builds up to a journey that I was all to happy to go on. Hats off xikers, as of rn, Trial and Error is my AOTY.

[bikenesmith]

Despite [Xavier's] previous insistence that he is only whole when able-bodied, he comes to terms very quickly with his return to disability: “My back is shattered, a parting gift from the Shadow King… It appears… if I am ever to achieve my dream… I will need all of you… to walk me there” (Nicieza 23). In the span of a single panel, Xavier acknowledges that he is once again disabled, accepts it, and asks his teammates for help. Due to his previous elation at becoming able-bodied, one would think he would require more time to adjust, to shift his identity once more from “able-bodied” to “differently-abled.” The ease in which Professor X resumes his disabled identity lends itself to the notion that being able-bodied, not disabled, is a plot device. He takes more time to adjust to using his legs than he does to losing them, a pattern generally reversed when other characters become disabled. This smooth transition back to disability implies that his truest identity is as a disabled man.

(emphasis mine) was reading crippled crusaders: disability representation in the superhero genre by cassandra m. nicol a few days ago and was struck by this bit....the idea that charles' "true" self is a disabled self is really interesting. (edited) crosspost from twitter:

the dominant, most objective read is that charles becomes abled, is disabled, + becomes abled again ad nauseam. yet those narrative tendencies have inadvertently created a reading where charles' disability is, functionally, a chronic illness that flares due to outward stimuli.

whether charles' paraplegia is due to physical injury or a brain/psychosomatic/astral issue isn't clear, having been complicated over the years by all the different ways the text has chosen to able + re-disable him.

what makes the most sense to me is leaning into that ambiguity. its both — either mental or physical injury/ailment can cause him disablement. and the back + forth of charles' paraplegia signifies he's uniquely in danger of that specific disablement — paraplegia/spine issues. and those issues happen ALL the time in real-life non-psychic people who experience (non-psychic….i presume) brain damage. the brain + the spine, the central nervous system, they're basically extensions of each other, and are some of the most important parts of your body.

so you can extrapolate that charles has a particularly "weak" spine, and it's likely to give out if he experiences intense physical or psionic injury. and as an x-man, he risks that often.

i also think the "ease" with which he moves from ability one state to another that nicol mentions is important to this. to be clear: we have seen charles agonize over his disability, and especially losing his ability. it's undeniable that it impacts him emotionally. but charles doesn't go through the intense "grieving" process a lot of newly disabled ppl do — the kind he went through himself when he was recovering from his first spinal injury. as nicol points out:

In Xavier’s next appearance two issues later, he is seated in a golden wheelchair and seems insistent that his disability not hinder his participation in X-Men adventures. Instead he emphasizes his usefulness with his telepathic powers, declaring, “I too shall be coming. Though I am crippled once again, my particular talents may be needed there” (Portacio and Byrne 6). His disabled status is stressed through a visual weight of the word “crippled,” both bolded and italicized in the comic panel, similar to how “whole” was stressed when he became able-bodied in 1983. But here, “crippled” is not laden with judgment. It is merely an acknowledgement of Xavier’s condition. This smooth transition back to disability in some ways rectifies his description of “able-bodied” as “whole,” as Charles insists that even paraplegic once more, he is still more than capable of being an X-Man, and he is still the most powerful mutant in the world. Regardless of the state of his physical body, Charles knows that his disability need not impose limitations on his actions; he harnesses his role as leader of the X-Men and his disability is, effectively, relegated to background information.

of course this is in part bc he'd already been paraplegic for years, but you can also see it as him just being ready for it. seeing it as an eventuality, a familiar state that he will return to throughout his life. a chronic disability that exists whether or not he can walk.

There is one more major instance in which Professor X becomes able-bodied. In 2002, a mutant named Xorn restores Xavier’s ability to walk (Morrison, “All Hell” 32). This is the most short-lived instance of Xavier being able-bodied. Only a year later, Xorn is revealed to be Magneto in disguise, one of Professor X’s oldest enemies; Xorn removes the nano-sentinels that had been holding Xavier’s spine together, crippling him again (Morrison, “Planet X” 19). Later, once freed from captivity, Xavier reappears in a chair with alien-like legs, giving him autonomous movement (Morrison, “Phoenix Invictus” 27). This time, he makes no mention of his return to paraplegia. He is in full command of the X-Men, and has again made a smooth identity transition from “able-bodied” to “differently-abled.” The fact that this occurs once more stresses that to be disabled is part of Charles Xavier’s truest identity, and that being able-bodied is a temporary plot point rather than a character trait.

and that raises the question…what does this mean in the krakoa age? does a newly grown body come without that disability? or is it a "symptom" of his mutation? is it imprinted in his mind-soul-whatever you want to call what part of a person cerebro catalogues?

throughout all of krakoa era, there's never been any mention of what charles feels about making his bodies ambulatory. the closest thing we have is the knowledge that he brought his own wheelchairs with him to krakoa which is a solid point in that theory's direction at least.

(interjection from a subsequent thread:

keep thinking abt the fact that charles brought his chairs with him to krakoa…in this place allegedly free of death or sickness he still prepares for his needs to change, as if its an immutable part of him that can resist miracle drugs + literal resurrection.

its so quintessentially x-men that we only get that interesting insight in the backdrop of an ableist story beat where a character is punished and humiliated by…. being dis-abled.

i'm still floored by how incompetent and tactless that whole thing was but that was the same book that gave us hits like kitty's "viking funeral", emma flashing men to distract them instead of using her, you know, telepathy, emma worrying about eating carbs, + other such bullshit. but i'm still surprised it went so under-discussed in x-comics fandom)

via xuân's resurrection, we know that its possible to request your physical disability be preserved when you're resurrected. so this must have been an active choice of his.

i don't think it's odd at all that charles would choose to walk considering his past feelings about it i just wish the text contended with that like at all 😭 but getting into charles' feelings abt his disability is a long ass post for another day.

(i accessed this paper on proquest here via my alma mater. if you would like to read it yourself but are not connected to an institution or library that has access, dm me and i'll send you the pdf!)

addendum: examples of charles’ disability as neurological illness and/or chronic illness

[orange-orchard-system]

You all probably know by now that I like to study psychology and see where clinical understandings of mental health related topics are in my free time. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of suggested treatments (even non-professionnel ones) for mental disorders tend to exist in a bubble, of sorts, where intersectionality with other disorders is not taken into account, and it's assumed a patient only has a single problem or disorder that is currently being treated. For instance, a lot of suggestions for dealing with executive functioning problems (especially if you have ADHD) is to make your jobs "fun" in some way – but never do I see follow-up on what to do if this technique is difficult or not effective, such as if you have a disorder associated with not getting much pleasure even from things typically considered fun (ex. depression, some personality disorders, and more). This is a huge oversight in properly treating patients, especially considering the frequent co-morbidity of disorders. I hope psychology and psychiatry will move towards correcting this soon. In the meantime, individual communities [of specific disorders, problems, or symptoms] may have their own suggestions of what worked for them and their own co-morbidities, if you are struggling with a treatment that is not properly tailored to you.

[nevadas-night-time-novelist]

okay but why's doc under Krinkles' name and not Madness Project Nexus like all the other plushies are

[monosaccharide]

chapter 2.8 and 8.2 of ibdp biology

[xyfanficarchive]

i just WANTED to write some porn but NOW its a week on and we're at 4.5k of exposition and still yet more to go before the main event FUCK

[spectralensemble]

Oh yay trauma memories /s