I really should sleep, but all my dreams have dissolved so there's no point
There's a type of post-movie Charles/Erik fic that can be succintly summed as: "Are you there Charles? It's me, Erik." (this is a Judy Plume reference, but I've actually never read the book). Or perhaps, "Dear Daddy Long-legs" a book which I did read at age 11 and by which I was horribly disturbed. I do realise these two examples are female bildungsromans, but Erik's development in XMFC is more akin to them than any traditional boy's tale because his constant grand adventuring clearly hasn't led him to anything. His character development happens inward and even the declarations Charles gave him are reassurances more expected of romantic rescue that abandons common expectations. Yes, there's something awfully like Victorian philanthropy in the presentation of Xavier's character, but it's the sort of philanthropy that ended up with Harlequin possibilities. We got something better though: bookends of the same soul.
Furthermore, X-Men has always been the perfect teenage-identity/alienation/self-realization metaphor before I ever learned of the alternative reading...And in XMFC, Erik's emotionally adolescent while Charles is only beginning to grow up. I don't know about grad-students in England, but as PhDComics attests, here it is taken for granted that the grad-life infantilizes a person to various degrees, especially in the sciences.
Sometimes I think people get to an age where everything simply becomes endless nostalgia, that there's nothing refreshing under the sun. I think to myself I'll never like anything new ever again, but then I'll write lolitics fics or read The Autobiography of Magneto X by Erik Lensherr or find myself not having much to say about Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and I'm glad that my past self never predicted my present self otherwise she would've died of shame and despair. And so, that we are so different seem a hopeful sign.
And yes, I'm still working on the XMFC fic.
Furthermore, X-Men has always been the perfect teenage-identity/alienation/self-realization metaphor before I ever learned of the alternative reading...And in XMFC, Erik's emotionally adolescent while Charles is only beginning to grow up. I don't know about grad-students in England, but as PhDComics attests, here it is taken for granted that the grad-life infantilizes a person to various degrees, especially in the sciences.
Sometimes I think people get to an age where everything simply becomes endless nostalgia, that there's nothing refreshing under the sun. I think to myself I'll never like anything new ever again, but then I'll write lolitics fics or read The Autobiography of Magneto X by Erik Lensherr or find myself not having much to say about Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and I'm glad that my past self never predicted my present self otherwise she would've died of shame and despair. And so, that we are so different seem a hopeful sign.
And yes, I'm still working on the XMFC fic.