(Untitled)

[sour_idealist]

Title: War Without End
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Characters/Pairings: Raven, Charles, [Erik, Angel, Emma, Brotherhood]
Rating/Warnings: PG, allusions to assault, discussions of extreme poverty
Written for: N/A
Wordcount: ~600
A/N: This is, essentially, a story about privilege. As some of it is about the kinds I have (not quite to the degree portrayed,

Comments

[littledust]

Ouch. Love this.

[sour_idealist]

Thank you!

[fae_boleyn]

Oh. Oh. Raven. And it's true, Charles... doesn't get it, does he?

[sour_idealist]

Yeah, this is the thing about rags to riches plotlines, especially when they're just a tiny bit of backstory. And Charles just... has no conception of his own privilege, but I'd bet Raven really, really does - his and hers - because a lot of hers was a late-stage acquisition. So.

[moonfoot_gamgee]

Oh man. This is wonderful.

[sour_idealist]

Thanks!

[mrs_laugh_track]

Oh wow. This is so perfect.

[sour_idealist]

Thank you! May I ask what brought you here? (You're entirely welcome; I'm just insufferably curious.)

[mrs_laugh_track]

Someone linked it on tumblr! And I was like whoa hey, a story that actually deals with Charles's problematic stuff in relation to how he treats Raven YES PLEASE.

[sour_idealist]

On tracked tags? Because evidently I linked to it there... which I don't actually have any memory of doing. I should not be allowed on the Internet after a certain hour.

And if that's the kind of thing you're looking for, you might want to go read ; it's a similar concept but much more in-depth and expanded, covering a lot of different points over the years.

[anonymous]

This makes me wince, because for the last few days- ever since I watched First Class- I've been wondering about privilege, and, stuff, wondering whose fault it was- Raven or Charles- and it seemed hard to pin one down or the other- and sometimes it seemed easy to pin down both at once- (I mean, logically it's Charles, but I sort of get him, too) and mostly wondering about Erik and Charles, if it was okay for Charles to think that it was okay, all going around in circles in my head. This just started the debate again in my head.

Striking. Thanks for writing. :)

[sour_idealist]

I'm curious as to what 'it' you mean, to be the fault of Raven or Charles or for Charles to think was okay. Launching the missiles? Raven leaving with Erik? The latter, I think, isn't the kind of thing for which you can assign blame, but it's a tricky question - on the one hand, Raven is responsible for her own decisions, but on the other hand, she wouldn't have gone if Charles weren't so utterly horrid at understanding what other people are going for. (An idea I bandied about at someone else was that his telepathy actually prevented him from developing a sophisticated sense of empathy - he could always get people on a superficial level, reading their minds, and so he never really had to try to understand anyone as a whole.

And I'm glad this got you thinking! Thank you.