Random fandom peeve

[yakalskovich]

What really bothers me about some XM:FC 'fix-it' fanfics is, oddly enough, when they try to twist and turn as to make Charles Xavier not paraplegic after all, post-movie. That doesn't just defeat the point of the movie (which is about telling how things came to pass so they're the way they are when the first X-Men movie starts) but also ableist as hell and negating the complex intricacies of that character: being in a wheelchair is as much part of the character "Professor X" as his telepathy is. Those people writing fix-its for that essentially make Charles less than he is, not more.

I've even used him as an example in a for-pay article about accessiblity, along the lines of 'Anything is possible for people in wheelchairs if they're Professor X and can throw money and/or mutant genius inventors at the barriers of bad/inconsiderate design until it goes away; real accessibility is about taking barriers like that away for everybody in that situation'. One of the points of the X-Men (which Ian McKellen already went on about on his website back in the nineties when he was in X1) is that they're all outsiders, alienated from society, and a great example to anybody who feels alienated from society as well (he was thinking of young gays, of course): use that which sets you apart as a superpower, rather than something to be ashamed of!

So any fic that goes out of its way to 'fix' Charles that way? Gets kicked right off my Kindle app for not getting it.-

Comments

[loki_of_sassgaard]

A friend of mine found one recently where Erik and Charles were in this AU setting. Charles was homeless (and the author insisted on constantly using the word "hobo," which... does anyone use that word anymore?), and Erik was some wealthy business type that took him in, and then sort of treated Charles like a pet, because being homeless, he's clearly a lesser being.

Ew.

[yakalskovich]

Eurgh. So much eurgh!

Charles/Erik, for some reason, is the fandom pairing with ALL THE AUs, and some of them are really good, very oddly and unexpectedly so. In some AUs, the issue of Charles being in a wheelchair doesn't even arise, which is fine; in some, it's the central thing, and that works as well if it's a good writer who wrote the fic.

But that AU you mention sounds so many kinds of wrong; like the sort of AU where the character are basically OCs with the names and imaginary faces of the originals tacked on.