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Wrap You In Dreams Of Me

Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Post-Movie: X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Erik is a broken old man. With his powers taken from him and Charles dead he trudges through his meaningless days blindly. He is a failure in every way possible and he knows it with every breath he takes. The only thing he has left is a pathetic but brilliantly vivid fantasy of Charles that's come to him every single night since Charles died. He knows he doesn't deserve the paradise the dream grants him, but Erik is powerless not to cling to it. It's so very real and what it does it matter what he does to stay in those dreams as long as possible?

So this is an attempt to make the ending of Last Stand make sense with the ending of The Wolverine. I know we got a weird little blip at the end of Last Stand but seriously? I need more explanation. So this bridges the two movies while also being compliant with First Class and the set up of Days of Future Past. Because I'm a crazy person and feel the need to try and unravel the insanity that is the X-Men movieverse. There will be some small fudges to the canon to make things line up (and also because I just don't want to watch Last Stand again lol) but I'm keeping it as minimal as possible.

Warnings for drug use and suicidal thoughts. It ends happy though and there's lots of comfort to be had. Or at least it's sorta a happy ending, cus I mean they die in that temple in DoFP lol But they fix their past and that doesn't actually happen so... win?

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I miss this Charles a lot. It feels like the writers just forgot who he is.

Sure, Professor Xavier can be a jerk – but every once in a while, we remember why he runs the school. 

Uncanny X-Men #292

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Go to their page and click the share button as per above.

And yes, the claim that Hank, of all fucking people, was "always bad" was so insane I just noped out of the whole talk. What do you even say to that? It's as batshit as claiming the earth is flat.

Seeing some of these seemingly X-Men fans on TikTok makes me want to say things that a self-respected, dignified lady should never say.

They also consider themselves very smart.

"Oh let me tell you about this retconed thrown out one time thing this charcter did 40 years ago. You are too naive and stupid to judge for yourself and you don't have eyes to go and have never read comics for yourself. I can't undrestand this character motives and he was mean to my favorites so you should hate him. And if you don't, I'm gonna bully you."

#$¥&@#}{€£#٪^&

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Yup. Seems there's a whole industry of Charles haters on tiktok. Meanwhile, their faves can do no wrong. Some of them started out pretty funny but now I'm just starting to block people.

Had one dude reply to my comment about what they did to Hank (turning him into a legit psycho) by telling me " He was always terrible, really." Yeah okay, kiddo. Sure thing.

Seeing some of these seemingly X-Men fans on TikTok makes me want to say things that a self-respected, dignified lady should never say.

They also consider themselves very smart.

"Oh let me tell you about this retconed thrown out one time thing this charcter did 40 years ago. You are too naive and stupid to judge for yourself and you don't have eyes to go and have never read comics for yourself. I can't undrestand this character motives and he was mean to my favorites so you should hate him. And if you don't, I'm gonna bully you."

#$¥&@#}{€£#٪^&

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I knew poinsettias "faked" having big flowers by just turning some leaves red but I didn't know the real tiny flowers in the middle looked like such idiots

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I really wish we'd have gotten a discussion with them about this. Cus they never do and I don't think Erik ever actually understood what he'd done to Charles. He seemed to think Charles was upset about him killing Shaw, not that he nearly lobotomized Charles!

I know this is Charles so of course he can't actually discuss his powers, his feelings, or anything else that is about himself, cus that's private! No, let's focus on everyone else. I'm fine. Everything is fine. But it needed to happen somehow.

Charles could barely stand when he staggered out to the beach after this.

X-Men: First Class - Killing Shaw Charles

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I think he'd spoil people unintentionally and likely in ways even they didn't realise. Like, in XMFC he decides Erik needs a watch cus he never has one cus his magnetism ruins the mechanisms.

So Charles does the absolutely normal thing: he calls his personal shopper at a scarily exclusive shop in NYC that he's been going to since he was a child. He tells the nice lady (whom he knows by first name) he needs a gift for a man, a watch that can't be effected by strong magnetic fields. Something fine for casual wear. "He likes black and silver."

And she, knowing Xavier’s wealth and family thinks nothing of the request. Charles holds a plethora of degrees and his father was a nuclear physicist. This must be for a work colleague. And she knows the cost is no matter, so she makes this happen and later hand delivers the watch to the mansion.

Erik wears the watch for years and years just because its treasured gift from his friend, till someone recognises the obscure maker and tells him it's worth more than a mil.

I feel like this fandom often forget how insanely WEALTHY this man:

Actually is. He's kinda rich, right? Wrong.

This cherry pie:

Is a MULTI-BILLIONAIRE. This would let him comfortably sit at Forbes 985th, ladies and gentlemen, that's the same net worth as Michael Jordan.

I know that he doesn't like to show off his money because his mother only cared about it and neglected him, and I know he's the one founding all the high tech gadgets for the X-Men + to the mansion and the planes.

However.

WHERE ARE ALL THE FICS ABOUT HIM SPOILING ROTTEN HIS BOYFRIEND?! not like Erik would accept it straight away, but I need them to talk about and Charles making sure Erik knows he's worthy it and that it's okay to accept love and gifts.

WHERE ARE THE FICS ABOUT HIM NOT HAVING A CLUE THAT MOST PEOPLE CONSIDER NORMAL ABOUT MONEY?! I'm sorry, as neglected you may be, there's no way you inherit 3,5 BILLIONS and has a realistic view on how most people handle money, let alone poor people. This man is the 1%, he's the rich that the liberals want to eat (erik, not like that-). He's self aware and he tries to police himself, but I need to see the reality checks every now and then. Besides, a lot of his students came from really shitty places and the class difference would be screaming sometimes.

ACTUALLY, NOT JUST ERIK, I NEED TO SEE HIM GIVING PEOPLE STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE GIFTS IN GENERAL. Sometimes just because he can and there's no reason why not, sometimes he doesn't realize it's that expensive, and then I digress to my previous point.

WHERE ARE THE SUGAR DADDY FANFICTIONS?!

There's also this website I found that claims he has 125 BILLION DOLLARS but I highly doubt that:

Ladies and gentlemen, that website was ranking characters from DC and Marvel, and they put him above Tony Stark (80 billion) and Bruce Wayne (100 billion). I have no idea where they took that information from, but that would make our adorable lab rat the 10TH MOST WEALTHY MAN on the planet as of 2024.

Omg, the subtitle got Erik's name wrong-

This was a Charles' bank account appreciation post, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

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I think part of the problem with Charles (both from fans and writers) is too many people see him IRL as a "old white guy" because in our reality his minority isn't real. But it IS real in that world.

Intersectionality grants him SOME privilege in the way that a white gay guy has more privilege than a black gay guy. But in the end, they're both gay, they're both a minority. Being a white gay guy won't protect you from being drug behind a pickup till unalived. Charles can be white, male, and wealthy all day long but in the end he's still a mutant. And in this world, there is no lower-ranked minority. While human racism still exists (and should not be forgotten) in the Marvel world, it's mutants that are regularly put up for full scale eradication by world governments.

The privilege he gets from his whiteness, maleness, and wealth will not protect him from the collars, the sentinels, the camps. Ask a wealthy black man and they can tell you they're always a second away from being called the n-word. A translady that passes oh-so well and wears the red hat will find out quickly how not accepted she really is. You can't be enough like the majority group to stop being the minority. Charles can even look human but those he interacts with always have the m-word available if they decide they don't like him.

One of the many stupid decisions in Dark Phoenix was pretending that Charles didn't know he wasn't actually accepted. That nonsense had to have been written by a non-minority writer. I don't believe someone who lived as a minority could think that was possible. We know. We always know because forgetting can get us killed. And Charles is even a telepath!

They actually bring this concept of incomplete privilege into '97 (created by a minority writer, I might add) when the mutants are outraged over him being attacked. "He's rich and he even looks like them, and it's not enough!" All their lives they've hoped (like a lot of irl minorities) that if they were human-enough, white-enough, straight-enough, cis-enough, etc looking/acting they would be accepted. But they won't be. Cus that's not how prejudice works.

It's inherently wrong to think of movie!him as a rich white guy who's achievements mean little. He's a minority person. He's a disabled mutant who, in the face of potentially deadly oppression, lived openly as a mutant and built a school for his people so they would have safety and opportunities that would otherwise not be available to them.

i wonder what the process was when Charles left the school in dark phoenix

i don’t think anyone was sad that he left ☹️

they immediately got rid of his name and replaced it with Jean’s

like imagine leaving the one place you’ve built your entire life on and then just being replaced like it was nothing

i wonder how long it took for Erik to come find him afterwards

did they not keep any kind of memorial or tribute to Charles??? HE STARTED THE DAMN THING BE GRATEFUL

like they could at least have a picture of him that says “founder of the jean grey school, formerly Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters” OR SOMETHING 😭😭

like i get he’s an old white man and that we have plenty of those guys doing stuff but cmon show like a bit of respect for him at least 😿

writers of dark phoenix i will find you for butchering nearly everyone in this movie

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Yes! This. Him trusting Charles to know of his powers was pretty huge and people don't seem to see it cus it got erased in the movies. At the time of his panel, the last time he showed his powers his daughter died cus a mob of his former friends and neighbors held him down while his house burned, and then his wife, whom he loved and protected throughout a CONCENTRATION CAMP left him! She was so frightened of him she fled and disappeared and he never found her again. To reveal his powers to Charles would have been terrifying.

We need to talk more about how when Erik and Charles became friends, Erik fully believed that Charles was human. And he adored him anyway. Trusted him even, to know about his powers when tensions arose. Erik loved Charles even when he was ‘human.’

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personal happiness or what the fuck ever

bonus:

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I didn’t realize you were the person who did the fanfiction tag drinks.

ahah yeah that's meeee!!

If you guys are interested they are all available as stickers on my RB!!

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Charles always had his bad traits but it really feels like the writers in recent years have dialed them up to 11 and made him just extremely unlikable.

As a fan from the prehistoric days, I have no interest in the current runs at all. When you break characters so badly you need to get versions from the past to replace the current versions... something has gone wrong. When I tell someone Charles is apparently in prison atm and the response is "oh good, I was hoping they'd lock him up," something has gone seriously wrong.

The way I recoiled when I heard Charles, mother fucking Charles, was making people earn the right to come back from the dead. This man fought to try and rehab Sabertooth and now people have to earn the right to live?! This current Charles is not the character I loved and cherished through my childhood.

This is so fucked it's like we stumbled into Ultimates... *shudders at the memory*

I'm hoping the writers are busting things so badly so they get to do a full rebuild on him like Magneto just got but... with the current comic trend of making heroes into horrible people I don't have a lot of hope.

I've considered trying the new Ultimate run. Even though it worked wonderfully for me the last time.

reading some more comics

i genuinely feel like no one actually likes Charles they kind of just tolerate him 😭

i think the only one who actually likes him is his husband and even then that kind of wavers 😭😭😭

NO ONE WANTS TO LISTEN TO HIS OPINION ❌❌❌

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It's always bad but abilism in a cherik fic is extra awful. Like what are you even doing in this ship?You have thousands of able-bodied ships to pick from. At the very least, be honest and tag it.

I don't need to stumble on your fic loaded with bs like grabbing the handles of a chair users chair, jokes about ridiculous accessibility aids, followed by a "Charles can walk again" plot.

Seriously. The disrespect.

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i wonder what it's like to be emotionally stable. anyways [thinks about fictional characters to survive] i am fine

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I really hate how they always leave out Charles' childhood trauma but always have Erik's front and center. So when Erik does shit people are like "Well... I mean... I get it." Meanwhile with Charles there's zero sympathy.

Oh, I'm SORRY! Does the dude who spent his childhood being abused while trying to save his mom from abuse (and FAILING TO DO SO) have control issues?! Gee! How shocking!

They even had Stewart playing him and just dropped the fucking ball! Of all people to play Charles! It was right there!

The gasp I gusped when XMFC Erik said, looking at the mansion "However did you survive such hardship?" Excuse me?! SIR!

Charles and Erik are two sides of the same coin. Both want mutants to be accepted in society and not feared. However, I fully believe their ideals would've been swapped had things in their childhoods been different. Like in the movies Erik's mom seems to encourage Erik to use his mutation (though this is in a very stressful and scary situation). However had shit not happened in Germany in the 30s and things were peaceful I fully believe that Erik's parents and uncle would've been supportive in him using his mutation, though advising him not to use it to win any tournaments or on others. Though his uncle would only tell him to use it on others if necessary like if Erik needs to save someone.

Charles, however, his upbringing imo gets neglected a lot in many xmen media that the general populous consumes. I know his father experimented on him since the womb and when Charles was a child. I fully believe had Brian kept living he would've kept the experiments going, Sharon unaware. All acting like a normal happy family on the outside. Though one day I do believe Charles would be pushed and he'd accidentally kill his dad just bc he wants to stop the experiments, Sharon would become neglectful though she is unsure if Brian's death was due to Charles somehow (i picture Charles like no more than 12 when this happens) or if Brian locked himself in his lab one too many nights and exhaustion was the cause for his death; either way Sharon still marries Kurt but Kurt knows about Brian's experiments and continues them on Charles and Kurt threatens Sharon and Raven so Charles keeps his mouth shut but he has to wonder how and why humans are like this. The scientific need to keep doing experiments especially on their own kids. Charles grows to resent humans and believe that he and Raven are superior compared to humans.

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I'm sure others have pointed this out, but this frame of him and the helmets is done as the 5 of cups from tarot cards. It indicates that you are refusing to move forward and instead are dwelling on your mistakes and loss. It speaks to self-pity and regret.

The figure looks at the spilled three cups/helmets while the two behind him are fine. This says he's not allowing himself to see the whole picture. While yes, three are lost, you still have two. You still have good things.

It tells the receiver to reflect on their past, take accountability for their actions, process and heal, and then move on. All is not lost, you still have happiness waiting if you can grow.

This whole issue is the 5 cups as a comic book. They hit every point.

On a side note, for the shippers, the cups suit can often speak to relationships.

The original tarot card for reference