Charles Xavier (au) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theboysoldier) wrote2012-01-10 11:22 pm
theboysoldier) wrote2012-01-10 11:22 pm
(no subject)
NOTE: Hi, Sing mods! What's up. Okay, I've had a busy month, but I've managed to accomplish the goals I've set for myself, so I feel I'm ready to app again.
This app is much the same as the prior one I used. However, I'd like to emphasize a couple of key points:
1) Charles will be coming in from a couple of months later in his canon, just after he and young!Erik kill Sebastian Shaw. This represents a step on the way towards darkness, as far as his personality progression goes. Charles will come in suffering from a kind of psychological shock from the brutality of it and deeply conflicted as to whether or not what he did was the right thing to do. He is also a bit more confident and slightly happier because he's had a close friend for two months now. This combines to create emotions that can't quite manage to coexist in his head. He'll be too easily pushed one way or another, and it might set of a series of bad emotional reactions. If you would like elaboration on this, I'd be happy to give it.
2) In light of what happened last time, re: other Marvel characters in Charles' universe, I'd like to pose a suggestion. I'm aware that the muns agreed to keep the XFC and MCU canons separate, as they are in the movie universes. However: the comics universes are combined, and I believe that, in-character, there's no reason for any characters to assume that Charles came from a variant of the XFC universe rather than a variant of the comics universe. In other words, there's no reason for them to assume that he's an XFC AU rather than a Marvel AU.
Essentially: I know that the Captain America boat has sailed, because in-game canon has established it as not being part of Charles' world, but I would like to keep the other Marvel characters that are later a part of his canon. For example, Ororo features, as does Scott Summers, Sabretooth, Wolverine and more, despite not being in the XFC universe themselves.
This won't become relevant, for the most part, because Charles hasn't met any of them yet. But if there's a future-seeing event, or an age-up event, or anything like that, it might become relevant. So this is my pitch to keep Charles' future-history intact as part of the AU.
If it helps, this can be considered a Marvel AU with some XFC elements rather than an XFC AU.
Um, so. Let me know your thoughts.
The rest of the app is identical to the revised version you allowed in previously.
Player Information
Your Nickname: Mara
OOC Journal:cerebel
Under 18? Nope. 22.
Email/IM: cerebel.r@gmail.com / fishicopter
Characters Played at Singularity: None!
Character Information
Name: Charles Xavier
Name of Canon: X-Men: First Class
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: AU
Reference: http://cerebel-fics.livejournal.com/93560.html < the fic that began this AU.
Canon Point: 1941.
Setting: England, World War II. Which is to say: a country single-mindedly devoted to the war effort, in which rations and shortages are commonplace, in which one's duty to Do Their Part for the war effort is more important than anything else. A sizable percentage of young men have been drafted and are off in the army, and a sizable percentage of young women have taken their place in the work force.
Prevailing attitudes range from the young, who are fiery and ready to get at Gerry, to the veterans of the last World War who want nothing to do with the violence of this one. Conscientious objectors try to get out of the draft, but they rarely make it unless someone rich and influential is on their side. And if they do make it, they risk hatred and public ridicule.
This British society values calm and dignity. Displays of affection are inappropriate, as are loud outbursts. Children are to be seen and not heard. Sex is understated, never mentioned in polite company, whispered about in dark corners. Deviance, in sexuality, culture, ethnicity or belief, is rarely tolerated.
Country life continues much as it always has, with little inconveniences and regulations specific to wartime. Every neighborhood has a Watch; every Watch makes careful notes of anyone taking unseemly or suspicious action. Also anyone who doesn't seal their blackout curtains completely during the night. Secrecy is the word of the day; as the American slogan states: 'Loose lips sink ships'. Everything from factories to shipments to troop movements is shrouded in misinformation and bureaucratic disorganization, sometimes indistinguishable from one another.
At this time, England is a besieged nation. America has made its neutrality clear; France is conquered, Russia distant. The brunt of the German Air Force's might falls directly on this nation. Bombs have been falling for so long that it's difficult to remember a time when they didn't.
In this: the boy, Charles Xavier, isolated from the conflict and the action by his mother's well-monied status. He rattles around in a big, nearly-empty house and only experiences England as a spectator, not a participant. In 1941, he changes roles and is thrust into the middle of the government's half-controlled chaos of the military complex.
This world also contains mutants. People with extraordinary powers due to genetic mutation, such as Charles, or Erik Lensherr, or Raven Darkholme. Charles has, of yet, not met any of these people yet. However, they're there. And there are a lot of them. Charles being publicly known as a telepath working for England will be the start of an avalanche of mutant discovery, paranoia and regulation beginning in the mid to late 1940s. But none of this has happened yet.
The most important parts of this setting for Charles are 1) the state of the war (and England's attitude towards it), and 2) the gap between what people think and what they do, which, in a culture as restrained as 1930s-40s England, is quite large indeed.
Personality:
NOTE: As far as timeline goes, I've taken XFC canon and shifted it back about five or six years. Charles is born in 1928 and his family does not go to America. Gaps in established XFC canon are filled in with slightly-modified comics history for Charles Xavier.
The most important single factor to note about Charles' development is that he is a telepath. In this universe, he has been a telepath for a very long time -- as long as he can remember. It didn't come upon him suddenly, and it didn't shatter his world. It has always been a part of him, and it is absolutely integral to his personality and outlook.
Charles is raw to the world around him. He is young, and he hasn't learned how to shield himself very well. As a result, he gets a constant din of telepathic input. The greater the population within a few miles of him, the greater the din he must endure. He feels others' emotions, sees their thoughts, understands them perhaps better than they do themselves. The effect that this has on a young, impressionable boy in a held-back, repressed society is devastating. Charles has grown up seeing sex, violence, revenge, pettiness, anger, jealousy written on the thoughts of everyone around him. But, by the same token: love, kindness, sympathy. He's always seen that there's more to the world than what people think, and the amount that he's seen makes him older than his years in experience. He'd like to think it's made him wise. He'd be wrong about this.
Charles is abandoned. Abused. He doesn't like to think of it this way -- in fact, he never has thought of it this way. He adored his mother and father beyond belief when he was small -- he felt their love for him and echoed it back wholeheartedly; after his father died, though, his mother grew distant. Regardless, Charles' adoration and his need for love never waned. She took a new suitor, Kurt Marko, with a son named Cain. Kurt was physically abusive to Charles. However, in England, in this time, physical discipline was common and accepted. Charles didn't have the context to recognize this as 'abuse'; all he knew was that Kurt was after his mother for her money, and that Kurt made him feel wrong. Hurt. Angry. Charles started to justify it to himself: if he could only drive Kurt away, then maybe his mother would love him again. Maybe he would have his voracious need for affection sated.
And so for the first time, little Charles acted against the wisdom he felt he had and struck out in a jealous rage. He twisted Kurt's mind and warped him and drove him away in a brutal telepathic attack that left him weak and sick for days.
Charles' mother had always known her son was strange. Fragile, smart, not normal. She couldn't have known for sure what he'd done, but she suspected strongly, and now she felt more alone than ever. Her son was an alien to her, her husband was gone, and her newer companion was gone. She turned to liquor, and Charles resorted to increasingly desperate attempts to get her attention. All of this failed.
By the time soldiers came to verify Charles' telepathic abilities, he was so disconnected from his home life that he barely gave a second thought to leaving. This isolated boy, this unloved and beaten down kid, saw an opportunity to find a place where he was respected. (Because, of course, he could be dignified. He could be an adult. And adults crave respect, not love.)
And so Charles is a series of contradictions. He's just a child, with the tempestuous emotions of a child, with the pride and the idealism and the desperate wish for a home. But he's also incredibly empathetic, brave, strong beyond even he knows. With England's soldiers, he takes on situations that break men four times his age and comes through them raw but intact. He is the formative stage of the Professor X that we all know, but diverted in a direction of violence and struggle before he hits puberty.
Moreover, his loyalty is unshakeable to those who have shown him affection. He believes in his country and his duty, and that England is worth defending, worth fighting for. He justifies deeply terrible things to himself by saying that it's for the greater good -- but it doesn't change the fact that this is a twelve-year-old boy who learned how to rip apart the minds of German spies to find their secrets, and who once froze a few squads full of enemy soldiers long enough for them to be surrounded and wiped out. These actions make him feel terrible, conflicted, angry -- but the thought of not doing them, of letting Allied soldiers take the fall instead, makes him feel worse. It's his idealism that drives him towards a very dark path.
Charles is a god among men, and he knows it. He has the power to crush the minds around him. But he's also deeply human, with his heart on his sleeve and his own particular blinders. He's not the sheltered version of Charles Xavier that we know in XFC canon; he's darker, and he's got the potential to become something particularly cold and terrible in his future.
Outwardly: a sweet, enthusiastic, brave young boy, particularly determined and very strong. Inwardly: fragile, clinging to every little scrap of affection or love that he can find, but toughening. Learning to be the cold-blooded killer that he has to be for this war. Overall: deeply wise and deeply ignorant at once. He knows what living life feels like, but not what it is like.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions: Charles is an omega-level telepath who, in canon, has powers that extend hundreds of miles, can erase personalities completely, maintain illusions that affect thousands of people, allow him to astrally project, and more. This, clearly, is ridiculous. Especially as far as RP goes. However, I'm not playing Professor X -- I'm just playing him as a kid. Young!Charles has not 1) come into his full powers or 2) figured out how to completely control them. As such, I propose that he come into game not very limited from his canon powers.
His effective telepathic range is ten to fifteen miles, depending on how well-rested he is and how determined. (In-game, this would be 'an effective range of however much the other mun has given me permission for.)
He can read minds, change memories, effect illusions and more, but his control is hardly perfect. His mind drifts, his emotions bleed over, and he can be easily derailed.
He does constantly touch the minds around him at a low level. This is because his mental shields are total shit. However. He does also constantly attempt to hold shields up and wall his mind off. What this means is that if a mundane is cool with him being his usual mental sieve, he'll be reading their surface thoughts. If they're not, he'll be blocking them out. I am flexible as far as interaction-to-interaction use of powers goes.
It's also worthwhile to note that while telepathy is both a power and a strength, it's also a weakness. Charles is very susceptible to the emotions of people around him. Because of the way he's so heavily depended on his telepathy over the last year, he relies on it as a crutch in communication. He stumbles over his words if he has to speak out loud. He tries to find shortcuts, and grows frustrated at misunderstandings. He tends to panic if telepathic connections are cut off.
Charles is also tiny. Physically. He can't hold his own in a fight (though a certain army sergeant did teach him how to headbutt) and telepathy is his main defense.
And, of course, Charles' biggest weakness, as always, is the fact that he's got piles of emotional issues.
Inventory: A set of child-sized, rank-stripped-away fatigues with a little picture of his mom and dad creased and wrinkled tucked away in a pocket.
Appearance: Short, mussed brown hair, big eyes. PB is Laurence Belcher, who played young!Charles in XFC.
Age: 13
OC/AU Justification
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across? In the obvious sense, Charles' life took a sharp left turn down Violence Street to Abuse-of-telepathic-power-ville. He's beaten and bruised, and instead of finding Raven and learning that he isn't alone, he exists in a shaky medium of soldiers and violence and necessary evil.
He is the Charles Xavier we know, but gone down a different path. I mean, let's be serious: the things that Charles can do are scary. XFC may treat his powers lightheartedly, for the most part, but knowing that the man next to you can split your brain along its seams is frightening. Knowing that he can do it to thousands of people, or to anyone within a few hundred miles, is terrifying. This is exploring the hinge point of Charles' life: he's not evil, not yet, but he's certainly taken a darker path than the Charles we know in canon. What happens in-game will be very influential on which way he ends up going.
There are quite a few differences in the world of the AU, from canon Marvel universes.
It starts with World War II.
Erik Lensherr is forced into helping the Nazis; Charles Xavier is drafted into helping the British. This accelerates the pattern of the war in a way that's subtle to the people participating but blatantly obvious historically. Charles enhanced the Allies' information-gathering techniques; he helped along events that were already going to happen and made them happen faster.
The course of the war really accelerated, though, when Erik was rescued by Charles and taken into the Allies' war effort.Their first mission was going after 'Klaus Schmidt'/Sebastian Shaw, Erik's handler, of sorts.
You have to understand -- Charles wasn't a natural-born killer. But riding the high of Erik's emotions, his joy at finally finding someone like him, the knowledge that he wasn't alone -- and he went into this mission deeply connected to Erik, telepathically, and he caught some of Erik's blood lust in the process. Even so, when Erik drove that coin through Shaw's skull, 13-year-old Charles puked his guts all over the grass outside the facility and was sick for days.
The entire facility was torn apart by the Allied soldiers, who knew the location and the intentions of all enemy soldiers. The Allies quickly figured out they had a seriously absurd amount of power on their hands, and they set Erik and Charles loose on the front.
This was the first true demonstration of mutant power, and it was devastating. England's propaganda machine went to work on it, and before long, the stories of Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr were worldwide, blown all out of proportion. England rushed into the re-invasion of Europe, while the Americans declared war on Japan.
The psychological effect of mutation was probably as much or more of a factor in the Allied victory, which took place in late 1943 in Europe and in 1944 in Japan. Between 1944 and 1946, the shockwave of mutant realization echoed throughout the world. Given the war that the world had just suffered through, there weren't many countries eager to allow permissive freedoms to a heretofore unknown faction of deeply powerful people.
Governments now have two goals: 1, to protect themselves against mutants. And 2, to get more mutants than anyone else does. There's a delay of a year or two in which mutants are relatively free, coming out publicly all over the place. And then the legislation hits. Mutants are researched, identified, rounded up, recruited and, in some cases, hunted and killed.
In 1946, the Zionist movement and mutant separatist movement find allies in one another (partially due to the heroic figure of Erik Lensherr, Jewish and mutant both) and unite to form Israel, a nation for the repressed. Erik wants to leave to help with Israel. Charles wants to stay with Erik. He reluctantly breaks with England to go unite with his new brethren.
Even in our world, the Zionist movement was a provocation to the nations surrounding Israel. In this one, it was even worse. Not only was there a nation full of peoples that the surrounding nations viewed as intruders, but it was full of mutants. This represented a huge change in the balance of power. A nation of mutants was a threat to everyone, and in the arena of a growing cold war, this was deeply terrifying.
A war in the Middle East began in 1946 and raged for four years -- much longer than in any other universe. Why? Because in this one, Israel didn't have the ally of the United States. Both the US and the Soviet Union were supplying arms and weaponry to the Middle Eastern nations arrayed against Israel. It took four extremely bloody years to stop the war, and by that point, mutant public image couldn't get worse. There were massacres, one-sided battles, brutal slaughters -- including one terrible telepathic accident in which Charles Xavier, while experimenting with a new invention nicknamed Cerebro, pushed too hard mentally and killed thousands of Lebanese and Israelis alike.
Charles couldn't take the pressures of running this nation anymore, and his and Erik's friendship was starting to fray. Erik was bent on Israeli domination; Charles wanted peace, but every day that end goal slipped further away.
At the age of 22, Charles returns to England to try and repair the reputations of mutants worldwide. He also gets his education -- for free, thanks to his rather damaged status as a former war hero.
Eventually, after an assassination attempt, Charles broke with Israel completely and went underground, forming the X-Men with Raven Darkholme, a young mutant who saved his life in the Israeli desert. He recruited the mutants who found themselves aimless and repressed in the new world, and started working for the cause of peace.
This timeline covers up through 1961, when Charles is at the age of 33.
So you ask about how "canon" changed with the events of this AU. In this case, canon is something of a mirror image.
Charles, as a boy, met Erik instead of Raven. He was dosed with violence early in his life, and had to struggle to learn the value of peace and tolerance. In canon, he meets Raven, and stays close with her until he meets Erik. (In this case, mutations also play into the course of events: Raven's mutation is all about secrecy and hiding, and in XFC canon, Charles hides her. Erik's mutation is about power, and in the AU, Charles grew up knowing how terrible power could be.)
Later, the course of Charles' life was changed by meeting Raven, not meeting Erik. In Raven, he found the idea of secrecy, as opposed to power. He learned subtlety, and went from there to found the X-Men. Raven was the prompting force in his life, and the split from Erik was a deeper and more painful one than in canon.
Essentially: this AU explores what it would have been if Charles had a much more difficult road to becoming who he was, and if canon had been mirrored around Erik and Raven. If XFC is about having Charles' idealism broken, and about how the world was never as lovely as Charles dreamed it to be, then this AU's parallel events are about Charles learning idealism, and learning to make his world more like what he believes it could be.
I want to explore the thought of Charles knowing darkness as a child. He has a peculiar sort of innocence even in XFC; he's a telepath, he can see into people's natures, and yet he believes the best of everyone. I find that a fascinating trait in a character, and I believe that he could come to the same place even through a darker path. But I'm interested in toying with the point where there's real divergence, in which Charles' innocence is being twisted for darker ends, and playing with the difference between this and canon.
If you'd like to hear any more about the timeline and its affect on the world around Charles etc., let me know!
I've got some supplemental links here:
http://radars.dreamwidth.org/1362.html - a write-up that I did on canon X-Men and Marvel characters, whether or not future adult!Charles knows versions of them, and what they're up to in this AU. None of these have happened yet to bb!Charles, so these aren't relevant to his characterization, just to the state of the world later on in the AU.
http://radars.dreamwidth.org/573.html - older!Charles app for Bete Noire, in which I detail his canon history beyond his canon point for Singularity. This isn't so much general world history as it is Charles-centric, but it's got a little in there.
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test?
And What Did You Score?
Samples
Log Sample: The first time Charles is left alone, he nearly panics.
He paces, impatiently. Misses the long, polished wood hallways of his mother’s country mansion, if only because they provide more space to move and breathe than this little box tucked away behind the base’s barracks.
He reaches out with his mind, after he’s certain they are several hours late in coming to fetch him.
(He is reluctant to do this, of course. Careless words cost lives. He wants to do his part for the war effort. He doesn’t want to be treasonous. But it’s so very hard for him, not hearing what everyone around is thinking.)
All he feels, in his light touch on the minds of the base, is the rhythm of everyday work.
Charles is distressed. He wonders, for a moment, if this is the work of a fellow telepath. If someone is making the people of the base forget about him.
Eventually, the red-faced sergeant puffs his way to the door and smiles.
“Told them to give you a day off,” he says. “Enjoying yourself? Come on, come on, let’s get you some fresh air.”
Charles is immediately, brilliantly happy. He never should have been worried. He’s safe here.
The sergeant takes Charles on a walk around the base, for the first time since Charles arrived.
Outside, Charles runs in knee-high grass under the watchful gaze of the soldiers nearby. He picks grass and ties it in knots, and pushes ever so gently on the minds of those watching him. He dampens their distrust and enhances their wistful homesickness.
Before long, he’s surrounded on all sides by gentle fondness. Not caution. Not fear.
This is better than home. This is everything young Charles has ever wanted.
Network Sample:
[ Video. Audio. A bit like the wireless, isn't it? -- And Charles shouldn't use telepathy, not so readily, not in an unknown situation. They've cautioned him against that many, any times.
And so he takes an unsteady breath. ]
My name is Charles Xavier. I'm very sorry to bother you, but it's absolutely imperative that I return to England. You see -- or perhaps you don't, I suppose there's no reason for you to know, but there's a war on, against Hitler. And I'm very important to the war effort.
And we all must do our part.
Thank you very much for your help.
This app is much the same as the prior one I used. However, I'd like to emphasize a couple of key points:
1) Charles will be coming in from a couple of months later in his canon, just after he and young!Erik kill Sebastian Shaw. This represents a step on the way towards darkness, as far as his personality progression goes. Charles will come in suffering from a kind of psychological shock from the brutality of it and deeply conflicted as to whether or not what he did was the right thing to do. He is also a bit more confident and slightly happier because he's had a close friend for two months now. This combines to create emotions that can't quite manage to coexist in his head. He'll be too easily pushed one way or another, and it might set of a series of bad emotional reactions. If you would like elaboration on this, I'd be happy to give it.
2) In light of what happened last time, re: other Marvel characters in Charles' universe, I'd like to pose a suggestion. I'm aware that the muns agreed to keep the XFC and MCU canons separate, as they are in the movie universes. However: the comics universes are combined, and I believe that, in-character, there's no reason for any characters to assume that Charles came from a variant of the XFC universe rather than a variant of the comics universe. In other words, there's no reason for them to assume that he's an XFC AU rather than a Marvel AU.
Essentially: I know that the Captain America boat has sailed, because in-game canon has established it as not being part of Charles' world, but I would like to keep the other Marvel characters that are later a part of his canon. For example, Ororo features, as does Scott Summers, Sabretooth, Wolverine and more, despite not being in the XFC universe themselves.
This won't become relevant, for the most part, because Charles hasn't met any of them yet. But if there's a future-seeing event, or an age-up event, or anything like that, it might become relevant. So this is my pitch to keep Charles' future-history intact as part of the AU.
If it helps, this can be considered a Marvel AU with some XFC elements rather than an XFC AU.
Um, so. Let me know your thoughts.
The rest of the app is identical to the revised version you allowed in previously.
Player Information
Your Nickname: Mara
OOC Journal:
cerebelUnder 18? Nope. 22.
Email/IM: cerebel.r@gmail.com / fishicopter
Characters Played at Singularity: None!
Character Information
Name: Charles Xavier
Name of Canon: X-Men: First Class
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: AU
Reference: http://cerebel-fics.livejournal.com/93560.html < the fic that began this AU.
Canon Point: 1941.
Setting: England, World War II. Which is to say: a country single-mindedly devoted to the war effort, in which rations and shortages are commonplace, in which one's duty to Do Their Part for the war effort is more important than anything else. A sizable percentage of young men have been drafted and are off in the army, and a sizable percentage of young women have taken their place in the work force.
Prevailing attitudes range from the young, who are fiery and ready to get at Gerry, to the veterans of the last World War who want nothing to do with the violence of this one. Conscientious objectors try to get out of the draft, but they rarely make it unless someone rich and influential is on their side. And if they do make it, they risk hatred and public ridicule.
This British society values calm and dignity. Displays of affection are inappropriate, as are loud outbursts. Children are to be seen and not heard. Sex is understated, never mentioned in polite company, whispered about in dark corners. Deviance, in sexuality, culture, ethnicity or belief, is rarely tolerated.
Country life continues much as it always has, with little inconveniences and regulations specific to wartime. Every neighborhood has a Watch; every Watch makes careful notes of anyone taking unseemly or suspicious action. Also anyone who doesn't seal their blackout curtains completely during the night. Secrecy is the word of the day; as the American slogan states: 'Loose lips sink ships'. Everything from factories to shipments to troop movements is shrouded in misinformation and bureaucratic disorganization, sometimes indistinguishable from one another.
At this time, England is a besieged nation. America has made its neutrality clear; France is conquered, Russia distant. The brunt of the German Air Force's might falls directly on this nation. Bombs have been falling for so long that it's difficult to remember a time when they didn't.
In this: the boy, Charles Xavier, isolated from the conflict and the action by his mother's well-monied status. He rattles around in a big, nearly-empty house and only experiences England as a spectator, not a participant. In 1941, he changes roles and is thrust into the middle of the government's half-controlled chaos of the military complex.
This world also contains mutants. People with extraordinary powers due to genetic mutation, such as Charles, or Erik Lensherr, or Raven Darkholme. Charles has, of yet, not met any of these people yet. However, they're there. And there are a lot of them. Charles being publicly known as a telepath working for England will be the start of an avalanche of mutant discovery, paranoia and regulation beginning in the mid to late 1940s. But none of this has happened yet.
The most important parts of this setting for Charles are 1) the state of the war (and England's attitude towards it), and 2) the gap between what people think and what they do, which, in a culture as restrained as 1930s-40s England, is quite large indeed.
Personality:
NOTE: As far as timeline goes, I've taken XFC canon and shifted it back about five or six years. Charles is born in 1928 and his family does not go to America. Gaps in established XFC canon are filled in with slightly-modified comics history for Charles Xavier.
The most important single factor to note about Charles' development is that he is a telepath. In this universe, he has been a telepath for a very long time -- as long as he can remember. It didn't come upon him suddenly, and it didn't shatter his world. It has always been a part of him, and it is absolutely integral to his personality and outlook.
Charles is raw to the world around him. He is young, and he hasn't learned how to shield himself very well. As a result, he gets a constant din of telepathic input. The greater the population within a few miles of him, the greater the din he must endure. He feels others' emotions, sees their thoughts, understands them perhaps better than they do themselves. The effect that this has on a young, impressionable boy in a held-back, repressed society is devastating. Charles has grown up seeing sex, violence, revenge, pettiness, anger, jealousy written on the thoughts of everyone around him. But, by the same token: love, kindness, sympathy. He's always seen that there's more to the world than what people think, and the amount that he's seen makes him older than his years in experience. He'd like to think it's made him wise. He'd be wrong about this.
Charles is abandoned. Abused. He doesn't like to think of it this way -- in fact, he never has thought of it this way. He adored his mother and father beyond belief when he was small -- he felt their love for him and echoed it back wholeheartedly; after his father died, though, his mother grew distant. Regardless, Charles' adoration and his need for love never waned. She took a new suitor, Kurt Marko, with a son named Cain. Kurt was physically abusive to Charles. However, in England, in this time, physical discipline was common and accepted. Charles didn't have the context to recognize this as 'abuse'; all he knew was that Kurt was after his mother for her money, and that Kurt made him feel wrong. Hurt. Angry. Charles started to justify it to himself: if he could only drive Kurt away, then maybe his mother would love him again. Maybe he would have his voracious need for affection sated.
And so for the first time, little Charles acted against the wisdom he felt he had and struck out in a jealous rage. He twisted Kurt's mind and warped him and drove him away in a brutal telepathic attack that left him weak and sick for days.
Charles' mother had always known her son was strange. Fragile, smart, not normal. She couldn't have known for sure what he'd done, but she suspected strongly, and now she felt more alone than ever. Her son was an alien to her, her husband was gone, and her newer companion was gone. She turned to liquor, and Charles resorted to increasingly desperate attempts to get her attention. All of this failed.
By the time soldiers came to verify Charles' telepathic abilities, he was so disconnected from his home life that he barely gave a second thought to leaving. This isolated boy, this unloved and beaten down kid, saw an opportunity to find a place where he was respected. (Because, of course, he could be dignified. He could be an adult. And adults crave respect, not love.)
And so Charles is a series of contradictions. He's just a child, with the tempestuous emotions of a child, with the pride and the idealism and the desperate wish for a home. But he's also incredibly empathetic, brave, strong beyond even he knows. With England's soldiers, he takes on situations that break men four times his age and comes through them raw but intact. He is the formative stage of the Professor X that we all know, but diverted in a direction of violence and struggle before he hits puberty.
Moreover, his loyalty is unshakeable to those who have shown him affection. He believes in his country and his duty, and that England is worth defending, worth fighting for. He justifies deeply terrible things to himself by saying that it's for the greater good -- but it doesn't change the fact that this is a twelve-year-old boy who learned how to rip apart the minds of German spies to find their secrets, and who once froze a few squads full of enemy soldiers long enough for them to be surrounded and wiped out. These actions make him feel terrible, conflicted, angry -- but the thought of not doing them, of letting Allied soldiers take the fall instead, makes him feel worse. It's his idealism that drives him towards a very dark path.
Charles is a god among men, and he knows it. He has the power to crush the minds around him. But he's also deeply human, with his heart on his sleeve and his own particular blinders. He's not the sheltered version of Charles Xavier that we know in XFC canon; he's darker, and he's got the potential to become something particularly cold and terrible in his future.
Outwardly: a sweet, enthusiastic, brave young boy, particularly determined and very strong. Inwardly: fragile, clinging to every little scrap of affection or love that he can find, but toughening. Learning to be the cold-blooded killer that he has to be for this war. Overall: deeply wise and deeply ignorant at once. He knows what living life feels like, but not what it is like.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions: Charles is an omega-level telepath who, in canon, has powers that extend hundreds of miles, can erase personalities completely, maintain illusions that affect thousands of people, allow him to astrally project, and more. This, clearly, is ridiculous. Especially as far as RP goes. However, I'm not playing Professor X -- I'm just playing him as a kid. Young!Charles has not 1) come into his full powers or 2) figured out how to completely control them. As such, I propose that he come into game not very limited from his canon powers.
His effective telepathic range is ten to fifteen miles, depending on how well-rested he is and how determined. (In-game, this would be 'an effective range of however much the other mun has given me permission for.)
He can read minds, change memories, effect illusions and more, but his control is hardly perfect. His mind drifts, his emotions bleed over, and he can be easily derailed.
He does constantly touch the minds around him at a low level. This is because his mental shields are total shit. However. He does also constantly attempt to hold shields up and wall his mind off. What this means is that if a mundane is cool with him being his usual mental sieve, he'll be reading their surface thoughts. If they're not, he'll be blocking them out. I am flexible as far as interaction-to-interaction use of powers goes.
It's also worthwhile to note that while telepathy is both a power and a strength, it's also a weakness. Charles is very susceptible to the emotions of people around him. Because of the way he's so heavily depended on his telepathy over the last year, he relies on it as a crutch in communication. He stumbles over his words if he has to speak out loud. He tries to find shortcuts, and grows frustrated at misunderstandings. He tends to panic if telepathic connections are cut off.
Charles is also tiny. Physically. He can't hold his own in a fight (though a certain army sergeant did teach him how to headbutt) and telepathy is his main defense.
And, of course, Charles' biggest weakness, as always, is the fact that he's got piles of emotional issues.
Inventory: A set of child-sized, rank-stripped-away fatigues with a little picture of his mom and dad creased and wrinkled tucked away in a pocket.
Appearance: Short, mussed brown hair, big eyes. PB is Laurence Belcher, who played young!Charles in XFC.
Age: 13
OC/AU Justification
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across? In the obvious sense, Charles' life took a sharp left turn down Violence Street to Abuse-of-telepathic-power-ville. He's beaten and bruised, and instead of finding Raven and learning that he isn't alone, he exists in a shaky medium of soldiers and violence and necessary evil.
He is the Charles Xavier we know, but gone down a different path. I mean, let's be serious: the things that Charles can do are scary. XFC may treat his powers lightheartedly, for the most part, but knowing that the man next to you can split your brain along its seams is frightening. Knowing that he can do it to thousands of people, or to anyone within a few hundred miles, is terrifying. This is exploring the hinge point of Charles' life: he's not evil, not yet, but he's certainly taken a darker path than the Charles we know in canon. What happens in-game will be very influential on which way he ends up going.
There are quite a few differences in the world of the AU, from canon Marvel universes.
It starts with World War II.
Erik Lensherr is forced into helping the Nazis; Charles Xavier is drafted into helping the British. This accelerates the pattern of the war in a way that's subtle to the people participating but blatantly obvious historically. Charles enhanced the Allies' information-gathering techniques; he helped along events that were already going to happen and made them happen faster.
The course of the war really accelerated, though, when Erik was rescued by Charles and taken into the Allies' war effort.Their first mission was going after 'Klaus Schmidt'/Sebastian Shaw, Erik's handler, of sorts.
You have to understand -- Charles wasn't a natural-born killer. But riding the high of Erik's emotions, his joy at finally finding someone like him, the knowledge that he wasn't alone -- and he went into this mission deeply connected to Erik, telepathically, and he caught some of Erik's blood lust in the process. Even so, when Erik drove that coin through Shaw's skull, 13-year-old Charles puked his guts all over the grass outside the facility and was sick for days.
The entire facility was torn apart by the Allied soldiers, who knew the location and the intentions of all enemy soldiers. The Allies quickly figured out they had a seriously absurd amount of power on their hands, and they set Erik and Charles loose on the front.
This was the first true demonstration of mutant power, and it was devastating. England's propaganda machine went to work on it, and before long, the stories of Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr were worldwide, blown all out of proportion. England rushed into the re-invasion of Europe, while the Americans declared war on Japan.
The psychological effect of mutation was probably as much or more of a factor in the Allied victory, which took place in late 1943 in Europe and in 1944 in Japan. Between 1944 and 1946, the shockwave of mutant realization echoed throughout the world. Given the war that the world had just suffered through, there weren't many countries eager to allow permissive freedoms to a heretofore unknown faction of deeply powerful people.
Governments now have two goals: 1, to protect themselves against mutants. And 2, to get more mutants than anyone else does. There's a delay of a year or two in which mutants are relatively free, coming out publicly all over the place. And then the legislation hits. Mutants are researched, identified, rounded up, recruited and, in some cases, hunted and killed.
In 1946, the Zionist movement and mutant separatist movement find allies in one another (partially due to the heroic figure of Erik Lensherr, Jewish and mutant both) and unite to form Israel, a nation for the repressed. Erik wants to leave to help with Israel. Charles wants to stay with Erik. He reluctantly breaks with England to go unite with his new brethren.
Even in our world, the Zionist movement was a provocation to the nations surrounding Israel. In this one, it was even worse. Not only was there a nation full of peoples that the surrounding nations viewed as intruders, but it was full of mutants. This represented a huge change in the balance of power. A nation of mutants was a threat to everyone, and in the arena of a growing cold war, this was deeply terrifying.
A war in the Middle East began in 1946 and raged for four years -- much longer than in any other universe. Why? Because in this one, Israel didn't have the ally of the United States. Both the US and the Soviet Union were supplying arms and weaponry to the Middle Eastern nations arrayed against Israel. It took four extremely bloody years to stop the war, and by that point, mutant public image couldn't get worse. There were massacres, one-sided battles, brutal slaughters -- including one terrible telepathic accident in which Charles Xavier, while experimenting with a new invention nicknamed Cerebro, pushed too hard mentally and killed thousands of Lebanese and Israelis alike.
Charles couldn't take the pressures of running this nation anymore, and his and Erik's friendship was starting to fray. Erik was bent on Israeli domination; Charles wanted peace, but every day that end goal slipped further away.
At the age of 22, Charles returns to England to try and repair the reputations of mutants worldwide. He also gets his education -- for free, thanks to his rather damaged status as a former war hero.
Eventually, after an assassination attempt, Charles broke with Israel completely and went underground, forming the X-Men with Raven Darkholme, a young mutant who saved his life in the Israeli desert. He recruited the mutants who found themselves aimless and repressed in the new world, and started working for the cause of peace.
This timeline covers up through 1961, when Charles is at the age of 33.
So you ask about how "canon" changed with the events of this AU. In this case, canon is something of a mirror image.
Charles, as a boy, met Erik instead of Raven. He was dosed with violence early in his life, and had to struggle to learn the value of peace and tolerance. In canon, he meets Raven, and stays close with her until he meets Erik. (In this case, mutations also play into the course of events: Raven's mutation is all about secrecy and hiding, and in XFC canon, Charles hides her. Erik's mutation is about power, and in the AU, Charles grew up knowing how terrible power could be.)
Later, the course of Charles' life was changed by meeting Raven, not meeting Erik. In Raven, he found the idea of secrecy, as opposed to power. He learned subtlety, and went from there to found the X-Men. Raven was the prompting force in his life, and the split from Erik was a deeper and more painful one than in canon.
Essentially: this AU explores what it would have been if Charles had a much more difficult road to becoming who he was, and if canon had been mirrored around Erik and Raven. If XFC is about having Charles' idealism broken, and about how the world was never as lovely as Charles dreamed it to be, then this AU's parallel events are about Charles learning idealism, and learning to make his world more like what he believes it could be.
I want to explore the thought of Charles knowing darkness as a child. He has a peculiar sort of innocence even in XFC; he's a telepath, he can see into people's natures, and yet he believes the best of everyone. I find that a fascinating trait in a character, and I believe that he could come to the same place even through a darker path. But I'm interested in toying with the point where there's real divergence, in which Charles' innocence is being twisted for darker ends, and playing with the difference between this and canon.
If you'd like to hear any more about the timeline and its affect on the world around Charles etc., let me know!
I've got some supplemental links here:
http://radars.dreamwidth.org/1362.html - a write-up that I did on canon X-Men and Marvel characters, whether or not future adult!Charles knows versions of them, and what they're up to in this AU. None of these have happened yet to bb!Charles, so these aren't relevant to his characterization, just to the state of the world later on in the AU.
http://radars.dreamwidth.org/573.html - older!Charles app for Bete Noire, in which I detail his canon history beyond his canon point for Singularity. This isn't so much general world history as it is Charles-centric, but it's got a little in there.
And What Did You Score?
Samples
Log Sample: The first time Charles is left alone, he nearly panics.
He paces, impatiently. Misses the long, polished wood hallways of his mother’s country mansion, if only because they provide more space to move and breathe than this little box tucked away behind the base’s barracks.
He reaches out with his mind, after he’s certain they are several hours late in coming to fetch him.
(He is reluctant to do this, of course. Careless words cost lives. He wants to do his part for the war effort. He doesn’t want to be treasonous. But it’s so very hard for him, not hearing what everyone around is thinking.)
All he feels, in his light touch on the minds of the base, is the rhythm of everyday work.
Charles is distressed. He wonders, for a moment, if this is the work of a fellow telepath. If someone is making the people of the base forget about him.
Eventually, the red-faced sergeant puffs his way to the door and smiles.
“Told them to give you a day off,” he says. “Enjoying yourself? Come on, come on, let’s get you some fresh air.”
Charles is immediately, brilliantly happy. He never should have been worried. He’s safe here.
The sergeant takes Charles on a walk around the base, for the first time since Charles arrived.
Outside, Charles runs in knee-high grass under the watchful gaze of the soldiers nearby. He picks grass and ties it in knots, and pushes ever so gently on the minds of those watching him. He dampens their distrust and enhances their wistful homesickness.
Before long, he’s surrounded on all sides by gentle fondness. Not caution. Not fear.
This is better than home. This is everything young Charles has ever wanted.
Network Sample:
[ Video. Audio. A bit like the wireless, isn't it? -- And Charles shouldn't use telepathy, not so readily, not in an unknown situation. They've cautioned him against that many, any times.
And so he takes an unsteady breath. ]
My name is Charles Xavier. I'm very sorry to bother you, but it's absolutely imperative that I return to England. You see -- or perhaps you don't, I suppose there's no reason for you to know, but there's a war on, against Hitler. And I'm very important to the war effort.
And we all must do our part.
Thank you very much for your help.