Yeek! OK, see, I *really* don't think I can match you in terms of XMM knowledge or character understanding, but I still have to argue, even knowing that I'll lose (and wanting to lose). It's genetic.
But I'm not sure in a fundamental sense that he ever feels he should be trusted with his own power to start with -- I just think he feels that given that he has the power, not using it would be worse than using it as well as he can.
That's not how I see him. I see in him - well. All the choices he's made seem to be predicated on a couple of beliefs: that people are basically good, that people do bad things most often out of ignorance or fear, and that people can be raised to do good things, choose to do good things. All his choices, from Erik to Cerebro to the school to the things we see him do at the beginning of X2, all those seem to me to have that underpinning, to be best and most simply explained by that underlying belief.
Most of all, I think Charles believes that he can trust himself. With the powers he's got, it's that or a lobotomy; I imagine that he also knows it's hubris, but I see some subconscious part of him, trained in Catholicism from an early age, whispering "God doesn't dish out what people can't take." "God wouldn't give people powers if they couldn't use them well." Now, maybe they choose not to use them well, but the potential for goodness is still in them. And if they make bad choices, they can always be redeemed. It's hard for me to explain his actions any other way.
And in X2 what he learned is that there are powers that no one should have, because no one is safe when anyone, no matter how well-intentioned, has them. He learned that you'd have to be truly superhuman, truly perfect to be trusted with powers like his. I think he'd react to this realization pretty much like Einstein reacted to quantum mechanics.
So that's my take. Now please show me that I'm wrong wrong wrong, because I'm pretty much convinced already; I just have to be beaten into the ground, 'cause that's how I was raised to argue.
no subject
But I'm not sure in a fundamental sense that he ever feels he should be trusted with his own power to start with -- I just think he feels that given that he has the power, not using it would be worse than using it as well as he can.
That's not how I see him. I see in him - well. All the choices he's made seem to be predicated on a couple of beliefs: that people are basically good, that people do bad things most often out of ignorance or fear, and that people can be raised to do good things, choose to do good things. All his choices, from Erik to Cerebro to the school to the things we see him do at the beginning of X2, all those seem to me to have that underpinning, to be best and most simply explained by that underlying belief.
Most of all, I think Charles believes that he can trust himself. With the powers he's got, it's that or a lobotomy; I imagine that he also knows it's hubris, but I see some subconscious part of him, trained in Catholicism from an early age, whispering "God doesn't dish out what people can't take." "God wouldn't give people powers if they couldn't use them well." Now, maybe they choose not to use them well, but the potential for goodness is still in them. And if they make bad choices, they can always be redeemed. It's hard for me to explain his actions any other way.
And in X2 what he learned is that there are powers that no one should have, because no one is safe when anyone, no matter how well-intentioned, has them. He learned that you'd have to be truly superhuman, truly perfect to be trusted with powers like his. I think he'd react to this realization pretty much like Einstein reacted to quantum mechanics.
So that's my take. Now please show me that I'm wrong wrong wrong, because I'm pretty much convinced already; I just have to be beaten into the ground, 'cause that's how I was raised to argue.