[ SECRET POST #2748 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2748 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Early because ... World Cup! No other excuse.

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 087 secrets from Secret Submission Post #393.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Telepaths bring up a slightly different set of fears to other mutants/other abilities, though. Most mutant powers, the ones that are threatening to life and limb, they're physical threats. Magneto can break your body from the inside out or grab your necklace and use it to throw you off a building. That's scary. But telepaths, depending on the type and how it's presented, aren't a threat to life and limb, they're a threat to mind and to will. They're a basic threat to who you are and what you are able to choose. They don't represent threat of death, they represent threat of slavery.

Reading thoughts I don't mind so much, so long as the telepath has a firm enough grasp on reality to tell the difference between my thoughts and my actions, and act accordingly. But a telepath who can manipulate and implant thoughts, who can use their ability to take control and use you, possibly without even your knowledge, that is a completely different kettle of fish. I would cheerfully walk into fire faster than I would let someone take my will from me, and knowing that someone right beside me was capable of it would freak me the hell out. I would take a thousand Magnetos over one Professor X who's proven willing to use his power that way, and in some continuities Xavier has. Including film continuity, when he took over Sabertooth during the standoff at the train station in the first movie. Probably didn't bother Sabertooth overmuch, but he was still forced to put his hand around his ally's throat and threaten him.

It's a different fear. Most mutant abilities, they're physical, and they're attached to the mutant in question. Someone going intangible and killing me, it's scary, but it's just not ... There's a group of powers, things like pheremone powers, glamours, telepathies, memory alterations, that sort of thing, that scare the fuck out of me, because it's not someone walking up and killing me, it's someone potentially walking up and making me kill someone else. They're taking my mind, they're taking my will, and in some cases I wouldn't even know, or I could be altered to like it. That horrifies me on a level that no amount of magnetically controlled bullets or even Rogue's one-hit-kill powers ever, ever could.

And the worst part is that it's not a fear I can imagine being easily solvable. Being afraid someone will kill you is at least lessened by the fact that, hey, you're not dead yet. With a telepath, how would you know if you'd stopped being afraid because you'd started to trust them, or if you'd done it because they'd made you. And they'd have to live with that. They'd have to feel that, all around them, all the time. A nightmare from both sides, unless the telepath was the sort of person not to care that they're constantly surrounded by fear when people know. Telepaths are the ultimate in paranoia fuel for other people, and for them it wouldn't be paranoia, because they could literally sense people being out to get them.

But. My point was. They're treated differently from other mutants because the fear they engender isn't the same type of fear. It's a threat to mind, not body, to will and not life. Slavery rather than death. For some people, that threat is a thousand times worse than any threat of death or physical intimidation. I would be such a person, and it doesn't really surprise me that Eric would be another. Death he can face or fight. Slavery of the kind Xavier potentially represents, Eric wouldn't even know he had to if Xavier didn't want him to. That's a kind of helpless levels above physical, and after what he's been through I can well see why he armoured himself against it.