Originally Posted by
Sutekh
What annoys me about this whole 'let's split the fanbase into armed camps and get them to fight for our amusement' from the writers is how much it requires the writers to write the characters in 'controversial' ways to weaponize this marketing strategy.
It was easy enough, and didn't necessarily hurt the characters for the Twilight marketing flaks to weaponize 'Team Shirtless Werewolf vs. Team Sparkly Vampire' campaigns as free advertizing / hype building, but for the comic writers to pit Reed and Charles against each other, neither are straight-up villains, and both have their fans, so the writers need to craft a situation where neither of them are just 100% wrong, and both of them come up looking sketchy or wrong-headed, so that neither of them can claim the moral high ground (and neither of them is the clear villain. But that just makes both of them look assy, and, IMO, pisses on fans of *both* of the characters, since they are only being written 'controversially' to service this desired faction-building.
Both Charles and Reed, among other qualities, are *smart dudes,* and this kind of BS shouldn't fly. Charles *might* wipe information he considers a threat to mutantkind from an ally's mind, but *he wouldn't then brag about it which defeats the whole purpose since it motivates Reed to get the information back!*
Charles could have used that fancy degree in psychology he's supposed to have and said, 'Hey, Reed does all sorts of stuff out of a misguided notion to protect his son. Maybe I can set up a mental link between him and his son and they can actually talk about whether or not Franklin *wants* to hide his mutant gene and 'stay in the closet' and live a lie, because dad is scared of mutant-haters. Maybe that would motivate Reed to be more pro-actively protective of mutants in general, and more vocal about being a mutant ally?'
Also a factor. Secrets always come out. (Generally at the worst time, for plot / drama reasons.) And Reed ending up making something *worse* than a 'hide your X-gene' invention for his son (like, oh, say that gun that turns your mutant powers off, that Forge made), because he doesn't remember the nicer option anymore thanks to Charles, would be exactly the sort of unintended consequences that would bite Charles in the butt for his actions.
It does amuse the cynic in me that a comic that's a metaphor for 'hate and fear of the other' has grown to the stage where it has fans as rabid in their 'othering' of different groups ('flatscans') as the one the comic was meant to speak against.