〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Xy
AGE: Almost 25!!!
JOURNAL:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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IM / EMAIL: erik.lehnsherr31@gmail.com (this is not a fake email I swear)
PLURK:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
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RETURNING: N
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Erik Lehnsherr AKA Magneto
CHARACTER AGE: 31 (birthday is headcanon)
SERIES: X-Men Movies, alternatively filed under M for Marvel
CHRONOLOGY: Towards the end of First Class, pre Cuban Missile Crisis, ~October 1962
CLASS: Budding anti-villain, currently identifying as an anti-hero.
HOUSING: Roommates are fine! If situated in Heropa, he will probably attempt to move to Xavier's School for Imports.
BACKGROUND:
Erik is from an alternate version of Earth where mutants exist. Mutants are the "next evolution" of humans, which is to say humans born with an x-gene that for some reason account for a multitude of completely unrelated powers or physical traits that typically manifest around puberty. Although they are technically not a separate species from Homo Sapiens, they are sometimes referred to as Homo Superior. They've been around at least since ancient times, but for whatever reason are unknown to the general public in the 1960s, and usually hide their powers.
Another difference about Erik's world is that the humans and mutants are almost constantly on the brink of war with each other. The new canon that replaces retconned canon depicts Erik as at-fault for a lot of the strained relationship between the two sides, but honestly before the canon got retconned the humans were depicted as pretty bloodthirsty. This, along with some other reasons, help to explain why Erik is so... dramatic.
The other main reason that Erik is so passionate is that he is a survivor of the Holocaust, where he lost both his parents and was experimented on before presumably escape or liberation. The stress of being taken from his parents caused his powers to manifest, though he had little control over them. When asked to demonstrate, he could not, and his mother was killed as a result. Due to this, Erik has a staggering amount of anger issues and his interests are heavily skewed towards preventing a holocaust of mutants.
After leaving Auschwitz, there is a large gap of story that is not explicitly explored. Meanwhile back in movie canon, during this period he visited many countries, learned a lot of languages, and became a serial killer of Nazis. The man who killed his mother (Shaw) was also his experimenter, and Erik considers him his "creator" of sorts. Shaw is his intended endgoal kill, which brings him to Miami (fast forward to 1962), where the CIA is hunting down Shaw for killing some politician and trying to instigate World War III. The CIA have aid from a telepath named Charles Xavier, who rescues Erik from trying to drown Shaw (and himself), and demonstrates that Erik is not the only good guy with powers!
At this point it's important to note that while Erik implicitly displays trust towards other mutants, he doesn't hate the baseline humans. In fact, he works quite decently with the other members of the CIA, all things considered. He meets a few more mutants-- Charles's sister Raven (later Mystique), a scientist named Hank (later Beast.) Together, he and Charles recruit more mutants to come work together and train their powers, by roadtripping across the country and trying to make the other mutants feel less isolated.
Importantly, while Erik is really in this for cribbing the CIA's intel on Shaw, he also has good intentions of actually helping out young mutantkind.
Anyway, the CIA send Erik and Charles to Russia to deal with Shaw where they find his right-hand woman Emma Frost, another telepath, revealing that yes Shaw intends to start World War III and make it look like Russia and the US are at war. Also Shaw's men come to CIA headquarters to kill one of the recruited mutants, convince another one to come with them, and kill a bunch of agents. Charles moves the kids to somewhere safer, AKA his house in Westchester County, New York. Then they all train to take down Shaw because everyone else thinks that staring World War III is a Really Bad Idea.
During/after a training montage, Erik bonds with some of the others, particularly Mystique, asking her to accept herself physically, as she is a shapeshifter with blue skin who has been historically forced/pressured to appear baseline. Before this all comes crashing down hard and fast, Erik has made substantial relationships, especially given his self-decided loner status from at least the last decade.
This is where in canon Erik will come from but I accidentally summarized the rest of First Class and it actually does explain some potential character development:
It turns out that Shaw is responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis so the mutants all go to the beach whereupon they fight Shaw and win (this includes a pretty gross scene where Erik drags Shaw's dead corpse out and clearly Loses His Goddamn Mind.) Unfortunately, the stupid humans can't tell the difference between Shaw's mutants and Xavier's mutants and they decide that instead of letting the mutants live, they are literally going to blast the beach with missiles and wipe out all of them. Yes, like the team of kids that Erik's grown to care for, his new friends, and himself. So naturally Erik is pretty cheesed, and turns both countries' navies' missiles around and aims them towards the ships. Obviously there is a concern that this action of killing both navies will actually start the war they were trying to prevent in the first place, so people try to stop him. This precludes Charles somehow getting shot in the spine, which distracts Erik long enough to have him not accidentally start another world war.
However, the damage is done and Erik believes that the humans will not accept mutantkind as displayed by the humans having just tried to exterminate the lot of them, as well as being reminded that even those who do not believe in killing mutants will do so de facto by following their orders, which 110% spells Genocide to him. He offers everyone on the beach an invitation to join up with him to wage war against the humans, which about half of the mutants take. This begins the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. (The Evil bit was supposed to be sarcastic. Erik, no one thinks you're funny.)
This is kind of a turning point that he hasn't reached yet by his canon point but the potential is there, if the threat is large enough. Everything after in this canon pretty much stems from this event and as far as Erik's concerned, is him basically spiraling out of control and upgrading his villain status to supervillain status.
PERSONALITY:
Erik is, over all else, an angry and cynical individual. He's been dealt a shit lot in life, and he acts on it. He also believes that his actions help prevent those things from happening again. Though he thinks he is doing the right thing, he understands there will be sacrifices and losses with his methods, and he considers himself almost like a necessary evil. For instance, he thinks the humans will try to kill all the mutants, but when he is on the beach with two navies, he doesn't want to kill any of them until they decide to draw their weapons. He knows he "shouldn't" kill them, but he levies the lives of those men against the lives they are (and will be) ordered to take, and decides the best course of action is for them to die.
He harbors a lot of hatred and resentment and is not above acting on personal vendetta. Some of his first scenes involve killing Nazis who have escaped punishment for their war crimes. Though there is plenty to convict Shaw in any jurisdiction, Shaw killed Erik's mother and therefore, Erik wants him dead. He actually does say this in the end: "I agree with everything you said. But you killed my mother," which illustrates his later attitude that he does everything for the sake of mutants out of his love for them.
Erik has a grey sense of morality when it comes to laws as outlined and governed by people. He defies rules imposed on him by CIA and he does a bit of breaking and entering onto private property, and stealing lots of money. Not to mention that whole serial killer thing. Sometimes his own morals are played fast and loose, causing him to do things like abandon his friends. This also gives him a certain degree of unpredictability, contradiction, and hypocrisy.
He is a good manipulator and he's perceptive. He has a good understanding of the people around him, even though sometimes people think he is disingenuous. For instance, he compliments Beast who is having some self-image issues, only to have Beast think he is being sarcastic. He uses these self-esteem issues displayed by the rest of the cast to his advantage to convince Mystique to join with him. In later canon, he attempts to manipulate her feelings for him and her rocky relationship with her brother Charles to have her spare his life.
A lot of people don't know when Erik is telling the truth or not, because mostly he has a flat effect which can make him seem uptight or disapproving (like the time he cockblocked some of the characters with a deadpan "kinky," embarrassing them out of their private moment.) He can be stoic, often hiding his emotions or emoting Resting Asshole FaceTM. He's a little distrustful, often preferring to do things by himself. Even when Charles professes to know him and imply acceptance, he is reluctant and verbally brushes Charles off.
Erik is also a bit of a loose cannon in a lot of ways, acting on impulse and adrenaline. He gets a rush out of asking Charles to shoot him point-blank, because he knows he can stop the bullet. He waves around said gun in a room full of children while watching a presidential address. He sneaks onto a ship to kill Shaw and then makes himself known by walking right up to him. He most definitely has a negatively skewed view towards violence and death, which at times make it seem like inflicting pain upon others is very easy for him. In both First Class and Days of Future Past, he casually throws people backwards into the air without giving it a second thought; there's definitely a threshold where he considers people background or unimportant and his attitude towards humans suggest most fall into this category.
He has a tendency to be dramatic, like in the aforementioned ship confrontation, and also generally because he has an us-versus-them mentality where he constantly equates the mutant rights struggle to full out war. His flair for dramatics is much more well-developed in later canon, so he has plenty of room to grow into that trait.
Erik's determination is, at one point of retconned canon (it's complicated) enough to almost cause a mass genocide of the entire human population. So it's safe to say that he is very determined, and extremely driven. He devotes his entire life into fighting for mutants, though it is in direct conflict with his desire to "settle down." In his mind, he's taking the course of action to get the best results, so if he thought there was a better course of action, then he would probably take it. And in retconned canon, he has this to say: "Charles Xavier did more for mutant rights than you will ever know. My only regret is that he had to die for our dream to live." In Days of Future Past, he expresses regret at wasting time fighting with Charles when they should have been working together. During most of First Class, Erik and Charles lead a team of young mutants and become mentors and role models. If not for the fact that he thinks there is an imminent war, and if not for a catalyst proving him right, he would most likely stay at Charles's mansion and continue to rescue and nurture a lot of lost, confused youth.
Erik is also a hard worker, seeming to not rest at all on his hunt for Shaw. He's organized: he did decades' worth of research, he traveled the globe, and he learned many languages. He's also a quick study, which is important to note because he is not well-educated by generally accepted standards. In the timeline, he was either completing middle school or in his first year of high school when he was taken to a concentration camp, and it's very unlikely that he continued his education afterwards.
He can be very empathetic - a lot of his earlier bonding with the students is wholly genuine and he honestly wants them to feel better about themselves. In fact, his entire fight is, to him, rather selfless. He has an "invisible mutation," meaning that he can present as human very easily. However, he doesn't believe anyone should have to hide. It's not actually selfless because he has a seriously warped idea of sacrifice, mostly that other people should be sacrificed for his cause. It's the thought that counts...
Erik also has a dark sense of humor, as evinced when he tells Charles he looks like a lab rat and then quips that he was one, so he knows, referencing his time being a human experiment in the camps. This also speaks volumes about his comfortableness with Charles, who will later be his arch nemesis but who he currently considers his best friend. Later, despite being worst enemies, Erik would probably still consider Charles his bff, so you can imagine how weird his interpersonal relationships are. Honestly, a lot of similar clashing things apply to Erik: his stoic drama, his premeditated impulse, his hate stemming from love.
He's very much a believer in the means justify the goal, and everything he does is in that pursuit of a utopia for mutants. This includes forgiving former enemies and teaming up with them, putting aside differences for the sake of the bigger picture. This often leads to some ill-advised short-term solutions, better explored in Days of Future Past, such as trying to kill Mystique.
Erik is very self-sufficient and resourceful, often moving from place to place with little on his personage, and will make life-altering decisions on a dime. Yet he manages to be a chameleon, to fit the mold of whatever he needs to be (a friendly face at the bar, a sleazy businessman at a strip club, a rich man looking to stow away some dirty money) with very little to work with.
He's articulate and direct and doesn't mince his words. He's growing into his shoes as an orator, and he's brutally honest. Though he may word things to fit his bill, he prides himself on not lying in Days of Future Past.
Erik is a survivor. He's tough, and very little scares or frightens or "moves" him. He's able to remain calm under duress and a teammate's death is a call to action for him. That's not to say he's unfeeling, but he does a good job of channeling that anger, and of keeping himself focused and ready.
Then there's Magneto. Magneto is Erik's codename and is a mantle he literally takes up at the end of First Class, after the canon-point I'm taking him from. At the same time that Erik and Magneto are the same person and Magneto is not an alter-ego, they are a little bit separate. For instance, characters will refer to him with the name Magneto, but will often attempt to reason with him by addressing him as "Erik." Beast does this in Days of Future Past when Erik nearly causes a plane crash, Charles does this in retconned canon all the time. But basically when Erik puts the cape on and "becomes" Magneto, it sort of allows him to 'get to business,' so to speak. Considering that in Days of Future Past before his final act, he sneaks into the Pentagon to steal his old costume, I believe that it holds a strong personal meaning for him.
There are a few relationships which have helped shape Erik.
The first and what he considers the most important is his mother. She is the good in him. She was used as a bargaining chip for him to demonstrate his powers, and executed when he failed to do so. The last thing she said to him was that "all was good" to try and assuage him. The loss made him so angry that he killed the two men who had brought her in - for years afterward, he thought his power was attached to his rage and he tried to foster that rage and make something good come out of it. He still carries the pain of her murder with him, seventeen years later.
There is Shaw, who is the man who killed his mother. He is a Nazi agent and the movie's Big Bad, trying to coax two nations into war. Erik believes Shaw's ideology but hates him. Yet, Shaw wins because in a way, Erik will carry on his legacy of mutant superiority. Shaw was the one who experimented on Erik, and who calls him "little Erik Lehnsherr." He's kind of a huge asshole and he's the reason for Erik's pain. As demonstrated with Erik's involvement with the kids, he's capable of moving on past his mother's death-- if not for Shaw still being alive. Still, it's not until he kills Shaw that he takes on the Magneto persona.
The person who will continue to be the most important part of his life is Charles Xavier. Some of Charles's first words to Erik were that he wasn't alone. They became fast friends, though Charles is a pacifist and Erik doesn't believe that's an option. Charles is possibly the person Erik most considers his equal - and his opposite. Yet Charles is Erik's first choice as his right hand, and respects him. It's Charles who gets Erik to stop running and to stop working alone, who puts belief in him that there are more of them worth protecting. However, he disagrees fundamentally with Charles on human nature. Charles believes that humans are inherently good and can be reasoned with to accept mutants. Erik believes the opposite, that humans are inherently selfish and will see mutants as a threat and try to extinguish them. He has already believed this for a long time, yet at the point I'm taking him from in canon, he's still able to work with humans and tolerate them. Until they prove him right and do try to exterminate them for existing, there is still hope for Charles to be right and a sliver of a chance for Erik to be amenable to peace, or at least, non-animosity.
Raven will (very soon) be his lieutenant. He'll impart on her everything he knows. She's Charles's sister, and she desperately wants to be her own person. Erik recognizes that and encourages her to be strong and independent of him, and of her love interest. She seeks Erik's approval instead, and he repeats that she should accept herself. In her he finds a partner, though through more retconned future canon, and the way he treats her in Days of Future Past, it's clear that he is really abusive. For example, the movies really only allude to their romantic relationship when Erik is trying to manipulate her feelings, making him the Worst Boyfriend Ever.
Though he doesn't know it, Erik's also a father. His relationship with his son Peter, which is explicitly stated by Erik's actor in the last video in this interview, and his relationship with Peter's mother are not yet well-established in the movies, although they are very important to Erik in the comics (Magda is particularly important) so this may be subject to change in later installments of the films. Likewise, in the comics his daughters are also important to him, but for whatever reason none of them have been introduced in the movies, but Wanda is Peter's twin, so that might also change.
POWER:
Magnetism: I'm going to preface this section by saying that the movie writers didn't do too much research so there are some contradictions. His official power is magnetism, referred to in some promotional material as ferromagnetism (what we would generally consider "magnetic," from the ones on the fridge to MRI machines.) This is however, an OOC misunderstanding on the filmmaker's parts and an IC misunderstanding on every character's part, because his power is actually control over the electromagnetic spectrum, of which ferromagnetism is only a small part. But hey, even the genetics experts in this canon don't understand genetics, so at least they're consistent. I'll limit him to ferromagnetism and metals, mainly because I'm too lazy to remember which metals are and aren't magnetic. If he does get a physics lesson, I can submit other abilities that fall under this power to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. For instance, he should technically be able to manipulate electricity, but if I decided to have him discover that, I would probably ask for him to have the ability to blow up a few lightbulbs but not really make more progress in control beyond that. As for limitations, by First Class he is 'only' able to lift a submarine (~50k tons), but by Days of Future Past he is able to easily lift a stadium (~100k tons) so he does have room to grow but unless I canon update him he probably won't make it too far in the heavyweight department. And as for fictional metals, canon is really wishy-washy on whether or not he can control them (adamantium is a heavy yes, vibranium and uru depends on the writer really), so I plan on leaving it up to the other players who are affected.
Autotune: I was told I could give him additional powers. So now he can autotune his voice. And sometimes might on accident.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE: tdm!
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: Day four, 11:23 PM. His manager is about ten years his junior, he smells, he's exhausted, and more than once he thought about busting a water main just to shut up possibly the stupidest, most entitled customers that he has ever had the displeasure of meeting. His apartment is clean, at least. Small, austere, but big enough for himself, and it comes with a window so he can air out the stench of his uniform.
Flopping backwards on the bed, he kicks off his shoes and already looks the part of someone from this new modern era, taking out his comm to check the network, the latest news, all else. Then he sees it, scrolling down, eyes glazing over from information overload but suddenly trained to a halt. Xavier's School for Imports. Xavier's School for Imports? So the headmaster is Robert Callaghan, whoever that is, but it's 2015 so anything's possible. He's already snuck off to New York, to Westchester. 1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center NY 10560. The only address he'd really even considered considering home in the last seventeen years had just vanished, like it never existed.
He pulls up his schedule, instinctively looks at his nightstand for a clock that isn't there, and calculates in his head how many hours until his next shift. Never mind that. He gets up and throws on the nearest clean clothes he has, bolts out the door and locks it with his powers, cheats a little when he calls the elevator.
Erik isn't used to culture shock. He never keeps much for himself, regularly hopping on planes, waking up in another country speaking their language and eating their food and hanging with their locals. He gets in cars, drives through the night and secretly relishes all those exceedingly American experiences like 24-hour roadside diners and nickel jukes that only play rock and roll earworms. He loves to travel and he loves to do it comfortably: the Grand Canyon is just his backyard, the Lincoln Memorial just a convenient seat for a game of chess. He doesn't often think about settling down, or even about slowing down. So it bothers him, digs into him, how much he cares to see this school. He takes a bus and the muggy late-summer air relaxes him, along with the hum of the tires, the sighs of the doors, the clinking of change and tapping of shoes. It brings him a comfort that this situation is a familiar one, a recurring one, that this could be anyplace and anytime. He thinks this, because he needs an anchor in the very real case that the place he's going also doesn't exist.
When he gets to the Xavier School, he instinctively knows he's found it. It may not look anything like the one he remembers, but he knows it's the right place. He resents his job because looking at this building, he's reminded that in Westchester he was doing something with his life. He was making an impact on young mutants, most of whom reminded him of himself. In a way, pushing the kids to their limits, growing fond of them, watching their gifts grow and flourish-- it helped him as much as it helped them. More than a home, it gave him a purpose that wasn't revenge. Yes, he wants to kill Shaw, of course he does; he owes it to his mother and his own twisted sense of justice to see an end to Shaw's life. But he hadn't planned for what would happen after, it had just dropped itself into his lap and demanded his attention, just a little too soon. This government sanctioned job isn't just a joke, it's a sign. Erik rings the doorbell, even though it's late. He's already decided that he's not showing up for his shift tomorrow.
FINAL NOTES: These aren't a power, but he does have a native knowledge of: German, Yiddish, Polish (possibly); fluent knowledge of: English (US/UK), French; conversational+ knowledge of: Spanish. These are the only ones demonstrated, but it is heavily implied that he either taught Mystique (Raven) Vietnamese or taught her how he learns languages, so he should learn new ones with ease. In First Class he also demonstrates some drawing skill, displaying a decent-looking drawing of Kevin Bacon that he did from memory. In Days of Future Past he exhibits an exaggerated high pain tolerance. Like, he gets shot in the neck and then gets up no problem, still kinda bleeding but he's alright, he'll walk it off.
NAME: Xy
AGE: Almost 25!!!
JOURNAL:
shippingIM / EMAIL: erik.lehnsherr31@gmail.com (this is not a fake email I swear)
PLURK:
RETURNING: N
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Erik Lehnsherr AKA Magneto
CHARACTER AGE: 31 (birthday is headcanon)
SERIES: X-Men Movies, alternatively filed under M for Marvel
CHRONOLOGY: Towards the end of First Class, pre Cuban Missile Crisis, ~October 1962
CLASS: Budding anti-villain, currently identifying as an anti-hero.
HOUSING: Roommates are fine! If situated in Heropa, he will probably attempt to move to Xavier's School for Imports.
BACKGROUND:
Erik is from an alternate version of Earth where mutants exist. Mutants are the "next evolution" of humans, which is to say humans born with an x-gene that for some reason account for a multitude of completely unrelated powers or physical traits that typically manifest around puberty. Although they are technically not a separate species from Homo Sapiens, they are sometimes referred to as Homo Superior. They've been around at least since ancient times, but for whatever reason are unknown to the general public in the 1960s, and usually hide their powers.
Another difference about Erik's world is that the humans and mutants are almost constantly on the brink of war with each other. The new canon that replaces retconned canon depicts Erik as at-fault for a lot of the strained relationship between the two sides, but honestly before the canon got retconned the humans were depicted as pretty bloodthirsty. This, along with some other reasons, help to explain why Erik is so... dramatic.
The other main reason that Erik is so passionate is that he is a survivor of the Holocaust, where he lost both his parents and was experimented on before presumably escape or liberation. The stress of being taken from his parents caused his powers to manifest, though he had little control over them. When asked to demonstrate, he could not, and his mother was killed as a result. Due to this, Erik has a staggering amount of anger issues and his interests are heavily skewed towards preventing a holocaust of mutants.
After leaving Auschwitz, there is a large gap of story that is not explicitly explored. Meanwhile back in movie canon, during this period he visited many countries, learned a lot of languages, and became a serial killer of Nazis. The man who killed his mother (Shaw) was also his experimenter, and Erik considers him his "creator" of sorts. Shaw is his intended endgoal kill, which brings him to Miami (fast forward to 1962), where the CIA is hunting down Shaw for killing some politician and trying to instigate World War III. The CIA have aid from a telepath named Charles Xavier, who rescues Erik from trying to drown Shaw (and himself), and demonstrates that Erik is not the only good guy with powers!
At this point it's important to note that while Erik implicitly displays trust towards other mutants, he doesn't hate the baseline humans. In fact, he works quite decently with the other members of the CIA, all things considered. He meets a few more mutants-- Charles's sister Raven (later Mystique), a scientist named Hank (later Beast.) Together, he and Charles recruit more mutants to come work together and train their powers, by roadtripping across the country and trying to make the other mutants feel less isolated.
Importantly, while Erik is really in this for cribbing the CIA's intel on Shaw, he also has good intentions of actually helping out young mutantkind.
Anyway, the CIA send Erik and Charles to Russia to deal with Shaw where they find his right-hand woman Emma Frost, another telepath, revealing that yes Shaw intends to start World War III and make it look like Russia and the US are at war. Also Shaw's men come to CIA headquarters to kill one of the recruited mutants, convince another one to come with them, and kill a bunch of agents. Charles moves the kids to somewhere safer, AKA his house in Westchester County, New York. Then they all train to take down Shaw because everyone else thinks that staring World War III is a Really Bad Idea.
During/after a training montage, Erik bonds with some of the others, particularly Mystique, asking her to accept herself physically, as she is a shapeshifter with blue skin who has been historically forced/pressured to appear baseline. Before this all comes crashing down hard and fast, Erik has made substantial relationships, especially given his self-decided loner status from at least the last decade.
This is where in canon Erik will come from but I accidentally summarized the rest of First Class and it actually does explain some potential character development:
It turns out that Shaw is responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis so the mutants all go to the beach whereupon they fight Shaw and win (this includes a pretty gross scene where Erik drags Shaw's dead corpse out and clearly Loses His Goddamn Mind.) Unfortunately, the stupid humans can't tell the difference between Shaw's mutants and Xavier's mutants and they decide that instead of letting the mutants live, they are literally going to blast the beach with missiles and wipe out all of them. Yes, like the team of kids that Erik's grown to care for, his new friends, and himself. So naturally Erik is pretty cheesed, and turns both countries' navies' missiles around and aims them towards the ships. Obviously there is a concern that this action of killing both navies will actually start the war they were trying to prevent in the first place, so people try to stop him. This precludes Charles somehow getting shot in the spine, which distracts Erik long enough to have him not accidentally start another world war.
However, the damage is done and Erik believes that the humans will not accept mutantkind as displayed by the humans having just tried to exterminate the lot of them, as well as being reminded that even those who do not believe in killing mutants will do so de facto by following their orders, which 110% spells Genocide to him. He offers everyone on the beach an invitation to join up with him to wage war against the humans, which about half of the mutants take. This begins the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. (The Evil bit was supposed to be sarcastic. Erik, no one thinks you're funny.)
This is kind of a turning point that he hasn't reached yet by his canon point but the potential is there, if the threat is large enough. Everything after in this canon pretty much stems from this event and as far as Erik's concerned, is him basically spiraling out of control and upgrading his villain status to supervillain status.
PERSONALITY:
Erik is, over all else, an angry and cynical individual. He's been dealt a shit lot in life, and he acts on it. He also believes that his actions help prevent those things from happening again. Though he thinks he is doing the right thing, he understands there will be sacrifices and losses with his methods, and he considers himself almost like a necessary evil. For instance, he thinks the humans will try to kill all the mutants, but when he is on the beach with two navies, he doesn't want to kill any of them until they decide to draw their weapons. He knows he "shouldn't" kill them, but he levies the lives of those men against the lives they are (and will be) ordered to take, and decides the best course of action is for them to die.
He harbors a lot of hatred and resentment and is not above acting on personal vendetta. Some of his first scenes involve killing Nazis who have escaped punishment for their war crimes. Though there is plenty to convict Shaw in any jurisdiction, Shaw killed Erik's mother and therefore, Erik wants him dead. He actually does say this in the end: "I agree with everything you said. But you killed my mother," which illustrates his later attitude that he does everything for the sake of mutants out of his love for them.
Erik has a grey sense of morality when it comes to laws as outlined and governed by people. He defies rules imposed on him by CIA and he does a bit of breaking and entering onto private property, and stealing lots of money. Not to mention that whole serial killer thing. Sometimes his own morals are played fast and loose, causing him to do things like abandon his friends. This also gives him a certain degree of unpredictability, contradiction, and hypocrisy.
He is a good manipulator and he's perceptive. He has a good understanding of the people around him, even though sometimes people think he is disingenuous. For instance, he compliments Beast who is having some self-image issues, only to have Beast think he is being sarcastic. He uses these self-esteem issues displayed by the rest of the cast to his advantage to convince Mystique to join with him. In later canon, he attempts to manipulate her feelings for him and her rocky relationship with her brother Charles to have her spare his life.
A lot of people don't know when Erik is telling the truth or not, because mostly he has a flat effect which can make him seem uptight or disapproving (like the time he cockblocked some of the characters with a deadpan "kinky," embarrassing them out of their private moment.) He can be stoic, often hiding his emotions or emoting Resting Asshole FaceTM. He's a little distrustful, often preferring to do things by himself. Even when Charles professes to know him and imply acceptance, he is reluctant and verbally brushes Charles off.
Erik is also a bit of a loose cannon in a lot of ways, acting on impulse and adrenaline. He gets a rush out of asking Charles to shoot him point-blank, because he knows he can stop the bullet. He waves around said gun in a room full of children while watching a presidential address. He sneaks onto a ship to kill Shaw and then makes himself known by walking right up to him. He most definitely has a negatively skewed view towards violence and death, which at times make it seem like inflicting pain upon others is very easy for him. In both First Class and Days of Future Past, he casually throws people backwards into the air without giving it a second thought; there's definitely a threshold where he considers people background or unimportant and his attitude towards humans suggest most fall into this category.
He has a tendency to be dramatic, like in the aforementioned ship confrontation, and also generally because he has an us-versus-them mentality where he constantly equates the mutant rights struggle to full out war. His flair for dramatics is much more well-developed in later canon, so he has plenty of room to grow into that trait.
Erik's determination is, at one point of retconned canon (it's complicated) enough to almost cause a mass genocide of the entire human population. So it's safe to say that he is very determined, and extremely driven. He devotes his entire life into fighting for mutants, though it is in direct conflict with his desire to "settle down." In his mind, he's taking the course of action to get the best results, so if he thought there was a better course of action, then he would probably take it. And in retconned canon, he has this to say: "Charles Xavier did more for mutant rights than you will ever know. My only regret is that he had to die for our dream to live." In Days of Future Past, he expresses regret at wasting time fighting with Charles when they should have been working together. During most of First Class, Erik and Charles lead a team of young mutants and become mentors and role models. If not for the fact that he thinks there is an imminent war, and if not for a catalyst proving him right, he would most likely stay at Charles's mansion and continue to rescue and nurture a lot of lost, confused youth.
Erik is also a hard worker, seeming to not rest at all on his hunt for Shaw. He's organized: he did decades' worth of research, he traveled the globe, and he learned many languages. He's also a quick study, which is important to note because he is not well-educated by generally accepted standards. In the timeline, he was either completing middle school or in his first year of high school when he was taken to a concentration camp, and it's very unlikely that he continued his education afterwards.
He can be very empathetic - a lot of his earlier bonding with the students is wholly genuine and he honestly wants them to feel better about themselves. In fact, his entire fight is, to him, rather selfless. He has an "invisible mutation," meaning that he can present as human very easily. However, he doesn't believe anyone should have to hide. It's not actually selfless because he has a seriously warped idea of sacrifice, mostly that other people should be sacrificed for his cause. It's the thought that counts...
Erik also has a dark sense of humor, as evinced when he tells Charles he looks like a lab rat and then quips that he was one, so he knows, referencing his time being a human experiment in the camps. This also speaks volumes about his comfortableness with Charles, who will later be his arch nemesis but who he currently considers his best friend. Later, despite being worst enemies, Erik would probably still consider Charles his bff, so you can imagine how weird his interpersonal relationships are. Honestly, a lot of similar clashing things apply to Erik: his stoic drama, his premeditated impulse, his hate stemming from love.
He's very much a believer in the means justify the goal, and everything he does is in that pursuit of a utopia for mutants. This includes forgiving former enemies and teaming up with them, putting aside differences for the sake of the bigger picture. This often leads to some ill-advised short-term solutions, better explored in Days of Future Past, such as trying to kill Mystique.
Erik is very self-sufficient and resourceful, often moving from place to place with little on his personage, and will make life-altering decisions on a dime. Yet he manages to be a chameleon, to fit the mold of whatever he needs to be (a friendly face at the bar, a sleazy businessman at a strip club, a rich man looking to stow away some dirty money) with very little to work with.
He's articulate and direct and doesn't mince his words. He's growing into his shoes as an orator, and he's brutally honest. Though he may word things to fit his bill, he prides himself on not lying in Days of Future Past.
Erik is a survivor. He's tough, and very little scares or frightens or "moves" him. He's able to remain calm under duress and a teammate's death is a call to action for him. That's not to say he's unfeeling, but he does a good job of channeling that anger, and of keeping himself focused and ready.
Then there's Magneto. Magneto is Erik's codename and is a mantle he literally takes up at the end of First Class, after the canon-point I'm taking him from. At the same time that Erik and Magneto are the same person and Magneto is not an alter-ego, they are a little bit separate. For instance, characters will refer to him with the name Magneto, but will often attempt to reason with him by addressing him as "Erik." Beast does this in Days of Future Past when Erik nearly causes a plane crash, Charles does this in retconned canon all the time. But basically when Erik puts the cape on and "becomes" Magneto, it sort of allows him to 'get to business,' so to speak. Considering that in Days of Future Past before his final act, he sneaks into the Pentagon to steal his old costume, I believe that it holds a strong personal meaning for him.
There are a few relationships which have helped shape Erik.
The first and what he considers the most important is his mother. She is the good in him. She was used as a bargaining chip for him to demonstrate his powers, and executed when he failed to do so. The last thing she said to him was that "all was good" to try and assuage him. The loss made him so angry that he killed the two men who had brought her in - for years afterward, he thought his power was attached to his rage and he tried to foster that rage and make something good come out of it. He still carries the pain of her murder with him, seventeen years later.
There is Shaw, who is the man who killed his mother. He is a Nazi agent and the movie's Big Bad, trying to coax two nations into war. Erik believes Shaw's ideology but hates him. Yet, Shaw wins because in a way, Erik will carry on his legacy of mutant superiority. Shaw was the one who experimented on Erik, and who calls him "little Erik Lehnsherr." He's kind of a huge asshole and he's the reason for Erik's pain. As demonstrated with Erik's involvement with the kids, he's capable of moving on past his mother's death-- if not for Shaw still being alive. Still, it's not until he kills Shaw that he takes on the Magneto persona.
The person who will continue to be the most important part of his life is Charles Xavier. Some of Charles's first words to Erik were that he wasn't alone. They became fast friends, though Charles is a pacifist and Erik doesn't believe that's an option. Charles is possibly the person Erik most considers his equal - and his opposite. Yet Charles is Erik's first choice as his right hand, and respects him. It's Charles who gets Erik to stop running and to stop working alone, who puts belief in him that there are more of them worth protecting. However, he disagrees fundamentally with Charles on human nature. Charles believes that humans are inherently good and can be reasoned with to accept mutants. Erik believes the opposite, that humans are inherently selfish and will see mutants as a threat and try to extinguish them. He has already believed this for a long time, yet at the point I'm taking him from in canon, he's still able to work with humans and tolerate them. Until they prove him right and do try to exterminate them for existing, there is still hope for Charles to be right and a sliver of a chance for Erik to be amenable to peace, or at least, non-animosity.
Raven will (very soon) be his lieutenant. He'll impart on her everything he knows. She's Charles's sister, and she desperately wants to be her own person. Erik recognizes that and encourages her to be strong and independent of him, and of her love interest. She seeks Erik's approval instead, and he repeats that she should accept herself. In her he finds a partner, though through more retconned future canon, and the way he treats her in Days of Future Past, it's clear that he is really abusive. For example, the movies really only allude to their romantic relationship when Erik is trying to manipulate her feelings, making him the Worst Boyfriend Ever.
Though he doesn't know it, Erik's also a father. His relationship with his son Peter, which is explicitly stated by Erik's actor in the last video in this interview, and his relationship with Peter's mother are not yet well-established in the movies, although they are very important to Erik in the comics (Magda is particularly important) so this may be subject to change in later installments of the films. Likewise, in the comics his daughters are also important to him, but for whatever reason none of them have been introduced in the movies, but Wanda is Peter's twin, so that might also change.
POWER:
Magnetism: I'm going to preface this section by saying that the movie writers didn't do too much research so there are some contradictions. His official power is magnetism, referred to in some promotional material as ferromagnetism (what we would generally consider "magnetic," from the ones on the fridge to MRI machines.) This is however, an OOC misunderstanding on the filmmaker's parts and an IC misunderstanding on every character's part, because his power is actually control over the electromagnetic spectrum, of which ferromagnetism is only a small part. But hey, even the genetics experts in this canon don't understand genetics, so at least they're consistent. I'll limit him to ferromagnetism and metals, mainly because I'm too lazy to remember which metals are and aren't magnetic. If he does get a physics lesson, I can submit other abilities that fall under this power to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. For instance, he should technically be able to manipulate electricity, but if I decided to have him discover that, I would probably ask for him to have the ability to blow up a few lightbulbs but not really make more progress in control beyond that. As for limitations, by First Class he is 'only' able to lift a submarine (~50k tons), but by Days of Future Past he is able to easily lift a stadium (~100k tons) so he does have room to grow but unless I canon update him he probably won't make it too far in the heavyweight department. And as for fictional metals, canon is really wishy-washy on whether or not he can control them (adamantium is a heavy yes, vibranium and uru depends on the writer really), so I plan on leaving it up to the other players who are affected.
Autotune: I was told I could give him additional powers. So now he can autotune his voice. And sometimes might on accident.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE: tdm!
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: Day four, 11:23 PM. His manager is about ten years his junior, he smells, he's exhausted, and more than once he thought about busting a water main just to shut up possibly the stupidest, most entitled customers that he has ever had the displeasure of meeting. His apartment is clean, at least. Small, austere, but big enough for himself, and it comes with a window so he can air out the stench of his uniform.
Flopping backwards on the bed, he kicks off his shoes and already looks the part of someone from this new modern era, taking out his comm to check the network, the latest news, all else. Then he sees it, scrolling down, eyes glazing over from information overload but suddenly trained to a halt. Xavier's School for Imports. Xavier's School for Imports? So the headmaster is Robert Callaghan, whoever that is, but it's 2015 so anything's possible. He's already snuck off to New York, to Westchester. 1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center NY 10560. The only address he'd really even considered considering home in the last seventeen years had just vanished, like it never existed.
He pulls up his schedule, instinctively looks at his nightstand for a clock that isn't there, and calculates in his head how many hours until his next shift. Never mind that. He gets up and throws on the nearest clean clothes he has, bolts out the door and locks it with his powers, cheats a little when he calls the elevator.
Erik isn't used to culture shock. He never keeps much for himself, regularly hopping on planes, waking up in another country speaking their language and eating their food and hanging with their locals. He gets in cars, drives through the night and secretly relishes all those exceedingly American experiences like 24-hour roadside diners and nickel jukes that only play rock and roll earworms. He loves to travel and he loves to do it comfortably: the Grand Canyon is just his backyard, the Lincoln Memorial just a convenient seat for a game of chess. He doesn't often think about settling down, or even about slowing down. So it bothers him, digs into him, how much he cares to see this school. He takes a bus and the muggy late-summer air relaxes him, along with the hum of the tires, the sighs of the doors, the clinking of change and tapping of shoes. It brings him a comfort that this situation is a familiar one, a recurring one, that this could be anyplace and anytime. He thinks this, because he needs an anchor in the very real case that the place he's going also doesn't exist.
When he gets to the Xavier School, he instinctively knows he's found it. It may not look anything like the one he remembers, but he knows it's the right place. He resents his job because looking at this building, he's reminded that in Westchester he was doing something with his life. He was making an impact on young mutants, most of whom reminded him of himself. In a way, pushing the kids to their limits, growing fond of them, watching their gifts grow and flourish-- it helped him as much as it helped them. More than a home, it gave him a purpose that wasn't revenge. Yes, he wants to kill Shaw, of course he does; he owes it to his mother and his own twisted sense of justice to see an end to Shaw's life. But he hadn't planned for what would happen after, it had just dropped itself into his lap and demanded his attention, just a little too soon. This government sanctioned job isn't just a joke, it's a sign. Erik rings the doorbell, even though it's late. He's already decided that he's not showing up for his shift tomorrow.
FINAL NOTES: These aren't a power, but he does have a native knowledge of: German, Yiddish, Polish (possibly); fluent knowledge of: English (US/UK), French; conversational+ knowledge of: Spanish. These are the only ones demonstrated, but it is heavily implied that he either taught Mystique (Raven) Vietnamese or taught her how he learns languages, so he should learn new ones with ease. In First Class he also demonstrates some drawing skill, displaying a decent-looking drawing of Kevin Bacon that he did from memory. In Days of Future Past he exhibits an exaggerated high pain tolerance. Like, he gets shot in the neck and then gets up no problem, still kinda bleeding but he's alright, he'll walk it off.
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