#really bad!

xavier putting blockers on jean’s telepathy is interesting to me bc it’s sometimes framed as being bad and actually harmful for jean, but it’s also kind of presented as a good thing in canon? i think the implication from canon is that jean experienced her telepathy as overwhelming and anxiety-inducing when it first manifested. she could not be in crowds with access to her telepathy. this makes sense. as an adult, when jean gains phoenix, she finds that she is not used to the power and needs to work on relearning how to control it. she also experiences this as scary and anxiety-inducing. later in life, we see that jean does not really like picking up thoughts from strangers, she’s just used to it. these thoughts she happens to read include memories of enacting abuse, or explicit sexual fantasies strangers have about her. in comics that address the x-men’s early years, with the idea that jean has always been a telepath in mind, the implication is that xavier worked with her to learn how to control her telepathy privately in a less stressful environment, allowing her time to adjust to it rather than being thrown into the deep end. at the very least, i think canon implies that the situation has nuance, rather than being the “cutting her off from a core part of herself” the movies tend to present it as.

A sharp world with soft beings and nonsensical ways of existing. Sunlight that cuts and air that drowns. Hands that sink through the floor and bones that will never hold strength again. Who are you? Who were you before you opened your eyes? The sunlight wraps around your head and burns