Cassandra Nova Is Charles Xavier
Travis Hedge Coke
My favorite thing about these evil sides, including the above excuses and explanations, is that we are, from the beginning, invited to disbelieve them. When the earliest of these evil sides attacks Xavier-proper and his school, it possesses him, he fights against it. It is seen as a clearly distinct being, called the Entity. However, the Entity is Charles Xavier, and even he eventually has to recognize this truth.
Onslaught, the seemingly all-powerful monster who seemed to be the death of most of the major superheroes in the Marvel Universe, was born out of Xavier, expressing his guilts and lusts explicitly, but later, we see that when he put Magneto in a coma, some evil creature, a seed of psychic energy, crawled up from Magneto’s brain into Xavier’s and clearly, that must be at fault.
We “see,” however, a memory, a replay from perspective. Memory is not reality, and in the Marvel Universe, memory and reality are not immutable or undeniable.
The Entity can stand proud, can conquer and rape in his conquistador helmet, with his working legs and his open condescension. Onslaught appears as a towering armored beast and as a wicked child, openly goading with guilt and promises of friendship. They don’t befriend and compromise, but command and disrupt.
So, we come to Cassandra Nova, a demonic inversion that is currently bedeviling Jean Grey in a new X-book just now. Cassandra is described by the Shi'ar, as a mummudrai, as an inversion of all that something is, a mummudrai is all that something proper, is not. Everything has a mummudrai. “The mummudrai of in, is out.” Up, down. Awake, asleep. Cold, hot. But, Xavier’s mind is so powerful, even before birth, that his mummudrai is also thinking and psychically-empowered. With that psychic power, and that awareness, she is able to have form in this world, and to act.
Later, we learn from other sources, that when Cassandra first gained consciousness, she made her body out of discarded cellular matter in a sewer. So, not a near-to-term fetus.
Still, most of the audience clung, and clings yet, to the fantasy that plays out in his damaged mind, because, well, Grey and Frost saw it, and we saw them seeing it.
It never happened. What we saw was memory only, or, if you prefer, it was presentation alone.
It was guilt and disassociation, which grew, by will alone, a physical, walking, talking, id-driven body, and then covered that body in armor and a pretense that it’s a living “not-me.”
Like Onslaught.
Like the Entity.
Cassandra is not a new species. She is not a magical demon from the nether realms. Not an abandoned, rejected twin fetus. She is an anxiety-fueled imaginary fiend. An intimate projecttion, a thought even a baby did not like having. Like the other evil sides we had seen, she is a subconscious rejection by Xavier, a thing of rejected feelings, rejected temperament, pushed away so strongly, by such a powerful mind, that they could pretend autonomy and act distinct from Xavier. But, she is still a projection, a willed being. She is still Charles Xavier, even if Charles made her up while still in his mother’s womb.
Cassandra Nova is not Charles Xavier’s twin sister. She is Charles Xavier.
1 comment:
Excellent observations!
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