I can’t help but notice that a lot of media deals with the satire and break-down of superheroes lately. Specifically with ones that abuse their power, or have ill-intentions behind a peaceful facade. 

I have mixed feelings about this. Partially because, as a comic book lover, I like seeing my heroes be heroic. I find that they are written with the explicit intention of being the best that humanity has to offer, to be us humans lionized and at the pinnacle of the better angels of our nature: brave, compassionate, trustworthy, merciful, and just. 

Secondly because I have often heard of comic books described as “America’s Mythology”, and that’s a dire and powerful notion. Mythology exists to explain the way the world works, and to give us heroes to try and become. That even in the face of tragedy we could be great. That even though wronged by the world we can be fair. That even though called weak we could contain hidden strength. 

How then should we look at those shows and books where the mighty abuse their strength? Where the instead of compassion we are faced with callousness, with cruelty, and with cowardice? 

Better yet, why are they so popular?

If Superheroes are American mythology, does this mean these are written or created by modern distheists? People who hate heroes and hate seeing these noble traits epitomized in their media? I very much doubt the latter. 

I suppose it deals more with the most painful part of hero-worship: saying goodbye to our real-life heroes. 

Most people, I imagine, will encounter a time when they discover that an artist, an athlete, or a person of importance to them is, or has been before, a bad person. That they’ve been hateful, bigoted, ignorant, or far worse. It’s hard to reconcile that a person you’ve admired is mortal and capable of folly or willfully ignorant. It hurts, to see them act that way, or to use harmful words. In the mythology we’ve created in our minds, we feel they should have known or done better. It’s jarring to realize, they are just human after all. 

Maybe it’s easier to imagine our fictional legends as being flawed than it is to admit our real ones are too. 

For me, this doubly incentivizes the reason for Superheroes to exist in the first place. Myth and stories should uphold and be strong when life is uncertain, and when the crucible of the world rages around us the legend of those noble, kind, and mighty who have come before us should serve as an example of what we should strive towards, even if we can never reach it. 

And thus with hope we should endeavor to become the next generation of role-models for those who come later: better, wiser, and stronger than the last. Just as brave, just as compassionate, with fewer of the priors’ flaws. We’ll craft better arts, we’ll break their world-records, and we’ll be better to each other in the process. 

Maybe the capes and cowls we have been looking for have been in our mirrors all along. We just have to choose to don them.

In a recent D&D game I am playing with friends, I chose to give a new character an unusual and difficult background (raised in the Underdark), summed up by the phrase “Mabaj Nujol.” It’s a rough internet translation of Tolkien’s Black Speech, effectively literally meaning “I am Counting Scars.” In my personal cannon, it’s a multifaceted phrase, meaning something like “I am sad,” or “I am hurting,” but also “I will live through this.”

As we move through these days in our real world, I have seen unprecedented pain. A global viral pandemic has killed my friends’ relatives, shuttered us all away from one another. What should be institutions in which we place trust for our protection have abused their power and taken lives, furthering an authoritarian police state which does us as citizens harm. All my friends are hurting, especially those who are people of color in the wake of the latest racist aggressions made against their communities. I have seen the wicked actions of those who would separate us by petty differences of appearance, inciting hatred against their brother humans. I have seen supposedly wise men fall prey to these words and deeds, choosing to believe obvious lies or spinning them into personal agendas, willfully ignorant of others. And I have seen people I trust remain silent to utter the words “Black Lives Matter”, the unspoken words the harshest of betrayals. I cannot look at any of the sources for information I receive about the outside world without seeing so much hate, so much violence, and so much pain.

So Mabaj Nujol. Today we are all counting scars.

At the expense of letting this place stay a dead blog for two years, I suppose I should put something up.

Sadly shortly after beginning writing again I realized that one) I write pretty slow and two) that if I wanted my fiction published I couldn’t give it all away for free.

This was complicated by the fact that I quickly learned that writing for myself instead of for D&D was a very different process: I learned about myself, and I discovered thought and opinions I didn’t know I had. I didn’t realize I was vehemently anti-hate until I wrote “Strom’s Hate”. It kind of just… bloomed in me, so to speak. Nor did I realize that I had such a heart for the environment till I wrote “Demons”, I just wanted to write a story where humans ended up being the alien invaders. I figured that would be a helluva twist ending.

I’ve tried to be published a couple times since then, notably with a large novelette, and mostly amassed a few rejection letters. I’m still writing, I just haven’t been showing it to the world. My thoughts being that, when I have exhausted my publishing options, put it it up here. So, slow it may be, expect a post or two this year.