I’m not at work today. Today, I meet with my thesis advisor to go over my prospectus and to register for Thesis I (which I will begin in the spring).So, I drove my wife to work. On our way, she was telling me about an episode of BONES, The Superhero in the Alley, that she watched on her day off, yesterday. The Superhero in the Alley is the story of Citizen 14 who is found dead in an alley. The murder involves a group of geeky kids that dress up and play superhero.
So, I had to watch.
Citizen 14 was really a 17 year old boy who was dying of a terminal illness. He wanted to be a hero. He tried to save a woman, his boss’ wife, from domestic abuse by intimidating the husband. It went bad. The husband killed him.
Anyway, what is it with boys, men, that we want to save people, be heroes? Why do I want to make a difference? Why can’t I be happy in my role as a middle manager? And in that role, why is it that I always want what is best for my staff? I kick and scream and I’m soft on them. I do more work so that they can do less. I don’t take much time off for myself, is that out of free that something bad might happen at work and I won’t be there to help? Yes.
I too read comics, not much any more, but I used to read a lot of them, instead, I now novels and short stories. I prefer narratives where someone, hopefully the main character is doing something noble or heroic. This character does not need to have super powers, the character just needs to have a deep sense of what is human and right.
As a writer, my fiction is filled with characters that are powerless to fight change. Their heroic acts are survival or sacrifice. Most of my characters are at the end of something, their time is up, and they must make a decision. This decision, at its most base level is the decision between their happiness and the happiness of someone else. Some of my characters choose happiness for themselves; they often end up dead. Their act of selfishness blinds them to their fate.
The real heroes make a sacrifice for another’s happiness. This often means keeping a job that they hate because it pays well and has great benefits, or never taking vacation so as to allow your employees time off, or any number of mind numbing actions that free another human being to fly.
However, in my fiction, I try to make it obvious to the reader that these heroes are not really heroes. They may think that they are, but in reality, they are just confused, that no one will ever really care about their sacrifice. It goes unnoticed and unrewarded, not that reward is ever a hero’s goal.
If I have a message in my writing, it is the age old saying, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” However, the choice has everything to do with how it makes the character feel. If you’re damned anyway you look at it, would you rather be damned for helping someone else or helping yourself?
NaBloPoMo
Citizen 14 was really a 17 year old boy who was dying of a terminal illness. He wanted to be a hero. He tried to save a woman, his boss’ wife, from domestic abuse by intimidating the husband. It went bad. The husband killed him.
Anyway, what is it with boys, men, that we want to save people, be heroes? Why do I want to make a difference? Why can’t I be happy in my role as a middle manager? And in that role, why is it that I always want what is best for my staff? I kick and scream and I’m soft on them. I do more work so that they can do less. I don’t take much time off for myself, is that out of free that something bad might happen at work and I won’t be there to help? Yes.
I too read comics, not much any more, but I used to read a lot of them, instead, I now novels and short stories. I prefer narratives where someone, hopefully the main character is doing something noble or heroic. This character does not need to have super powers, the character just needs to have a deep sense of what is human and right.
As a writer, my fiction is filled with characters that are powerless to fight change. Their heroic acts are survival or sacrifice. Most of my characters are at the end of something, their time is up, and they must make a decision. This decision, at its most base level is the decision between their happiness and the happiness of someone else. Some of my characters choose happiness for themselves; they often end up dead. Their act of selfishness blinds them to their fate.
The real heroes make a sacrifice for another’s happiness. This often means keeping a job that they hate because it pays well and has great benefits, or never taking vacation so as to allow your employees time off, or any number of mind numbing actions that free another human being to fly.
However, in my fiction, I try to make it obvious to the reader that these heroes are not really heroes. They may think that they are, but in reality, they are just confused, that no one will ever really care about their sacrifice. It goes unnoticed and unrewarded, not that reward is ever a hero’s goal.
If I have a message in my writing, it is the age old saying, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” However, the choice has everything to do with how it makes the character feel. If you’re damned anyway you look at it, would you rather be damned for helping someone else or helping yourself?
NaBloPoMo
0 comments:
Post a Comment