"Hero"

Decided to poke through my phone's music player until I landed on something meaningful to write about (the Nom Nom Song being right out), and it landed on Nickelback's "Hero."

Fair 'nuff.

An' they say that a hero will save us, I'm not gonna stand here an' wait ....

So, herein we define hero.

• a man distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength; "RAF pilots were the heroes of the Battle of Britain"
• the principal character in a play or movie or novel or poem
• champion: someone who fights for a cause
• Greek mathematician and inventor who devised a way to determine the area of a triangle and who described various mechanical devices (first century)
• (classical mythology) a being of great strength and courage celebrated for bold exploits; often the offspring of a mortal and a god
• (Greek mythology) priestess of Aphrodite who killed herself when her lover Leander drowned while trying to swim the Hellespont to see her
• bomber: a large sandwich made of a long crusty roll split lengthwise and filled with meats and cheese (and tomato and onion and lettuce and condiments); different names are used in different sections of the United States

According to Professor Google.

Huh, I lived on a Leander street once.

Why the hell should anybody wait for a hero? 'm sure it's great that they're marked by strength and courage and shit, but that doesn't mean other folk can't be courageous or strong. Lotta people're courageous 'n' strong 'n' ... yeah. This ain't workin'.

I'm aware. Typin' out a slur 'ssa habit from bein' all ... y'know. -ey.  Roleplay. That'n'. 'ssa good indication of being all ... unfocused. Fuzzy. Fuzzled. MR. FUZZEMS. (The terrible.)

So tired. Feel like I'm fuckin' drunk.

ANYWAY, yeah. Waitin' on a hero seems silly. Guilty pleasure here, I read romance books sometimes 'coz they're cheap, not too brainy, and often fun. Thing that pisses me the fuck off in those books is about half the time, the woman's some helpless incompetent bitch who can't even fuckin' tie her shoes without a MAN standing there helping her out. It's like ... half the reason I quit goin'a church, right? 'coz they wouldn't recognize a family that didn' have a man in it. I ain't got nothin' against men, y'know? Just, don't fucking tell me I need to have one. Fuck you an' your fuckin' "religion" bullshit keepin' good folk from doin' shit with themselves, 'coz they ain't chained to a goddamn bed.

'less they're inta that, y'know.

'n' the hero always gettin' mixed up with the protagonist. What'cha mean, the noble dragon's up there gettin' slaughtered by the wicked knight?

Honestly, though, most stories now days have their heroic sociopath bases covered.

... I think I'm pretty much 'onna have to cut this short t'say simply: Do what the fuck's right, and who gives a goddamn shit if it ain't appropriate or lawful or if you ain't the strongest or bravest person.

An' don't forget, if you do have a hero type person: they ain't fuckin' infallible. Nobody is.

Punch 'em in the fuckin' gut if they can't remember what "right" actually is.

Oh. And not every hero has t'die. There's that, too.

Irrational

Can someone be said to be suffering from a crisis of (absence of) faith?

I think I have diagnosed a key problem with my psyche: I have significant difficulty with belief.

I have been raised as I think most Americans have, with an odd duality. At once we are told to believe only in the rational and quantifiable and logical, the hard data and concrete proofs in the world, yet then also we are told of Santa Claus, God, the Devil, tarot cards and Slender Men, and we are supposed to sort which of these are fiction from the facts.

I don't believe in God. Not really. I don't believe in God or Jesus, Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, Slender Man or the Devil himself.

But I also cannot so blithely discount myths and legends, magical and unquantifiable lines of reasoning, just because I have not personally experienced anything that counts as hard, logical proof. There is an incredibly large chunk of my mind that simply wants to believe in something ... more. Something beyond the dull mundane world of phone calls and little handheld computer-phones and sleeping peacefully in my blissful island of ignorance. Some part of me wants to get the chance to talk to Cthulhu, no matter how much it would shatter my mind. I think there's a very real desire to be special or important, and I think most humans experience it, and I think that's part of why we devise our little religions with us as the center point.

This inability to decide leads to an ... unease, we will go with unease. There is a schism in my personality, a hard line between a very serious, stony side which believes only in that which I can see and feel and touch, research and prove, and a more ... childlike innocence, a willingness to believe and an enchantment with the fantastic.

I love the idea of magic.

I hate the idea of magic.

No, I really don't want you to try and convert me to your religion. What really makes you think it's all that much better and more true than any of the hundreds of other lines of illogical thought? What makes you think that believing in an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent deity (who actually still gives a damn about humanity, not to say a reality that, being omniscient, he/she/it knows inside and out, from start to finish) that rules over everything is any more reasonable than believing in an omniscient, omnipresent deity that gives out material wealth to small children over the course of a given holiday season (be it the Easter Bunny's chocolate Cadbury Eggs or Santa Claus's gaily wrapped presents)?

Yes, I really do want you to try and convert me to your religion. There's a certain ... comfort ... to belief. There's a joy in feeling as though you are a small part of something larger than yourself. The idea of being a large part of that selfsame entity is intoxicating, if foolish. There's a wonderful relief to the idea that a man with a gun might not completely and utterly end your consciousness just because your brain - and all of your chemical, emotional responses - have been shut down. I only ask for the one thing no religion seems able to provide: proof that cannot be explained by any other means. Proof that does not rely upon confirmation bias and self-delusion.

There's a reason I identify as Agnostic but actually don't try to think about it too hard.

My head hurts.

Now excuse me while I go sleep with the lights still burning because I can't disbelieve in the Slender Man just because He's probably fake.

Admission

Or, the Awkward Post

So it's Monday again, and I figure, why not.

Since last week was all about the Slender Man, now's as good a time as any to mention that I write in advance as far as I possibly can. You know, just in case I get abducted by Candlejack or somethi

All joking aside, this entry was written Thursday of two weeks ago.

Hello, future me! Have you been abducted yet?

Probably not.

In the daylight hours, I find it easier to ignore, disregard, and disbelieve in lines of fantastic reasoning. I prefer to think rationally in situations that require logic.

Other admissions, given the post title here's as good a place as any for them:

I actually identify as Asexual IRL. I don't know if it ever came up, or became particularly obvious. It's more apparent IRL than online, in my opinion: I have spent my entire life immersed in a sex-driven culture, and have absorbed the vernacular. Besides that, I tend toward apathy. It's fairly hard to showcase a lack of something. Probably the most obvious clue is how utterly oblivious I am toward being hit on (a trait that accidentally transfers to my characters in RP, since I don't even notice). I have to be pretty much hit over the head with a shovel to recognize a compliment.

Speaking of apathy and lifestyle choices, I tend to label myself agnostic. I am the exact opposite of a religious fanatic of any stripe: I actually don't care enough. Religion is one of those things that is almost impossible to prove, and without proof, I can't really care too much which invisible, omniscient, omnipresent entity I "should" be trying to appease - and how would I actually know, anyway?

That said, I wear a pentagram, not a cross. Of all the mystical, metaphysical babble I've bothered to expose myself to, Wicca is probably the most empowering and female-positive.