You Are Legend

Most people are aimless and unappreciative. They feel entitled because life is unfair and righteous because they were wronged. Such people are useless or worse and worthless if not costly. They are the impersonal many who live and die in vain.

There are the few who gain insight and develop a sense of purpose. Whether such are good or evil they are righteous in their endeavors. They strive boldly and cannot be disheartened. They prove tireless even when weary. Such are the individuals who make a difference, for better or for worse.

Fiction is our waking dreams. Our legends are the world from our spiritual perspective. Everything we imagine is our fancy of something real.

Adventure and horror are, were and shall always be humanity's favorite legends. The two are often one and the same. They are only different in that horror is the grim fate of protagonists and adventure that of antagonists.

The anonymous many of the real world are the helpless bystanders and useless thugs of fiction. The individuals who make names for themselves are the heroes, sidekicks, masterminds and killers. As for the monsters of adventure and horror, they are either characters already mentioned or impersonal forces of nature.

What would you be as a fictional character? Your pride may claim "hero" or "mastermind" or "killer" or even "monster" but who are you really?

Grimly Amusing

Dead sexy. Whether anonymous bystanders or useless thugs we are grimly amused by the slaying of unimportant characters.

The Red Shirts of Star Trek are loved for falling easy prey to strange horrors. The Stormtroopers of Star Wars are revered for being the objects of heroic violence. The scream queens of horror are the sexiness thereof. We admire our heroes and respect our villains but we relish our victims.

Sexuality and violence are intrinsically linked. Easy violence is casual sex. An anonymous victim is a one-night-stand.

Killing is thrilling and fiction is rarely intense without it. The silencing the sentry is an unusual theme in that it is meant to thrill but calmly. It is a predator-prey scenario in which one character easily and impersonally subdues another. The distinct appeal is the contrast that what is unceremonious for the assailant is tragic for the victim. The ease of the kill is an inglorious fate indeed.

Monsters are masculine even if female. Victims are feminine even if male. The hapless Red Shirt, for example, is the "vagina" and what kills him is the "penis" in what is thematically the heterosexual dynamic. Such would not be the case if the Red Shirt enjoyed a fighting chance. He is "helpless" because the feminine is anatomically passive. The "penis" does not require consent to penetrate. The prey must be vulnerable by its nature. The victims must be lambs before gathered for the slaughter.

A foot soldier of villainy is an expendable agent of someone else's evil. A bystander is a faceless face in a crowd. We are amused by the deaths of the nameless because their lives are inconsequential. They cringe and scream fearing a doom that shall make no difference. Their bodies are heaped into piles to be lost in the crowds from whence they came. In a strange way they deserve their fate... because they are nonentities.

Who and What We Are

Reality is a lackluster drudgery locked in a cycle of vainglorious futility. History is embellished as legend or propaganda. Science and religion are whatever we want them to be. Stronger, smarter, faster and tougher are the worldly standard by which some are better than others.

I am not a man of the world. I am not a minion nor a mastermind. I do not live in the past, real or imagined. My life and what I make of it are my reality.

Most lives are worthless. Never bother with those who do not bother. Never give to those who only take. To be wronged does not make one righteous nor to be needy make one worthy. Bless or curse only that one may reap what one has sown.

A good does not beget evil. What seems friendly only to prove unfriendly is like poison in an otherwise good drink.

Whosoever cares shall always care and shall act accordingly. Whosoever does not care may do good but only when it suits them. People cannot change: they are only better or worse of who they truly are.

What we are is the nature we are made of. Our experiences can only shape what is already there. Who we are is the smallest part of us... but it is the part that makes all the difference. We are good or evil by who we are. We decide who we are by the actions of our own volition.