But I don't WANT to be a hero
I've been having these weird dreams where I'm some sort of superhero. That's really peculiar considering the fact that if I had super powers, I'd be far more likely to use them for personal gain rather than to promote truth, justice and the <insert country> way. Right, so let's take a look at what my diseased imagination dredged up from the realm of Morpheus.

Friday night
After a decade of rigourous training under the tutelage of a reclusive master, I had become an expert in the long-forgotten martial arts style of "18 Palms of Subduing Dragons". That's right, this is the very skill learnt by various heroes in the wuxia novels penned by Louis Cha. Among my array of devastating moves, the one I enjoyed the most was, of course, qing gong. To those of you unfamiliar with the wuxia genre, think Trinity leaping tall buildings with a single bound in the Matrix, or go look up Spring Heeled Jack in wikipedia.

Aside: Seriously, unless you have been living on the moon for the past few decades, how could you be ignorant of the wuxia genre? It is perhaps the single most successful cultural export of the Chinese. It would be like me not having even heard of King Arthur or something.

So as I was saying, I left the unknown but cliched hut in the forest abode of my master after ten years of training and returned to the city. Crime was rampant, and given my strong sense of justice (yes, yes, laugh all you want, it was only a dream, ok?), it wasn't long before I started righting wrongs and depressing the oppressors. In short, I became a vigilante. A one-man army against the forces of evil.

Of course, every heroic tale that deserves to be immortalised in song has a tragedy at the heart of it, and this was no different. One of the villains I killed had great PR skills, and was known as a philanthropist. Immediately, the media turned against me, and everyone was out for my blood. Of course, no one could catch me, given my amazing qing gong, and I soon got used to the sound of bullets whizzing past me. It was entirely possible that I did not even need to run and that I could have caught bullets or at least avoided being fatally injured by them through using my nei gong (internal energy, or chi) to protect myself, but I never got to test my theory, since I woke up right after a group of coppers packing heat managed to corner me in a deserted warehouse.

Shucks.

Saturday night
I was a Kryptonian. Some sort of relative of Superman's. Strangely, I was not aware of either my heritage or the powers that came with them at first. As far as I was concerned, I was merely a normal youth, living a normal life in the city of Metropolis. I had always admired Superman, and had often seen him in that ridiculous spandex outfit hurtling through the air upholding justice or something.

Lex Luthor knew about me, though. Perceiving that I would become an enemy once I learnt of my powers, he decided to launch a preemptive strike against yours truly. His henchmen managed to capture me, and I was dangling precariously from a flagpole outside a skyscraper. I looked up at skinhead (he looked suspiciously like Michael Rosenbaum), and I (melodramatically, as a superhero does) swore vengeance against him even from beyond the grave. He smiled in that friendly, yet slightly sinister manner he had, and severed the flagpole I was clinging to with some laser cutting device. Suddenly, with death staring me in the face, I discovered my powers and the force of gravity had no effect on me, and there I was, hovering in mid-air, batting chrome-dome on the head with the fucking flagpole, fuckin' A!

The weird thing was, when Superman became aware of me, instead of being overjoyed that there was someone to help share the burden of saving the world, he got jealous because of my status as the new golden boy of the media. Christ, what a petty man he turned out to be. Although he was basically still a good guy, he would keep trying to race me towards some location where evil was being plotted or where people needed rescuing.

I was, like, what the hell in the world of flying fucks is this guy trying to do? I'd be flying through the air, leisurely doing about 4 times the speed of sound with my arms at my sides on my way to stop Zod, and our dear Kal-El would suddenly zing past me at twice my speed with his arms extended to the front, fists clenched and head bowed to cut air resistance. And I'd be like, dude, what the fuck is your problem?



Of course, he'd be tired when he got there and had to fight like, 3 other evil Kryptonians, or he'd run straight into a trap where he was surrounded by fucking robots packing Kryptonite because he didn't think things through due to his hurry to be there before me. Then, I'd have to bail him out of the bloody mess and the villains would subsequently get away. After that, he would still have the brazen gall to accuse me of being inexperienced and cramping his style. My last thought just before I woke, was that maybe having too many heroes in one city was not such a good idea, as I watched Lex Luthor fleeing in a space capsule while I used my laser sight, from a safe distance, to cut the chains of Kryptonite in which Clark Doofus was bound. He was slowly dying of asphyxiation because we were all floating in the vacuum of space with the flaming ruins of Lex's Death Star-like space station all around us.

Seriously, I would have been better off doing evil. At least I wouldn't have had to keep worrying about bailing out people from my own side, because villains simply don't care about anyone else.

p.s. I must say that I am a great admirer of Michael Rosenbaum. I think he does a terrific Lex Luthor in Smallville. The Clark Kent guy is all right, I guess, but he's just way too pretty to be taken seriously as an actor.

p.p.s. In the second dream, I did not wear spandex. I was sensibly dressed in a T-shirt and slacks when I was dispensing justice. Maybe that's why that caped maniac was so displeased with me. Because I looked better than him.

Update: Picture drawn by Feisty Bitch.  ¶
Permalink

If you don't like what I say, why not subscribe me for some porn?