Antiheroes and Coffee

This is how I start my day, apart from the obvious shower and the rest; with a nice Pink Lady apple and a big cup of Coffee. I used to start my days when I wasn’t at my day job with a fry up (something including any of the following: Sausages, Bacon, Scrambled Egg & Hash Browns). Now that’s a lot for the body to take on in the morning and as soon as I’d eaten it, I was already feeling tired again. Now as part of my ‘trying to be healthy’ (yeah, right!) I’m trying to eat an apple a day. To keep the doctors away and all that. Though I’m pretty sure this apple elixir doesn’t work on those doctors that like to dish out straitjackets. Anyway, the only way I can guarantee myself doing this is by eating it first thing in the morning. To be honest with you it works pretty well, it’s just enough to fill the stomach while you’re working up to speed and has just enough sugar to perk you up.

Then I’ll whack on a film soundtrack (currently: Inception) and sit here and attempt to write something vaguely interesting. I don’t mean the blog, we all know this ain’t that special! But the stories which you will find in any blog that doesn’t come with the ‘musings’ title. Once I’ve done that, I’ll probably get on with the myriad of other jobs I need to do! Today, as it’s Friday, I will probably go grab a coffee from my favourite coffee place (more coffee? Yeah I know! Well I’m going mad anyway!) and make it last as long as possible while I read a book. You can’t beat reading while watching the world go by.

Anyway, as fascinating as you undoubtedly find all of that, on to the actual musings…

I was pretty dumbfounded this morning while conducting my usual ‘reading twitter before getting my arse out of this lovely warm bed’ ritual when I came across a competition by a certain store, ‘Forbidden Planet’. Now as most of you guys will know, they are purveyors of graphic novels, science fiction and general tv and film memorabilia. The competition was one of these ‘retweet while finishing the sentence’ things. And the sentence was ‘I WANT TO BE AN ANTIHERO BECAUSE…’.

The thing that dumbfounded me was that all the replies, as well as the general talk from the Forbidden Planet webmaster? tweetmaster? Twit? was that an antihero was the opposite to a hero, i.e. a villain. Most of them were saying things such as ‘because I can do what I want and get away with it’ <insert picard.jpg>. I can’t help but feel they have somehow missed the point of an antihero. An antihero isn’t simply a villain, they are not even the bad guy in most cases. An antihero is someone who is the protagonist in a story, the guy everyone follows and empathises with, but they have traits that set them apart from the usual hero. In that they aren’t squeaky clean and perfect.  Think ‘The Punisher’ he’s the good guy right? But he goes around killing his enemies and getting his vengeance, BAM! Antihero! You could even class Boromir in the Fellowship as a kind of antihero. Lets think about this, he’s definitely a good guy, I mean he’s human, he’s from Gondor, he fights on the side of good against the evil forces of Mordooooor. So, he’s a hero? Yes. But, he also wants to take the ring and return it to Gondor so he can use it’s power, all be it for good, to destroy Mordor. He wants this so much that it consumes him to the point that he almost steals it. Okay, you could argue that this is the rings power to corrupt driving him, but yes, you guessed it, he’s still a kind of antihero.

Right, I think I’ve made my point there. I could go on about various other antiheroes and I’m sure you have far better examples. I was just, to be kind of honest, shocked at what I was reading earlier.

I was last night also thinking about having a rant about not letting stuff dictate your life. I was in a pretty dark place, as of most nights these days. Something which this writing seems to help or alleviate at least, a distraction I guess. I wanted to say that people shouldn’t let the crap that life throws at you determine who you are. If things are bad, don’t become the bad guy. Nice guys finish last and all that. It’s often tempting to think, well, I’ll become horrible, then I might get somewhere. But you should always stay true to yourself. The only way you should let things affect you is in a way of positive improvement. If you get a lesson out of something bad happening and it helps you to do something better or encourages you to respect and appreciate things more, then good. But don’t let it destroy you.

I recently read the graphic novel ‘The Killing Joke’ and it’s an excellently crafted story about how one simple bad day brought about the character of ‘The Joker’, the great tragedy that crafted his insanity. The scary thing is that I could empathise with the story. Whether that was the genius of the craft or where my mind is at the moment I couldn’t tell you for sure. While reading, at times I just thought, stuff this world…It’s hard not to be too candid on a public space, sufficed to say you don’t want to hear about all my crap, and I don’t want to bear my heart on a plate for you. But I often feel like I’m hanging on to my sanity by a thread…

Right, enough of that. I am going to finish writing some stories. Then I plan to go and look at all the things I want for my new flat and that I can’t afford.

Once again, thanks for reading and I hope you found at least some of in interesting.