TRANSMISSION 004 - THE RAGE

Hello. Kind of starting off with a strong title here, but recently I've been going through something of a superhero renaissance. The same feelings I harbored as a child when I would see figures like Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Superman, are coming back to me as an adult. It's very heart warming to indulge in these stories once again with a more mature and understanding mind.

The reason I bring this up in particular is because I've recently been watching the new Lanterns show, as well as playing the new Insomniac Wolverine game. Despite what you might've heard about either, especially Wolverine, they are phenomenal experiences and worth every penny and second invested into them. Wolverine alone might only be 18 hours long in story length but I've been enjoying it for the better part of the last two weeks. However, I'm not here to write a review for these two mediums, that's not what this blog is about. It's about how these mediums made me feel, and even you, viewer, your interpretation.

Logan (Wolverine) comes off as an angry, spiteful man who's wrath causes him to lose control and hurt the loved ones around him. A man with no will nor desire to be alive, yet the inability to die either. It's a bit ironic but a very interesting contrast. He doesn't claim to be a hero, anti-hero, vigilante, or villain, none of those titles align with how Logan views himself. He is a ruthless man who kills others in cold blood for mutant rights, he is no different than somebody like Punisher or Red Hood for example. Yet despite his very rough exterior, Logan is a very broken and vulnerable person. He has withstood hundreds of years of torture, experiments, trauma, and death. Throughout his time alive, never did he ever get hurt or even close to death due to his abilities, meaning for as long as he can remember, or later revealed inability to remember, he had to sit and endure these experiences with no out, totally alone. All his loved ones perished due to old age as he continued to live through the decades. All this stacked up trauma took a serious toll on him, because despite being a mutant, his mind is still human, and it broke. He forgot everything and turned feral. Hence where we are at with his character, he can't care for anything anymore and doesn't even know where this overwhelming anger and rage is coming from anymore, but he channels it to complete his missions as Wolverine.

Why am I going into detail about a 5'3 400lbs. comic book character? His character comes off comical but it's a very real experience. Playing through the game reminded me of the anger I used to feel, and even still now at times. Growing up, I was a very angry kid. I would lash out at the people closest to me and make decisions I couldn't take back, decisions that hurt the people who cared about me the most. And a lot of the time, if you asked me why, I couldn't even tell you. The anger was just always there, sitting under everything. Kind of like Logan, I didn't know where it came from, I just knew it was running the show.

The thing that changed it for me was losing someone very special and dear to me. When she passed I was still angry, but it was a different kind of anger. I wasn't angry at the world anymore, I was angry at myself. I got quiet and reserved, and for a while that anger just sat and brewed inside me with nowhere to go. Slowly it started to fizz out, but not because I beat it. It took a lot of trials and tribulations, broken trust, broken relationships, and actually facing the consequences of what I'd done before I understood something important. I was never going to win a fight against my own anger. It's a part of me, and it always will be.

So I stopped fighting it and started accepting it. And once I did that, I could finally do something with it. That's what hit me playing through Wolverine. Logan never gets rid of his rage either. He's had hundreds of years to try and it's still there. The difference between Logan at his worst and Logan at his best isn't whether the anger exists, it's whether he's in control of it or it's in control of him. When he's lost, it eats him alive. When he's got something to fight for, it becomes the reason he never stays down.

These days I try to point my own negative feelings toward something positive. The intensity I used to harbor as wrath didn't go anywhere, it evolved into something greater. The same passion that used to come out as anger comes out as love and care now. I try to live in her image every single day, and spread kindness everywhere I can, even to strangers I barely know or people who hardly deserve it. It just feels right to me and I think she'd like that. With that, I apologize for the somewhat heavier post today, viewer.

My altruism knows no bounds.

Love, THE RECEPTIONIST