Was I Ever Innocent Reflection

Short answer, no. 

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but for people who may not have heard it, there’s a “joke” in my friend group that if I were ever to get superpowers, I wouldn’t be a hero. A villain to many, yes, though perhaps I’d be an anti-hero. I’m the living embodiment of the audio people online use: “The world doesn’t need saving, it needs fixing.” I’ve held that belief for a very long time, and I have a lot of ideas on how it can be fixed. How the Greater Good needs to be served, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. 

How badly I wish I could be Monkey D. Luffy but I know in my heart that I’m Monkey D. Dragon. 

(Props to the people who get that, and if you don’t, go watch One Piece, do I really need to keep saying that?)

I’ve spent a lot of time working on trying to come to terms, and overcome, my belief in a black and white world. Things are either right, or they’re wrong, and quite often that gets me into trouble. Not just when looking at things in terms of morality, but daily life things as well. Either what someone says is right or wrong, and if its wrong, I feel a compulsion to correct, not out of a feeling of superiority, but because I don’t want people to be lost in a world where they have misinformation. 

Yes, living in America right now is absolute torture with this compulsion, thank you for asking. 

That black and white thinking can be a disaster for one’s own innocence as well. See, I have very strong beliefs about how people should be treated and what should happen to those who break that social convention. I’ve more than once wished harm on other drivers who I feel are driving recklessly (and yes, for those of you who’ve driven with me, I do drive fast, but I’m not reckless). 

This comes out a lot in Grey, I think mostly because I’m allowing myself to allow him to indulge in the things that my own understanding of social convention keeps me from really delving into. Plus he has the power to back his words up in ways that would get me arrested in the real world. I live in a world where I need to swallow injustice and wait for the slow process of our manipulated “justice system” to try and fix. While Grey also has to swallow some injustice in the world, he’s also able to affect actual change in the world he’s “living” in. He is, again, what I envision myself becoming should I be given access to these kinds of powers. 

Innocence is an interesting concept, because it implies a level of naivety in the person or character, because only those ignorant of the ways of the world can truly be innocent. Children are often given this quality, them and the stupid, though children are granted forgiveness for their ignorance, and actually have theirs protected. 

This brings me to the question: Do we even want to be innocent? I think most people really just want to be blameless, and have begun to equate the two together. And since ignorance is paired with innocence, we seek to be ignorant of the follies and flaws of our world and our peoples in hopes that we can retain that ignorance so we can claim innocence, hoping that no one will place the blame on us. In this respect, none of us, since learning what innocence means, can really claim to hold it. We are all to blame for something in this world, whether that’s something we’ve done or something we’ve left undone. This can be something harmful, or something that we seek to correct in the world, but it is done out of a need to uphold something we believe in. 

If we are at fault, then we are the cause of something. To be blameless is to never have a cause connected to you. 

I think that’s my bigger fear. As Grey lays dying, alone, at the bottom of a shaft deep under Charlotte, part of me actually envies him. Not that he’s dying, but that he has a hill that he can die on. That he feels that strongly about something that he’s willing to put himself through everything he’s going through, not the reluctant hero, but the purposeful protagonist. He knows he isn’t innocent, because he stands for something, and he knows he isn’t a hero as he’s just trying to change the world into a place where he and those he loves can thrive. Really, that’s all anyone wants to do. The problem often comes from the ones who will cease to thrive when such a change is put into place. 

Villains seek to make their vision thrive at the expense of the world. 

Heroes seek to make the world thrive at the expense of the few. 

Interpret that how you will, because these sentiments aren't straight forward. After all, they’re hardly black and white.