Mystique

Villains, villains, villains. It almost makes me feel dirty to write about villains all of the time. I remember reading that C.S. Lewis had a difficult time writing Screwtape Letters because he had to think like a demon all of the time. I am not sure I have had the same problem. I write about villains and I simply keep realizing that evil is worse than I ever imagined it, but also more familiar. With that though, I am going to press on with Mystique, who I have been very excited to write about. Hope that this is much fun as I hoped it would be.

Mystique never goes away. In comics, she might fade from the forefront for awhile, but she works her way back into the story at the most unexpected times. In the movies she and Magneto represented the only follow up villains and guess what? She's back for round three this summer. The woman is fascinating. For those who have managed to miss seeing her, she is a very blue woman, who can look like whoever she wants to. She usually sticks with other petite women, because it is easy for her maintain a shape like her own and because her second most potent weapon is that she is a woman, a weapon she wields well. She is also very mysterious. What's her real name? She goes by Raven Darkholme, but that is generally excepted as an alias. How old is she? Old enough to be Nightcrawler's natural mother and foster mother to Rogue. Where has she been in the past? Who has she been? How many lives has she led? Whose life is she living right now? If Magneto is the most morally consistent character in the Marvel universe, Mystique's is the hardest to come to grips with. Who is she?

She doesn't know.

Really. She doesn't anymore. She has lived to many lives, wore to many masks. She has been to fluid to have any "character" anymore. She no longer is who she once was, she is now simply her characteristics. She is manipulative. She is cunning. She is very sexual. But she isn't a real person anymore. She is never successful at settling her life down, because she always tries it as another person. The fraud is always discovered. Whoever she once was has been lost forever, whoever she is now is always is flux. To Magneto she is one person. Another to Rogue. Another to the next man who decides to settle down with one of her characters.

Mystique's evil is one of the most tragic that I have ever encountered in any fiction. She is evil because she has been willing to kill off all of herself in order to gain acceptance. She becomes who men most desire, but how can the question of whether any man could ever desire her go away? She becomes what her business associates need, but how can she shake the question of whether they ever needed her? She has never been able to be a wife or a mother for any length of time, because eventually people needed a real person, not a forever changing figment of their imagination. Sure she is dangerous. She may kill you in your sleep, kidnap your daughter or assassinate a world leader, but I cannot help but wonder who is really committing those crimes anymore?

If we're not careful, we all run the risk of becoming Mystique. While most of us lack the ability to literally change our skin, most of us are perfectly able to become someone else when we sense someone else wants us to be so. I have played so many characters in my life. I have been the perfect son, boyfriend, friend, employee all because something inside of me has sworn up and down that no one wants anyone like me. I have needed just a few simple alterations to become what people have wanted me to be. What happens after a year of that? Five? Ten? Fifty? You become Mystique, simply a conglomeration of someone else's desires.

Evil cannot create. It simply cannot. It can only corrupt. Slowly, it twists, distorts, steals and lies to leave a mangled thing left. A thing that once was a person. A friend or child that has lost everything that once made it real. When I first became a Christian I tried to make my faith just another identity, one that I could put on my shelf next to the student, the drunk and the ladies man. Jesus wasn't satisfied to gain only one of my persona's. He instead wanted me. He wanted me to become who I was created to be. It is not always fun. "You've changed", "You're a sell out", these phrases have actually been said to me (I just thought they were used in bad teen movies). Some of these have been said by some of my best friends. So of those friends have left my life now, never to return. Others left and now are back and our friendships actually mean something now. All I can say at this point though, this is way better. Way better. It's not over though. The trip from phony to authentic is slow and sometimes painful. Yet something amazing happens along the way, the pervasive fears start to have less of a hold. The fear of being alone becomes weaker. The fear of being discovered no longer grabs my throat it was the Reaper. It's simply a better way to live.

A Short Note on MLK

Martin Luther King. Jr is simply one of the most complete and remarkable American's ever. This country, like so many others, has so much to live down, a history of racism being at the top of that list. From slavery, to Jim Crowe, to "Separate but Equal", to racial profiling and today's ethnically divided slums. We need this holiday and we need to keep dreaming. We also need to keep acting on this dream, to keep living it. If we stop challenging racist institutions and only pat ourselves on our backs for what has been accomplished, then it is time to stop celebrating. Finally, as we celebrate this day, we cannot forget that MLK's conviction not only came from his life, but also from his faith. Let's have the guts to ask God for the eyes he gave King. That is a risky prayer that just might lead to a world that looks more like a fulfilled dream.