x_maker: (Couch)
[personal profile] x_maker
Mr. Kylun made a good point today, and I've spent the better part of the morning thinking about it. About why being a mutant, and specifically doing what I can do, is important to me. I know the instant I say that my abilities aren't much compared to others', I always get a bunch of people providing a contrasting opinion. But that's not exactly true.



Shiro can fly and project plasma. Lorna can manipulate magnetic fields. Manuel can sense and control emotional states. Jubilee makes explosive flashes of light and heat. These are all active powers, they *do* something. Kitty walks through walls, Jamie duplicates himself, Clarice teleports. Active, and quite enviable.

Then you have the mutations like mine, the non-triggered passive ones. My brain works differently than most people's, the same way that Kyle's body does, or Jay's, or Dr. McCoy's. It's a passive ability, just something different about how I am. In a way, it's as passive as Clarice's skin, or Mr. Wagner's tail, or Lorna's hair.

So the obvious conclusion would be "what do I do with it". And as you're all aware, I build things. I see them in my head, and it's a simple matter of getting the material and putting it together, it's always been as simple as that. I can't blink and make a device just appear, nor can I wiggle my fingers and make parts fly together. All I can do is think it up, and the rest is accomplished the same way anyone else would do it.

And it's not like I'm completely unique there. People without my power have invented things that were fantastic for their time. Marconi, Tesla, Ford, Whitney -- all the way to our own McCoy and Xavier. When it comes down to it - I technically don't do anything that couldn't conceivably be done by anyone else.

What matters is that I DO it. I can be as far removed from Edison and Ford as they were from the guy who picked up trash on the street. I have this ability that if I cultivate it, if I push it hard enough, I can be like nothing the world's ever seen before.

And I like that. I like the feeling of uniqueness that gives me. Yes, I know we're all unique in our own ways - I just feel that this is mine. And I know that if I were just a "normal human", I wouldn't have it. I'd have something else to make me unique, theoretically. But probably not.

Thus, I'm proud of what I am and what I can do. I don't feel that I should ever be ashamed of it or try and hide it. I've read the papers, I know the claptrap about mutants being the "next evolutionary step" and "humanity's replacement" are falsehoods. We're just, as it has been often said, people with a little extra gift that sets us apart. In that regard - and it is undeniable and inevitable - we will always be in some way set apart. I don't see that as something to be ashamed of. It's a simple truth, why not revel in it?

In the physical world, I have one roommate who can fly and sing four-part harmony by his lonesome, and another one who can smell whether or not the milk's gone bad from all the way across campus. I have friends that turn into cats, teachers that lift card with their mind, and classmates that treat the laws of physics as mere suggestions.

Me? It's an achievement some days to use the stairs without the handrail. In the physical world, I am limited by my handicap. It's another undeniable truth.

But in my mind - inside my head I am unique. My gift is to take that and make it physical, to bring that uniqueness of mine, what makes me special, into the outside world.

I will never stop being proud of that. It is not all I have, but it is what I have. It is not all that I am, but it is who I am. I am a student, an inventor, a friend, a son, a half-assed piano player, a horrible poker player, a reasonably decent point guard, and the most innovative mind to ever pick up a tool since the first cro-magnon used a rock to crack a walnut. And I am a mutant, as well.

I can be proud of all those things.

JHF

Profile

x_maker: (Default)
John Henry Forge

April 2013

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28 2930    

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 6th, 2025 06:26 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios