Today I want to address something very important, and I’m going to do it with the help of yet another animated TV show example.

This one is really fitting, actually.

I’m going back to that show I used to watch every day, Justice League/Justice League Unlimited. (JLU.)

Until I started watching that show I had never heard of at least two of the members of the original league, that would be the Martian Man hunter, and Hawk Girl.

I like both of them, but I am focusing om Hawk Girl, also known as Shirira Hall.

To make a very long story short, Hawk Girl appeared on Earth, claiming it was a mistake, but in reality she was on a secret military mission, to learn about the planet and the people. This was unknown to all her friends and fans until out of the blue, an alien warship showed up with her fellow Thanagarians in it. It pretty much went downhill from there. Her friends felt hurt that she had never trusted them enough to tell them and suspicious of the new comers, but they agreed to help them set up a defense on earth against their mutual threat, the Gordanians. However it soon turned out that the Thanagarians really wished to use Earth to build a sort of shield against their enemy, and in the process earth would be turned into an hourglass shaped hunk of itself, destroying all life on the planet.

Needless to say, Hawk Girl was horrified when she learned this, and more so because she had helped her people to capture and neutralize the Justice League when they got too antsy. They had already escaped, so she found them and gave them the information hat she’d learned, none of them really wanted to trust her, but they took it.

Hawk Girl then returned to her people, only to be found guilty of treason, and locked away. There ensued a final battle between the League and the Thanagarians. Hawk Girl was reluctantly set free by Wonder Woman, and then helped Green Lantern to defeat her former fiancé, and shut down the bypass before it could activate.

The Thanagarians recognized their defeat and left, of course leaving hawk Girl behind, she was then voted on to stay or be kicked out of the League, but she left before hearing their decision. She told GL she was going to find a place where there were no more secrets, no more lies. And she left.

Hawk Girl later was readmitted to the league, they had voted in her favor, but it took a long time for the rest of the world to forgive her, if they ever did. And things got no easier for her in other areas.

So, why am I telling you all this? Well, I want you to understand the scope of the story. It involved a lot of deception, a lot of betrayal, and  a lot of bitterness, which is perhaps the worst, in my book at least.

My major complaint about the whole movie they made about this was that despite the outcome, Hawk Girl’s own friends did not let go of their anger for a long time. Well, I should say, not all of them did. (Flash is awesome.)

Also, when I watched a commentary on the movie, I learned that many of the real life fans of the show though Hawk Girl should have been left to her fate by Wonder Woman.

Since then I’ve run across other situations where the fans were the same, they had absolutely no mercy for the characters. And the characters aren’t even real. Nothing they did actually hurt these fans, or endangered our world.

What does endanger us, is their attitude.

Because I have to wonder, if you cannot forgive someone who is not even real, how can you forgive someone who is?

You may think, “Well, if the characters aren’t real, it can’t hurt to hold a grudge against them.” And I would have to politely disagree.

For two reasons: One being, many fans of superheroes consider the heroes to be quite real, to the point where they are irrational about it, and if they can think that way about them, they can think that way about anyone.

The other reason is that I have not missed the things people say about those in politics, or those who are just famous, or even those who are not but who have a small public voice. Horrible, terrible things are said of them.

It is a sad fact that humans beings can be very cruel to each other.

(I’m going to get more into Hawk Girl herself in part two, but for now I’m focusing on this problem.)

And I am sorry, but what a person will say about a fictional character, they will nine out of ten times say about a real human being. I have heard it many times.

The fact is, we are not aware of real or unreal when we pass judgement on people or their actions. That is a simple truth. Our brains will make no distinction, and neither will our feelings. All that changes is how personal it is.

Someone who cannot be merciful when it is not personal will have a hard time being merciful when it is; unless they are working from the inside out, but that is rare. Our attitudes do not switch on and off with our televisions or phones. (That is so a quote I want to remember.)

This goes for other things besides anger by the way, it goes for hate, sadness, exhilaration, envy, and host of other emotions.

I’ll be getting more into the first one in part two, until next time–Natasha.