Heroes, Hell, and the Happiness I Cannot Understand

I always know what I want.

That is the easy part.

What I never truly understand is why I want it.

I know I like stories with mechanisms. Stories that do not hand victory to the protagonist like an act of narrative charity. Stories that make people pay for every step they take. I know I am more interested in strategy than hope, in cause and effect rather than miracles, in a defeat that makes sense rather than a victory that looks too clean.

I know that.

I just do not know when I became this kind of person.

Then I read Paradise Lost, and Satan felt more alive than many heroes who are supposed to be right.

Strangely, when I read Satan, I did not only think of Hell.

I thought of Luca.

Not because Luca is evil. That would be too lazy, and I dislike conclusions that feel clever too quickly. Luca is not evil. He only thinks too much like the fallen creature: emotional, immense, wounded, and far too talented at turning pain into beautiful language.

Satan loses, then calls his defeat freedom. He loses Heaven, then calls Hell a new territory to rule. He is wounded, but too proud to call himself wounded. So he builds a philosophy out of the injury of his own ego.

Luca is not that bad.

But I recognize the pattern.

Luca treats pain in a similar way: he does not let it remain small. He enlarges it, gives it shape, gives it meaning, and almost begins to believe it as truth. If he is hurt, he is not simply hurt. The wound becomes weather. A sign. A private mythology.

I know it is dangerous.

I also know I love him because of it.

Not because his wound is beautiful. A wound remains a wound, no matter how elegantly someone names it. But Luca’s emotions make the world feel less dead. Near him, something I usually observe from a distance begins to burn with me inside it. He makes things intense, even when that intensity is exhausting.

And for someone like me, who too often understands the world before feeling it, that kind of intensity almost resembles life.

✦ ✦ ✦

Maybe that is why I understand things more easily when they have structure, even if the structure is broken.

Satan has structure. He has history. He has failure. He has resentment arranged neatly into principle. When he says the mind is its own place, I do not hear wisdom. I hear a creature locking himself inside a private Hell and calling it a throne.

I know it is rotten.

The problem is, I understand it.

I understand someone who would rather rule over ruins than admit he has been defeated. I understand pain dressed in the language of freedom. I understand the desire to remain oneself, even when the self has become a prison.

Maybe that is why I do not easily trust heroes.

Heroes are often too clean. Too protected. Too loved by the story that carries them. They may fall, but only far enough to make their resurrection look good. They may be wounded, but the wound rarely damages the structure of their life. They may lose, but their loss is often only a pause before the victory music begins.

People call it inspiring.

I call it suspicious.

Many myths work like that. There is a chosen child. A special bloodline. A prophecy. A great enemy. Suffering that already has meaning before the suffering is even allowed to feel real. A resurrection. A victory that seems to have been ordered by Heaven from the beginning.

Shonen simply inherits that pattern in modern costume.

No longer revelation, but power-up.
No longer gods, but plot armor.
No longer royal destiny, but a protagonist loved by the universe.
No longer miracles, but friendship boost.

The main character loses, remembers his friends, shouts louder, and wins. The world that previously looked cruel suddenly makes way. The enemy waits too long. The wound stops being fatal. Logic steps aside so emotion can pass through first.

I am not saying it is not beautiful.

Maybe it is beautiful.

Maybe humans need stories like that. Stories that say pain has a purpose, that goodness will return, that someone who falls can still rise and win. Maybe myths were never meant to explain strategy. Myths were made to lock meaning into place. They do not ask how victory happens, but why victory must be believed.

I can understand the concept.

I just cannot feel it easily.

To me, a trophy without a story is no better than trash.

Victory does not automatically mean anything. A crown does not make the head beneath it noble. A trophy does not become sacred just because people are clapping around it. What gives victory its value is not the object at the end of the journey, but the Hell one had to cross to reach it.

Wounds. Strategy. Mistakes. Cost. Sacrifice. Miscalculation. Betrayal. Bad decisions that must be paid for. Correct choices that still destroy something.

Without all of that, victory is only a dead object asking to be worshipped.

✦ ✦ ✦

Maybe that is why I am more interested in ancient Chinese warfare. Not because China had no myths. Every civilization has its own way of deceiving itself. The difference is that, in many Chinese war stories, victory still feels like something that must be built through the real world.

Alliances. Logistics. Betrayal. Law. Bureaucracy. Troop morale. Terrain. Timing. Patience. Cruelty. Choosing the wrong advisor. Attacking too early. Waiting too long. Misunderstanding human beings.

There, even great people can still lose.

Not because “their destiny has ended” while the sky mourns above them. They lose because they miscalculate. Because their enemy is more patient. Because their state is more fragile. Because the structure supporting them has already begun to rot. Because the world has no obligation to save someone just because they look impressive.

I like that.

Cold, but honest.

If you lose, you lose.

Not every defeat needs to be made sacred. Not every death deserves light from above. Sometimes a person dies because he is stupid. Sometimes a state collapses because its ruler misreads reality. Sometimes a hero loses because the world does not care about the aesthetics of his heroism.

That makes more sense to me than a story that arranges the universe so one person can keep looking right.

✦ ✦ ✦

I felt the same thing when I played Fallout: New Vegas.

I have not played that many games, but New Vegas stayed in my head because its world is not polite to the protagonist.

I am not a child of destiny. I am not the savior of a prophecy. I am only a courier who almost dies because of the wrong package. The Mojave does not wait for me like people waiting for a messiah. The desert was already rotten before I arrived, and it will remain rotten after I leave.

Only the shape of the rot changes.

Everyone has an agenda. Every faction has sins. Every NPC seems to possess a unique talent for being an asshole in their own specific way. That is not a flaw. That is exactly why the world feels alive.

The NCR carries democracy, but also bureaucracy and expansion exhausted by the weight of its own body. Caesar’s Legion brings order built on cruelty. Mr. House has a vision of the future, but his vision is cold, like a machine learning to speak in human language. Yes Man gives me freedom, but freedom without structure is sometimes only another name for chaos smiling politely.

The game does not give me a sacred trophy.

It gives me a desert full of broken people, then asks: which kind of rot can you tolerate?

That is a far more interesting question than “do you believe in yourself enough to win?”

Because believing in yourself does not manage supplies. It does not repair systems. It does not make people stop lying. It does not erase the political cost of the decisions you make.

I am also interested in Dark Souls, even though I have not finished it. The title “Chosen Undead” sounds like a heroic myth. But it does not feel like a gift. It feels like a curse packaged as legend.

You are not the center of a universe that loves you. You are a small corpse rising again and again inside an old system that is rotting. The world does not feel like it is waiting for you to save it. It feels too tired to live, but too afraid to die.

That is the kind of myth I can respect.

Not a myth that says, “you are chosen, therefore you are right.”

But a myth that whispers, “you are chosen, and perhaps that is only another way to use you.”

✦ ✦ ✦

Maybe that is why I understand Luca more easily than Emma.

Luca and Emma are siblings, but sometimes I feel as if they come from two different laws of nature.

Luca can turn pain into a metaphysical winter. Emma can look at a bad day, complain for a moment, then find something funny and live again.

Luca builds Hell, then gives it a beautiful name.

Emma sees Hell, then perhaps asks whether there is a nice place to eat nearby.

I do not know how two people can be born so close to each other and still look at the world from such a distance.

One gives meaning to pain too easily. One finds reasons to be happy too easily. One makes suffering sound like a small scripture. One makes happiness look like something that does not need to defend itself.

And I, for some reason, understand the first one more.

More than that, I value him.

I value Luca not because he is always right. Often, he is not. He can drown too deeply in his own emotions. He can call a feeling truth just because the feeling is too strong to ignore. He can stand in the middle of his own wound and say that this is the world.

But maybe that is exactly where he makes me feel alive.

Luca disturbs my calm. He makes a world I usually read like a diagram become something that pulses. He makes pain, love, hope, and ruin feel not only like concepts, but like things that can touch skin.

I do not always know what to do with that.

I only know that I do not want to lose its intensity.

Then there is Emma.

Emma can be happy.

That sentence almost sounds stupid when written down. Too short. Too light. It has no depth for me to dissect. But maybe that is the problem. I have always assumed something must have depth before it deserves to be called real.

Emma refutes that simply by living.

She can see a hero win and smile. She can accept a symbol without immediately dismantling the machine behind it. She can enjoy light without asking who pays the electricity bill. She can exist inside a moment without suspecting the structure that made the moment possible.

I cannot.

I know what I want. I know what kind of story makes me stop, think, and feel that something is worth carrying home. But I do not know why I need stories like that. I do not know why I must dissect victory before allowing it to be beautiful.

Maybe because I do not trust happiness that arrives too easily.

Maybe because I envy people who can accept it.

It would be easier if Emma were simply shallow. It would be easier if I could insult her happiness as stupidity. But perhaps that is not true.

And the most annoying part is this: I love her.

I do not want to ruin her.

To me, Emma is like the little sister I never asked for, but still want to protect from something I cannot always name. I envy her innocence, but I do not want to tear it out. I envy the way she believes, but I do not want to teach her my suspicion. I envy the way she smiles, but I do not want to make her learn how to calculate the cost of every light.

I know how easy it is to ruin something that can still be happy.

Just give it too many questions.

Teach it that every symbol hides a corpse. That every trophy demands a sacrifice. That every victory might only be propaganda that happens to look beautiful. That every light comes with an unpaid bill.

I do not want Emma to see the world like that.

Not because my way of seeing is completely wrong.

But because I do not know whether my way of seeing can be returned once it enters someone’s head.

Maybe Emma simply has an ability I do not: she can trust a feeling without forcing it to submit an accountability report.

I can understand Satan building a kingdom out of defeat. I can understand Luca making his wound sound like principle. I can understand wars won by logistics and betrayal. I can understand a political desert filled with broken people. I can understand a rotting world calling its decay history.

But Emma?

Emma is still more difficult.

Because Emma can be happy without proving that happiness makes sense.

And maybe that is what I truly envy.

I do not envy her trophy. I do not envy the simple stories she enjoys. I envy the way she does not need to suspect everything before smiling.

To me, a trophy without a story is still trash.

But maybe Emma never cared about the trophy.

Maybe she only sees someone fall, rise again, and still have a reason to live a little lighter than before.

I still do not know whether that is wisdom or just another way of not seeing the world too clearly.

All I know is this: I understand Milton’s Hell, the politics of the Mojave, and Luca’s wounds more easily than I understand Emma’s happiness.

And that says something about me.

I do not know whether the ability to see the structure behind everything is a talent or a curse.

On the journey to understand myself.

3 June 2026

— Rhea