Violence, that's how they call you.
There are many other names for you, such as the dark side of human nature, the internalized violent impulses, the need for catharsis when the human mind can no longer bear the burden, the contempt for rules and laws, the uncivilizable dregs that can only survive at the bottom of society, the cynics of modernization, and so on. I think we have habitually regarded you as the most primitive emotional impulse in Marc Spector's personality.
But what is the truth? Jake Lockley. Is the real you really as one-sided and superficial as those simplistic understandings depict, just the most uncontrollable, bloodthirsty and violent symbol of madness between Marc Spector's rationality and sensibility? You know, whenever Marc Spector encounters a moment of despair that shatters his rationality as himself, you appear. You replace Steven Grant, who can only degenerate as a playboy and is powerless to fight against the horrible truth of the world. Almost every time you show up, it seems that people can cheer loudly for the violence and absolute carnage you display.
But if you are really the garbage recycling station and waste disposal plant in the heart of a poor and unfortunate vigilante, dealing with the dirtiest and most unbearable darkness and blood in his miserable world, then why do we always find your presence when we discuss all the topics about Marc Spector's longing to seek love and be loved? And the person who actually made Marc Spector, this body, plant a seed in the world and have it bear fruit was neither Marc Spector himself nor Steven Grant, the wealthy Jewish businessman loved by Marlene.
Jake Lockley, when we talk about you, most people may selectively forget the most important concept that is never mentioned in the dark and dirty narratives of blood and violence: love. This topic, which seems to be the furthest from violence and primitive impulses, is undoubtedly the reason for your birth and the cause for which you strive. Love. It sounds like it has nothing to do with Jake Lockley, but it is the solid core that constitutes the foundation of your existence.
Love. I think when people talk about violence, they always forget that even if human nature is lost and civilization ceases to exist, as one of the most primitive emotions, love still occupies a very important part in the chaotic crucible of human nature. So, if we have to talk about you, Jake Lockley. We can't just talk about violence. We also have to talk about the love that has the same weight as the violence of every punch you unhesitatingly throw at criminals, every powerful kick that breaks every nasal bone, and every hideous wound that makes blood splash out.
It's not about being mysterious and talking about some metaphysical theory. It's about speaking frankly about the most overlooked existence in the deepest misunderstandings of Jake Lockley by the world —— Diatrice, your daughter. The crystallization of the love between Jake Lockley and Marlene, the light that can truly redeem a scarred soul in this troubled, chaotic world that will undoubtedly continue to exist. It is the only reason why a New York taxi driver living at the bottom of society, who is exposed to violence and foul language every day, is still willing to sacrifice for justice.
It is also the only reason why you can't bring yourself to do it now.
Jake Lockley. You can't kill an innocent child, even if you think you are the embodiment of all the violent impulses that Marc Spector can't do but you can. But let's be honest with each other, my child who is the most deeply hidden in the guise of a priest, a son who is willing to get his hands stained with blood and tries to deceive the world that he no longer needs to seek to be loved. A son who tries to prove to the world that his madness is just the most primitive violent impulse and that there is no room for the word "love" in primitive emotions, the most misunderstood person.
I believe this is not the first time we have been honest with each other, nor will it be the last time we expose each other's most reluctant-to-be-uncovered scars. But if I can't see the deepest sorrows in my sons' hearts like a real father, then I can't call myself your father, nor can I even call myself your god.
The birth of you and Steven may be simply attributed to the fact that fate has a probabilistic preference in arranging the sufferings of mortals. Regarding the early mental trauma that Marc Spector suffered, the poor man who was hung upside down in the dark basement and bled continuously. Your Uncle Ernst, the culprit who caused your trauma, exposed you to a scarred world. The impulse to abuse needs no reason, just like a wild beast needs to tear the flesh of its prey with its fangs and claws, and like your late mother who would precisely cut open the good red meat with a knife in those TV shows. As a deviant former Christian, you are not a vegetarian, so you know that everything just happened like that. Killing, bleeding, and then death comes. In the hideous and miserable corpses, you see the most pitiful sorrow of humanity —— violence, without a reason, without a destination.
A child who has not yet reached adulthood cannot bear the huge impact. In every sleepless night, in the painful struggles that only the moon knows, he cannot count the pain of seeing blood in his dreams. The reason why you were born is to keep facing those horrible memories for Marc Spector, those injuries, that blood, those broken human tissues, the internal organs flowing out of the wounds, and the darkness that will belong to you in the future, those dead people.
Your birth, just like Steven Grant's need to bear the decency of society and the civilized rationality in human nature, is just that, with no special reason. But society doesn't always have a fair view of naturally occurring existences. Obviously, Steven is more popular, and you and Marc have no objections to that. However, Marc Spector became Moon Knight, and Jake Lockley became, in people's praise of violence: that devil, the absolute executioner, the embodiment of violence, the handler of dirty work.
Perhaps this is a bit exaggerated, but you know yourself that your existence and the trials you have faced alone make you stronger than Marc Spector. You are more willing to drink the harsh cheap alcohol at the bottom of society than to lie on a soft mattress worth millions of dollars in a luxury mansion and dream of being a wealthy Jewish man. You always mock Steven Grant's extravagance. However, compared to these trivial matters, what you care about and haven't honestly told your two brothers is your heart. In the dark tide filled with violence, there is that cry, the longing for light, rather than being willing to walk alone in the blood and violence forever.
You long for love more than Marc Spector does.
You long to feel love more insatiably than what Steven Grant gets from Marlene's side.
When you take a short break from the underground bar filled with the smell of nicotine and alcohol, from those beggars who haven't had hot water to bathe for months and smell all over, your compassion for the poor and the people at the bottom is also the question you ask: Who will love you? Marc Spector suffers from dissociative identity disorder and is enslaved eternally by the so-called crazy god, your father. His sufferings have won him too much sympathy. Marlene loves him, Gena loves him, the third-tier agent in the Avengers loves him, and even the Black Widow, the red death angel holding a crossbow who has been deeply hurt by men, loves him. And what about Steven Grant? He is so charming that countless covetous eyes will throw flirtatious glances at him when he walks on the street. Among my three sons, Marc and Steven seem to have reasons to be loved, either being pitiful enough or lucky enough. But what about Jake Lockley?
Isn't your heart, in the torment of how you can be worthy of being loved, secretly return to Marlene's side without Marc Spector and Steven Grant knowing, trying to prove to her, to the world, and also to yourself: Look, the embodiment of violence also has the right to be loved.
Being loved, a too cliché proposition. But it never fails to appear in the deconstruction of violence. And as a god, a bystander, the one who has always witnessed how your souls struggle in this world, and also as the one who exists in your destiny, I will naturally not try to mock your thoughts and the motives of your actions. What we are talking about is not the future or what you will do. It is a story that has already happened, a story of your attempt to prove but only to find failure: the miserable Marc Spector is pitiful enough for empathizers to love, and the charming Steven Grant is charming enough for anyone to love. But Jake Lockley. The most ordinary-looking, the most violent, and the one who bears the most blood and杀戮, seems to have no reason to win love.
This may be too sad or too pitiful, but after all, you are not Marc Spector. The part of the soul that your brain has divided for you has no crying weakness and no self-pity. You are strong enough and powerful enough. So, after your relationship with Marlene failed, you were still able to face the cruelty of the world. You know that your only daughter is the proof that you tried to earn the right to be loved and that there was at least a short time when a soft river flowed through the dry and cracked soil that was once nourished by love, no longer filled only with ruthlessness and cruelty.
But precisely because of your strength, your forbearance, and your unrelenting violence when you vent, in the trial where you tried to save your daughter and held in your hand an object that, with just a gentle throw, could kill another child of the same age as your daughter, you said that word: No. You didn't want to do this.
You didn't want to kill an innocent life of the same age as your daughter. You didn't want to continue to pretend to be the devil who really doesn't care about the injuries and bloodshed of life and can get pleasure from pure violent venting. Even if you are strong enough, powerful enough, and able to hold back the tears that haven't been shed, when you look at that young face as tender as your daughter's, the disguise that you can deceive the world and make people believe that you enjoy the pleasure of killing and bleeding can only end in complete fragmentation.
Jake Lockley, of course, we know that among the voices talking about you, the most words are expressions of admiration for you. Among those admirers who have a superficial understanding of you, just seeing your brutality and your calmness when you kill the criminals who deserve to die, they project all their beautiful fantasies about violence onto you. People are always good at finding self-moving feelings of praise for the beautiful in the sufferings they have never experienced. Also, precisely because people have never experienced the irreversible brain damage caused by violence, they worship the ability to use violence to solve the problems of the hooligans and murderers that the law and civilization cannot solve. People's misunderstandings of you and your strength have just right formed this decades-long "murder". But now, I have lifted the mask covering your head.
Just like putting on the Moon Knight's cowl for Marc Spector, the coming-of-age ceremony I gave him is your unmasking ceremony. This is not out of my pity for you, but a necessary thing that a god, a father, must do to love his son equally.
Just one failure is enough for you to give up the desire to argue again from the misunderstandings of others. You are too sober and remember those bloody memories too deeply. We have quarreled in the past when vultures, rats, and maggots all came to you seeking the sacrifice of the dead, but you held back every impulse to kill and shed blood for Marc Spector. Your father god already knows your true nature. It is not the violence that fools admire, but the strength that has already had its face wet with blood in the blood and violence, and the determination you have already made.
If we want to talk about the ultimate dedication of human beings, not asking for anything in return, perhaps you have lost the qualification to be among them because of having a daughter with Marlene. But making mistakes is still something that a father needs to forgive and tolerate. In fact, you are always making mistakes, and humans are always making mistakes. Making mistakes is not a sin, but a proof of the vivid existence of humans. I have witnessed this in history for a long time and firmly believe that humans will inevitably make mistakes endlessly. You know that longing for love is not about those cliché stories, because if Jake Lockley really has no complaints about bearing the waste after those madnesses, then he cannot be regarded as another thought living in Marc Spector's mind.
Sometimes, we always take it for granted that what we see with our own eyes must be the truth. That's why the world doesn't hesitate to think that everything you bear doesn't need to be complained about, and even doesn't need to be mentioned again. But God is not a mortal, and the moon is not the ruthless sun that will scorch everything in its flames. Because of the violence you have committed, the arms you once cut off with a chainsaw, the terrifying coronation on your face, the blood all over you, and when you went deep into the complex sewers and tore the bodies of the rat people into blurred pieces that could no longer taste the flesh of any child in the rotten bloody river, every night, the moon hangs high in the sky and knows very well about the violence that you seem to have no regrets about but actually have just made up your mind to bear.
So, this time, we meet alone. We are not talking about Marc Spector. We are not talking about Steven Grant. We meet under the moonlight, not like years ago, when a crazy god tried to incite his follower who seemed no different from an executioner to become a meat butcher, with a relationship of irreconcilable conflict. But if I must love my Moon Knight as a father loves his son, then I will naturally not just simply talk about Marc Spector.
I will also talk with you about the deepest topics. About the violence, behind those shallow misunderstandings, there is a strong person who has forever given up the qualification to be loved and is willing to watch his light fall into the arms of another person.
Jake Lockley, you know that in front of a god, a mortal has no lies and the truth cannot be hidden. You know that under the moon, you cannot lie, and you cannot deny it again: Longing for love is your sin, the result of your once attempt to prove but failure.
I will not call you violence. I will call you my son. He loves the poor, the neglected, and the forgotten deeply. He endures the most ruthless violence, walks in the darkest world, makes up his mind for his brother, and bears the heaviest responsibility for everyone. He is the embracer who knows the weight of being loved better because he knows the pain of violence.
Your hands soaked in blood are warmer than the hands of anyone who has never experienced violence. And now, you should get the thing that you have given to others for a long time but have never had for yourself.
When you embrace those who are deeply unfortunate and suffering, the moon will embrace you. Just like a father embracing his son.