To: Brook Haupenstaat, forwarded from fairyqueen1111@hotmail.com
Subject: I know this isn’t your real email
Hi Titania,
1st of all, I think this is ridiculous. ;-) I have to have an extra email account with my alias in it—it’s part of being on the campus supe team. Seriously, gorgeous. Unless you can show me your contractual obligation to keep your ID secret, I’m going to keep teasing you as much as I want. You can’t stop me.
Just had to get that off my chest. Still, if you are going to be all weird about this, thanks for setting up an account that lets me contact you. It’s been great hanging out lately, and I’ve been a little worried about what would happen if an emergency came up right when we were scheduled to meet—since I didn’t have any way to get in touch.
Sure, a phone number would be better—but I guess I can understand your not wanting to give personal information out to strangers. I’m sure your mother would be proud.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the question you asked me last week—whether I think I’m a different person with and without the mask. There aren’t too many people I can talk to about that kind of thing. It’s pretty much just my friends in the NSC, but we don’t really talk about the serious personal stuff too often. Usually when we get together we trade stories about what we’ve been up to and the crazy people we’ve met. You know, stuff like, “This girl was jaywalking across a wet street while texting, and then she yelled at me when I snatched her out from in front of a speeding car!” jk.
I think I do act a little different when I’m Softstone. I’m still me, whether I’m wearing a mask or a baseball cap, but there are a lot of little differences that probably add up to a different personality. Just as an example, I’m a lot more careful about my language when I’m representing for the NSC. It’s not like I go around cussing the rest of the time or anything. Still, even though the occasional f-bomb from some random guy on the street isn’t a big deal, do you remember all the controversy a few years back when the Velvet Avenger went on Conan? And that was late-night TV! So we’re all really careful about how we express ourselves when we’re in costume.
But at the same time, I can only use my powers when I’m Softstone—or when I’m hanging out with people who know who I am. We supers usually don’t like that phrase—“use my powers.” It’s not like we all have this extra something we have to consciously use. For a lot of us, it’s the opposite. I mean sure, I have to think about melting stone, but I don’t “turn on” the ability to benchpress 1200 pounds. So whenever I’m in the real world, I have to remember to act like things are heavy or that it’s supposed to be struggle to open a really tight jar.
;-) That’s just a couple of day to day things. Deep down, I guess I’m always me. When you think about it, being a super is just a really specialized job. Maybe I can’t put it aside at the end of the day, but then a lot of people without superpowers have careers that they live and breathe 24-7. The toughest thing about my job is probably knowing that I can’t tell most of my friends what I did at work today. (That’s a big reason why a lot of supers hang out exclusively with other supers. I think that would be kind of boring, but I can understand why they do it.)
Thanks for asking such a great question! I’ll try to come up with something to ask you this week… something insightful that doesn’t demand any personal information. Hm, I’ll have to think about that.
In the meantime, I hope your week is going great. Don’t let homework get you down!
Softstone
