Muse/Fandom: Goren/LOCI Prompt: #1. What is your worst character flaw? Word Count: 904 Open to roleplay: Yes.
None of us like to think about our flaws, yet they exist whether or not we acknowledge them. It seems to make sense to acknowledge them them so that we might more easily understand and, if necessary, control them. Yes, it sounds simple, and no, it isn't simple at all.
Aristotle held forth that the middle state between any extremes on a continuum was the ideal, the virtuous place for an individual to strive. Take loyalty as an example.
Disloyalty ---- Loyalty ---- Blind Loyalty
I'm sure there's a better description for blind loyalty but I can't think of it right now. Nonetheless, loyalty would be the golden mean philosophically speaking and that is where my biggest flaw tends to pop up and bite me every time. No, I'm not talking about my ability to spout off on various topics seemingly at will to the point someone close to me likes to joke that I "read that on his box of Wheaties this morning". I'm talking about trusting ideals or people to the point that I'll blindly follow them even when confronted with all evidence to the contrary.
Blind loyalty to ideals was all well and fine in the military and it worked not too badly as a rookie cop on the streets of New York, but as a detective, it’s definitely a flaw. I’ve met those – not often mind you, but often enough – who have been able to sense that flaw and use it to burrow in under my armour and needle me on a personal level. With people, it’s usually those I've let get close, or who've managed to get close to me despite all my best efforts to drive them away. As much as I want and seek approval from those around me, I’m not good at maintaining relationships unless there is some element of loyalty on my part involved. Declan Gage is a good example of this and I’ll eventually get back to him, just not here. Not yet. That particular wound is a little raw, which is why maybe I should think about it now.
Declan took me under his wing while I was in the military as part of the Criminal Investigative Division – something I’m not sure to this day how I managed to get into given my family history. Maybe by that time I’d gotten good enough at pretending to be normal that I was able to pass as a normal human being. Maybe that was why he turned his attention to me out of all the agents in Korea; he alone could see the disconnect between what I was and who I was pretending to be. He took an ability I already innately possessed – that of being able to adjust and adapt to what other people needed me to be – and turned it into something I could use as a career builder once I got out of the military. Even after he and his methods were discredited, I couldn’t let go of him, of the family of choice I had with him and Jo. It was better than the family of accident I had waiting for me back in Brooklyn.
Something else I suppose I’ll never fully understand is my blind loyalty to family – not necessarily my own but the ideal of a family as being somewhere where you can always return to and they have to take you. I went into the military to get away from them and their particular brand of insanity. I got a chance to travel the world and see things so far removed from the day to day life I had known. Having my college courses paid for was just a bonus on top of getting as far away from home as possible and I admit that I enjoyed every second of my freedom. In the end, it was my family of accident that drew me out of the military and back to the streets of Brooklyn. Someone had to step up and take care of my mother. My brother certainly wasn’t doing a great job of it, leaving me with the task. I never questioned that, not once and I’m not really questioning it now. She was my mother and when she needed me, I had to be there. I was the only one left to do what needed to be done and I owed her that much, even if she never understood what I had given up for her. Turns out there’s a very very fine line between love and hate that I didn’t see until it was all over. My blind loyalty to that ideal of family literally blinded me, allowing both families I had a claim with to ultimately… well to stick with a theme, blind side me.
So much for my being articulate.
I should sum this up before I lose track of my train of thought again. I think that’s part of the cost of dwelling on your flaws for any length of time, eventually you can take any virtue and make it a vice. If you trust too much in blind loyalty, then any change is apt to leave you like a scared little boy all over, insecure in your abilities and adrift in the flotsam and jetsam. Thus, my worst character flaw is my blind loyalty to ideas, people, and ideals that I should know better than to trust as concrete and unchangeable.