(Primary Sources by Corrine Manning, Continued part 2. CW: mentions of assault)
The Fantastic Four were humans first. They were four humans, Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben, who were particularly devoted to their country. They took it upon themselves to try to beat the Russians in the space race, but when building the ship they failed to consider the effect the atmosphere’s cosmic rays would have on it, let alone on their own bodies. When the ship crash-landed they all had fantastic abilities: Reed, to stretch (Mr. Fantastic!) and Johnny , to burst into flames (The Human Torch!). It’s the last two, Sue and Ben, that I find particularly interesting. Sue now had the ability to become invisible (Invisible Girl), and Ben was transformed into an orange monster with incredible strength (The Thing). Even though the four pledged to use their power to help mankind, there’s something about Ben and Sue that feels different. Initially, Invisible Girl’s ability is useful for intellectual purposes but also seems like the highest form of self protection—to disappear. And Ben, The Thing, loses all recognizable human features, making him distinctly different from the others. The transformation leaves him frustrated and hostile. Unlike the other three who can blend into the human race, The Thing can’t. He is visibly stuck outside of it, which results in moments of fantastic rage. “Well maybe they’re right! Maybe I am a monster!”
He shouted: told her to leave it alone.
Then people will look at you and think, Oh boy, she’s crazy, I’m not messing with her. No one will mess with you.
Sue’s difference within the group goes beyond gender: her abilities changed and strengthened over time. Initially, her powers were ridiculous, useless. Even when under the protection of invisibility she could be made visible from someone touching her. Her power does very little to deter Miracle Man or the Submariner, villains who use her to get to the others.
“Ah! I thought so!! It’s a human! An invisible Human!”
“Oh!”
“Stop struggling! No one can escape Prince Namor.”
Seeing that her plight is helpless, Sue Storm becomes visible again.
Issue #4 The Sub Mariner.
“Too bad invisible girl!! It won’t work! I know you’re there! Become visible! The Miracle Man commands you!! Ahh! That’s more like it! And you must obey me!! I am your Master!! Signal the other member of the Fantastic Four!! I shall defeat them forever, here and now!!”
Like a girl in a trance, Susan Storm aims her small flare pistol into the sky, And…
Issue #3 Miracle Man
In the Submariner’s case, Sue’s defensive invisibility is active. To be passive, for Sue Storm, is to be visible—to give in to her visibility. Dr. Judith Lewis Herman affirms that though most hypnotic states come about from a place of choice, traumatic trancelike states do not. Celeste, the nun, even in the joy that she experiences within her disassociated states, complained that they were often “inopportune.”
[ T]hey had increased in frequency (occurring about once a week) and duration (lasting anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes) and she felt less able to prevent their onset at inopportune times or to snap herself out of this state when necessary.
Though a sense of calm can settle on the body, there’s also something frustrating in the acknowledgement that what’s triggering the response doesn’t deserve the response. As in, sometimes it comes from a friendly hand at the center of my back, a misunderstood phrase, or even a moment that requires intense concentration, when I’m just on the brink of figuring something out. In these moments, the more I want the state to end the longer it holds. There is something to be said here about memory— what we can recall and how we can use it. You don’t have to believe me but here’s what I can say, that for most events and situations I have a good memory, an ability to remember what is said in a conversation, the gestures someone else makes. Like anyone, there are places where I fail, moments when my experience does not seem to be chronicled or digested by my consciousness. According to Freudian psychoanalysts, consciousness is something passive. We naturally bring experience into our consciousness. It is an effort to keep consciousness and experience separate. Freud uses the example of a beach ball being held underwater, and that once it’s under, muscular defenses have to remain to maintain it, because naturally, experience and consciousness want to become one. It happened so suddenly, all by itself. Herbert Fingarette and Donnel Stern assert that consciousness might not be as passive as we think. We actually have to coax our consciousness to digest our experience. To, as Stern puts it, “haul up a rock from the bottom.” Dissociation is not, in that sense, defensive. It is the personality’s last resort, when all other defensive measures have been overwhelmed. Seeing that her plight is helpless, Sue Storm becomes visible again. We only know what we can express through language, and its through language that the dissociated pieces can be reconstructed and placed together again, free of trauma and full of a new meaning. Through language we develop the ability to “correctly” process the event, to haul the rock upward. We must, Fingarette says, “conceive consciousness as active, not passive. It is something we ‘do.’ We are ‘doers,’ and consciousness is the exercise of a skill.” Reed: Just as I thought! You have greater powers of invisibility than you suspect, Sue! The problem is… How do you learn to control those powers? Fantastic Four Issue #22
London, January 2004
Dissociation is the inability to reflect on an experience. I am a secondary source. I have two primary sources.
A document saved as “It” that is dated, what I assume to be the day after my assault January 27th, 2004 (which I didn’t access until June 28th, 2008). I do not remember writing this despite the fact that I recognize it as my own writing. This document contains physical details that I don’t remember and in some cases do not believe. What I wrote gives the sense of flickering in and out. Even then, the events of the night come in the form of questions:
“Did I choose to sleep through it? Did I really wake up when I felt his fist knock against my jaw? Did I really apologize for the sound my teeth made?” Somehow the cosmic rays have altered your atomic structure…