I think it’s more useful to represent these things on separate axes. It’s not that someone is either privileged or cursed, or that these are some kinds of net positives and negatives that can be then summed together to place people on some kind of linear scale, but that these things exist simultaneously.

To use another tiresome metaphore from my own life – I’ve had at least tens, and more likely well over a hundred people tell me that I wasn’t human.* This has generally not been presented as an insult, but more as a “ha, ha, isn’t this funny and we’re recognizing your uniqueness” sort of thing. (I’ve recently kind of put my foot down in my social circle and said that I don’t how cute you think it is, saying that you don’t think I’m human is fucked up. Of course, the precipitating event was one involving both my current lab and the lab I’ll be moving into, with all of them merrily speculating on my actual background. While these are friendly coworkers, they aren’t folks I’d think of as my social circle. And… I mean, it would have been funny had I not been hearing it since I was eight, and looking at working with these people for a few more years. I’m in my forties, FCOL. Can we stop?)

But all that nonsense doesn’t negate the ways in which I have been and am ridiculously privileged. My appalling family – another axes of its own! – doesn’t negate that (especially since in other ways they gave me access to a lot of privilege – life is complicated). I’ve gotten to do so many cool things – people keep letting me do cool stuff, it really amazes me. I’m able to do so many things. And yes, I’ll never know what is innate ability and what is chutzpah. I have a large and pretty tight social circle, and within it are an awful lot of close friends. (Not so many who are local at the moment, sadly.) This is all small beans compared to being super strong and invulnerable, but hey, apparently it’s enough that people have independently decided that I’m not human for most of my life.

I would feel a little more comfortable talking about Daniel as being cursed, just because in his pre-confinement existance it appears he never really pulled his head metaphorically above water. (By which I guess I mean achieving a certain degree of maturity and sense of direction, to be actively making choices to get the life you want, rather than be in a reactive mode. You don’t have to come from a good place, but somewhere in there, you have to get a glimpse of where you want to go.) His family situation sucked. His health situation sucked. His biodynamic powers tended to make him appear older and less vulnerable than he was inside, and made it a lot harder for him to connect with people. He arguably fell in with the wrong people (I want more backstory). That’s a lot to get past.

It would be interesting to see how many people would take up Alison’s power set, if offered, even knowing that it was likely to set them apart from people. (It’s also interesting that the usual out of the superhero – the secret identity – is something she abandoned on her own.) It’s my observation that a lot of people do crave a sense of meaning in their lives, but at the same time feel like they are too insignificant to accomplish it in any major way – Alison’s powerset on the surface of it would seem the antidote, wouldn’t it?

(It’s also my personal observation that the world is absolutely full of interesting and meaningful things that are just begging to be worked on. Boredom and ennui are completely fixable, when not fixed by depression.)

* Just in case it isn’t completely clear, this is ridiculous. I’m quite bright, and predisposed to think in unusual ways. I’ve had a unusual upbringing, and an unusual life. But easily within human parameters – this always says more about the speaker than about me.