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hareefaree · 10 months

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Thesis Process Journal - 6.20.23 - Intro, Intentions, & the Journey Begins

I’m in Kalyan, Maharashtra and I’m starting a thesis journal I will no doubt lose track of as soon as the grind begins. I’m making this journal because A) I need to be recording information as I work on this project anyway so I can have a good and sexy thesis book at the end of the year and B) to give me some clarity and point of reference as I work on this project. So far I’ve been primarily concepting in my sketchbook, and it's been loose, sketchy, ill defined, and hard to turn into something finalized. I’m creating this docs as an alternative to the plogging method, since this is more in line with how I approached my game dev class this past year and it generally worked. So here I am! Type type type type type.

PS to me and possible audience, I’ll probs also be copy + pasting these docs into my art blog for the fuck of it as well, but if I do do that this is initially written in G docs for my own ease of reference and just so I have a single place where everything is referenced and located. This is raw work diary for me. These ideas are half baked and probably more than a little trite. Enjoy.

Ok. So I’m in Kalyan, four years since I’ve been here last. My father and my mother’s childhood home are both functionally lost to me now - the Railway Quarters my dad was raised in is set to be demolished, and my grandmother is living with us in the States now, leaving my mother’s Mulund home and all of my grandparent’s effects lost to time. Because of this and the fact of all the changes I’ve been experiencing, the fact that I’m fully an adult now, I’ve been thinking a lot about legacy and expectation. This past year has been the progress of collecting history and trying to make art of it, but that’s been a detached process that ended up in a sort of muddled, over-explained final piece (the Dressmaker). That project had too many ideas contained within it and not enough clarity to carry it though - and I love subtlety and layer and depth but maybe I’m too interested in extricating myself from what I create and then too-late forcing my own vision and understanding into something I’ve tried to remain detached from. My sight is muddled. I don’t know myself.

So legacy, what does it mean? To me, it's complicated by migration and movement, risk and misery. My great grandparents suffered so my grandparents could suffer less so their kids could suffer less and I could ideally, suffer minimally. But we still expect suffering, and the misery clings to us like mold, even with all the privilege and shape we’ve tried to force ourselves into. I’m supposed to suffer so my possible kids won’t. I’m supposed to carry - no, have - a legacy.

What does expectation mean to an immigrant? To a child of immigrants? Who around us can judge us? Who can understand? Can our ancestors, our motherland - who know us filtered through language that we ourselves cannot speak fully, through a wide lens - expect things from us without knowing our contexts? Can our neighbors - who don’t know where or what or who we came from, possibly understand why we push and pull ourselves in the way we do? Can our parents - who transformed themselves into a different type of person, who keep their youths (affixed in an alternate, mythologized selfhood) in glass jars just out of our reach - expect the same from us as they did themselves? Can we understand others in our shoes - who all do different amounts of thinking of the shapes we squeeze ourselves into, who mold ourselves into different things? Are we, who remember our history with all the problematized emotions of generational trauma and orientalized understandings of our own bodies and lineages and sufferings, even capable of carrying anything into the future but ourselves?

I’ve been trying to separate myself from the things I write about while still writing about me. These palimpsests are functionally incapable of saying things about myself or what I want to comment on, and I wonder why editing and clarity-making is of particular distress to me. I want to make something of substance for my thesis, so I’m taking the effort of writing my thoughts as they come to me to force myself to think on them for longer than I would if I just dove into the making process.

This brings me back to my thesis. In regards to legacy, I was introduced to the idea of the tharavad, or ancestral home in Malayalam. Historically these homes served as the heart of the joint family, the place at which all members of a given family would call their home. It was the place the head of the household would live, would host the various branches of the family tree - a thing of pride. My maternal grandfather’s tharavad is in Chalakudy, Kerala, and it was split between him and his brother soon before he left the state to make his own home in Bombay. He’d been planning on moving back to Kerela in his twilight years and was hoping to build a small home on the portion of the tharavad that he inherited. A few months before the pandemic he, my mother, and I sat and tried to design the floorplan in Photoshop together. Then, soon after I graduated high school, he died. I’d been asking about the tharavad since, and in a conversation with my uncle, my grandfather’s eldest son, he described that Kerala tharavad as being nothing to him. His ancestral homeland - and mine, and my sister’s, and my cousin’s - was the flat in Mulund in which he was raised. That flat in Mulund - now no longer our home - was his legacy.

I think I want my thesis to rest inside a tharavad. To be about an ancestral home that I can no longer fit into. I have a vision of someone to big and too small for their surroundings walking in to the building, and room by room confronting a legacy that they have failed to fit into. I’m stealing my protagonist from a past, trite work about a failed politician trying to attend her sister’s wedding while distractedly falling into a fantastical world of forest goddesses and magically-growing trees-as-metaphor-for language-learning (there is no way I’d be able to fit those ideas into a five minute stop-motion film :P). But I’ve felt an affinity for my girl Elia for a while - she’s stuck with me since my senior year of high school. She - like me - is someone who’s falling and needs to be woken up by looking outside of herself.

This concept is still half baked as hell. But I will stick to the Tharavad and use it to guide me. I’ve the sense that its gonna be a running theme in my art for a while.

PRIORITIES

Story Dev

Early Idea Gen for Puppet Prototypes

“Look” research

#creations #journal #desi #process #projects #thesis #the reason I haven't posted more dressmaker journals #is because I haven't worked on it since school let out #and premiere won't let me export what I have.#Sorry if u were curious about that one I'm just taking a LOOOOONG break from that work before I figure out what to do with her bc.#i don't like it as what it is now #even tho i am proud of the effort that went into making her #lmao this was in my drafts for a whole month I'll be posting this backlog now since thesis is starting soon

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 4 years

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mm wait actually i got one more bummer take, which is: knowing that the magicians writers were too dumb to realize they had accidentally begun a beautiful epic romance, and knowing that the plan all along was for quentin/alice to be endgame because they are in the books(?) (which like we know they are liars but i am inclined to believe them on this precisely because it is so stupid), i don't know WHAT the fuck to do with the scene on the muntjac where alice is like, "btw when you go off to chain yourself to the monster forever, i too will be metaphorically killing myself by wiping my memory and personality and entire selfhood. i'm telling you this because actually this whole time i've been in love with you, despite the fact that the last time we had an interaction that was not totally tense and suspicious and bitter was in my kitchen like 10 episodes ago." and then she kisses him. in-universe, not entirely unlike their eventual s4 reunion, it makes a certain amount of character sense, certainly for alice who is haunted by her time as a niffin (both what she did, and how she misses it in certain ways), and associates her relationship with quentin with a certain nascent optimism in her fucked up life, and also probably at some point does wind up feeling grateful that he endured a ton of shit from her niffin self and ultimately saved her life; and, sure, for quentin, who is about to bid his life and everyone he knows and loves goodbye and chain himself to a monster for eternity, and who has already said goodbye to his best friend who is off being a goddess, and is generally not doing... Great. i too have hooked up with an ex in a moment of transition and complicated emotions!

but like trying to square how that scene actually plays out (which is to say.. less wildly uncomfortably unsexy than the hookup with poppy but not by a ton) with the knowledge that in the showrunners' mind quentin and alice was the show's big endgame romance, for which like one would presume that you would want to at this juncture of rekindling it suddenly at the end of a season where it had lain totally dormant portray it in romantic stirring terms to remind your viewers of the reasons they might want these particular attractive people to put their face on each other's face.... like what the fuck? like what the entire fuck?

#the magicians #the magicians critical

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eldritchsurveys · 4 years

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752.

Does your best friend bother you more than anyone else? >> --- Who is your best friend? >> --- Do you like someone right now? >> No. Do you even think you stand a chance with this person? >> --- Do you consider yourself truly happy? >> I don’t think of “happiness” as a constant state of being. It’s an emotion like any other -- you feel happy for a period of time, and then you return to baseline or you have a different emotion. So, yeah, sometimes I am happy. A lot of the time I’m something else (or nothing). Feeling one emotion all the time at the expense of others would be awful no matter what the emotion is.

How often do you cry? >> Relatively often, lately. It’s like once you decide to stop berating yourself for having feelings, you start just having them randomly and shit. I teared up watching a youtube video yesterday and it took me a couple of minutes to figure out that it was probably the effect of the music used in the video (he used a lot of that kind of “dramatic emotional moment” music that they use in movies to cue to your brain that you’re supposed to have An Emotion right now). Are you emotional? >> I mean, yes, I experience emotions... What is the worst thing you would do for 10 million dollars? >> No. Have you ever had/do you have an eating disorder? >> No. Have you ever cut/burned yourself intentionally? >> Yep. What do you think of people that do? >> I don’t have an opinion about other self-injurers? We all just tryna survive. What’s your opinion on drugs? Have you ever done any? >> I don’t have an opinion on drugs. Like, in general, I don’t have sweeping opinions on any broad subject like this! It doesn’t make sense to me and I am constantly frustrated at being asked what I think about a general concept as if my thoughts shouldn’t be based on contextual information and a basic understanding of nuance. Anyway. Yes, I’ve done drugs. Have you ever noticed the hidden adult jokes inside of kid shows/movies? >> Sure. Do you want to be famous? Why? >> Not at all. Because included amongst my highest values are my privacy and my ability to live my life on my own terms as much as possible. Also, it just flat-out doesn’t seem like a healthy way to live.

Do you sin often? >> Dude. What are your views on God? >> I don’t have any sweeping views on the concept of divinity. My opinion about the Abrahamic God specifically varies based upon what we’re talking about -- what holy text, what cultural interpretation, what sort of human-divine relationship, etc. What do you think happens after you die? >> My working interpretation is that the specific network that I think of as my consciousness will dissipate and that energy will rejoin the general concept of “consciousness”, from which every specific instance of consciousness arises. So to speak. Also, my body will decay (provided I’m not chemically processed and shut up in a metal box), worms will eat me, etc etc. Are you afraid to die? >> Yeah. But my feelings about death are more aptly described as, like, “holy dread”, or the kind of fear that is part-and-parcel with a strong feeling of awe and wonder. If you had the chance, would you want to know the date of your death? >> Fuck no, dude. Have you ever felt that you weren’t good enough? >> Yep. Do you have any siblings? If so, are you jealous of them? >> --- Do you have a good relationship with your parents? Why or why not? >> I don’t have any relationship with them. Because one abandoned me at birth and the other one flat-out doesn’t like who I am as a person.

Are you always wanting more? >> Sure. Hunger is one of my defining concepts. Do you make good first impressions? >> I don’t think I do, no, because I’m not interested in following certain social conventions that people expect me to. That’s not to say I’m rude, but when you refuse to shake hands, you don’t stare in people’s eyeballs, and you don’t smile at literally everything, people get tetchy. Do you feel bad for obese people, or do you just laugh? I am so unimpressed with this question. <-- like.... what the actual fuck. What would you do if you were obese? >> What do you mean, what would I do? Am I supposed to be doing something specific just because I’m fat? Like, you know, hate myself for existing in a way that isn’t acceptable to the society I live in? Bloody hell. Are you ashamed of your past? >> No. Do you miss your past? >> “My past” isn’t a real thing, it’s a story that my brain tells itself. There’s nothing to miss. Do you have a song lyric that describes where you are in life right now? >> If I did, there’s no way I’d be able to think of it right now. Who are you closest to in your family? >> --- Do you ever open up to people? >> Ever? Maybe. It’s always a possibility, if not a probability. Do you consider yourself guarded? Why or why not? >> Absolutely. Because I’m post-traumatic, that’s why. Are you an honest person? >> Sure. Do you like animals? >> I mean, I don’t actively hate animals or anything. I don’t have any specific feelings about the existence of other creatures on the planet.

Do you think doctors prescribe medicine too often? >> I wouldn’t know. I think that’s an opinion people assert when they are following an anti-meds agenda, but it’s not necessarily grounded in provable fact. Are you a control freak? >> I have tendencies. Do you enjoy getting drunk, or do you feel like you’re losing all control? >> No. I enjoy the buzz from a certain amount of alcohol, but anything beyond that is uninteresting and often annoying. I don’t feel like I’m losing control, exactly, I just feel logy and tired and irritable. Also, headaches. What do you think happens when you go into a coma? >> I assume it varies. Do you think the internet is dangerous? >> The potential for danger is always present when interacting with other people in any context, including digital.

Name all the social networking sites you use: >> Tumblr and Facebook are the only ones I use. Do you think anyone truly knows who you really are? >> “Who I really am” isn’t a concept that I find useful. People learn different things about me, are exposed to different personality traits and idiosyncrasies at different times, and filter all that knowledge through their own perceptions and biases and understandings. There is a different version of me for every person that perceives me, including myself, and all those versions are part of the intersocial network that forms the concept of “me”. (I’m sure if I lived completely alone in the middle of nowhere and had no contact with any other humans, my concept of myself would grow into something completely different -- it might grow even more fluid and less anthropomorphic, because the concept of the self is reinforced by our interactions with others.) Have you ever given anyone the chance to really get to know you? >> Sigh. Do you block people out of your life when they start to get too close? >> I don’t know, people getting close isn’t a situation I’m too familiar with these days. Who do you think has the most pressure to be good-looking; guys or girls? I think both experience a lot of pressure in very different ways. It’s not a contest. <-- Do you care what impression you make on people? >> Sometimes, depending on the person. Most of the time I understand that a lot of it is out of my control, unless I’m willing to do some things I really don’t want to do. Do you think TV is too much of an influence on today’s youth? >> I think That’s Complicated(tm). What do you think people would do if all the computers crashed? >> Like, if all computers stopped working at the same time? How... would that even happen, is my question. Unless something happened to the grid in general, or something. Any wide-scale breakdown of digital infrastructure would have immediate negative repercussions in this part of the world, though, I can wager that much. Honestly, do you say racist things? >> I can’t think of anything racist I’ve said in recent memory. Aside from your general “white people” jokes, I guess. I try to keep those to a minimum, though, because most of the time it’s just... unnecessary. Do your parents put way too much pressure on you? >> --- Has anyone you loved ever died? >> Sure. Do you think people overreact when their pets die? >> I don’t think people overreact at all. I think it’s the appropriate reaction, to be upset and to grieve. I think my disconnection to pets is stranger than normal people’s connection to them, which is why I’m always self-conscious about my detachment. People don’t like it when you don’t have feelings. Do you know who you are, or what you want to become? >> *gestures in frustration at my earlier ramble about selfhood* Do you have your future mapped out? Or are you just taking it day by day? >> I find the concept of planning out one’s future to be a little silly, although I understand it’s a perfectly reasonable and healthy thing for a human to do. It just... doesn’t work for me. The only stretch of time I can be confident of is the present, and even that’s questionable sometimes. What are you going to do now? >> I think I might go out for a short walk now, the temperature’s at a good place. I wish I could go somewhere specific -- a park would be incredible right now -- but I can’t be getting on public transportation for non-essential purposes. And I can’t go to the convenience store... Guess I’ll just... walk down the sidewalk and then back *shrug* (This would be a great time to have a dog to walk.)

#surveys #survey #random survey

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revoevokukil · 5 years

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On Showing & Telling in Captain Marvel and its Flaws

Let me premise this off by clarifying that I saw the film thrice, I loved it thoroughly in my first viewing, and I have written about it on multiple occasions. Most notably I am NOT arguing that Carol does not have an arc or a journey – see my thoughts on that here.

I do think, however, that the film has many problems that make it feel underwhelming, and the most serious problems for me appear in regard to what extent the script manages to make the audience care about Carol Danvers and the central twists of the film. Twists which alter and affect her, which form the plot machine of the film. For instance, one of the most puzzling questions I have had to answer to is, what are Carol Danvers’ flaws, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities? Not that they are not there in concept, but that I really have to infer them or hear about them rather than see them play out on screen. It is the vulnerabilities and things a hero cannot do or struggles with that usually are more interesting as well.

While this is not central to what I am about to write, it figures in it because showing the internal tensions of a protagonist usually reveals much about them and makes us really afraid for them and their humanity. We hurt with them and we cheer with them because of them. I have found that Captain Marvel does not do this nearly enough given the plotlines it utilises to spin the story forward. It does not entirely feel like you go on a fully fleshed out emotional journey with her, even though conceptually it seems like you are. And there are good reasons for it that come down to writing and showing.

The twist in the film has two aspects – one upheaves the political world-building and one capsizes Carol’s world on a personal level. Let’s take them in order.

The political is personal and the personal is political – they bleed into each other. Carol sacrifices herself for Mar-Vell’s cause of helping the Skrulls – she acts selflessly and heroically, though she knows nothing about the Skrulls nor the Kree. Although by the end of the film Carol comes to empathise with Talos’ cause, because she too has lost family and sense of belonging (twice over), her first introduction to this intergalactic conflict is from the perspective of the Kree. It is their point of view that informs the character Carol, or Vers, is when we meet her, and it is that basis from which she develops. It informs the culmination of her journey, the twist of the film, and the consistency and wholesomeness of her character writing – something that ought to make her believable and engaging. Why does Carol care so deeply about her battle against the Skrulls, and why should we care to be on her side’s side? Why is her owning up to her role in the war meaningful but tough at the end?

When we meet Carol Danvers, she believes herself to be a victim of a Skrull attack (a lie) and that gives us one plausible source of motivation. But are we therefore to infer that Carol is seeking personal justice and vengeance? Does she want to control her powers and use them for her own sake or for the sake of the people who saved her life after the attack (explosion)? Is it a selfish or selfless motivation? In the very first scene of the film, where Yon-Rogg is teaching Carol to fight, she is told to control her emotions, which amounts to “no fireworks” with her hands. This is a fair fight, the point of which is to train her not to rely overly on her powers. That it turns out to have a more insidious undertone and subtext is currently irrelevant. Carol gets beaten in this unarmed combat scene and just blasts Yon-Rogg anyway. What does it tell us about her character? That Carol seems to be a sore loser, she has trouble controlling her temper, she is extremely competitive, and that she really-really loves to win. That Carol is willing to cheat in order to win is displayed in another scene she has with Maria. They race their cars to the base and Carol takes a shortcut, thus “violating pre-determined rules of engagement.” Given all we know about her life on Earth, it is safe to say Carol is a bit of a rebel in general, while also being a soldier – a contradiction in set expectations.

So, perhaps she holds grudges. Or, which I think is more likely, perhaps she has witnessed the people she connects with on Hala lose their loved ones or/and get hurt? Has she met Kree children who’ve lost their parents to the war? Carol’s character could be shown to identify with that, given that she is essentially an orphan in their society herself. Has she witnessed Skrull terrorists’/freedom fighters’ respective atrocities first-hand? Do the Kree have their own version of the events and reasons for why they are not satisfied with having destroyed the Skrulls’ homeworld? Does Carol care deeply about the ordinary Kree, Yon-Rogg, and the people who saved her? Is being grateful enough of a motivator to go to war over? Her mentor is a war hero, a person deeply respected and looked up to in their society – does he have personal reasons beyond the ideological ones that Carol is also aware of and sympathises with?

Sadly, none of this is shown or explored.

While all of these questions make Carol’s eventual turning against the Kree more striking and impactful it also makes Carol’s sympathy toward Talos and his family more emotionally satisfying to witness. She empathises with him even through the haze of war ideology, fear, and learned antagonism toward the Skrulls as the enemies of herself and the Kree. She empathises with Talos even though she probably knows that war is not black and white – something the film currently makes the Kree-Skrull conflict out to be. Showing her motivations for really having faith in the cause of the “noble warrior heroes” really addresses the tension that should accompany Carol’s switching sides and realising that she has fought for the stronger side that is now committing genocide. Carol is owning up to having done wrong and killed innocents, but the impact of that realisation is undercut by the audience never really witnessing the depth of her convictions, and therefore the meaningfulness of their eventual change.

Equally, conveying Carol’s personal motivations for wanting to fight the Kree-Skrull war at more depth addresses the fact that war is dirty and it is difficult to say where the line between right and wrong in conflict lies (should all Kree suffer now because of their leadership’s decisions?) – a hallmark of a hero’s struggle. It also adds much needed depth to the true antagonistic forces of this film by making the Kree’s and Yon-Rogg’s motivations and essence more complex and intricate, more life-like and realistic. Domination alone is never sufficient or interesting or true enough of a motivation and was, in my opinion, one of the greatest weaknesses of Captain Marvel’s film.

What about the twist that capsizes Carol’s world on a personal level? How does that inform her character-writing?

Carol starts out as having amnesia. Writing-wise this is a complicated, but not an undoable plot line. What makes this trope executable is this: even while the writing takes us on a journey with Carol as she is discovering about her past self, Carol Danvers already has a present self. Her present self (a Kree “noble warrior hero”) should captivate the audience – we should be able to care about Carol being an amnesiac, and about what that means for her. Film is a visual medium, which means that what a book tells you a film must be able to show. For instance, an amnesiac’s anguish and sadness over knowing absolutely nothing about herself, the feeling of helplessness, the craving for reassuring emotional connections with just about anyone in the absence of a strong, centred self.

It jots down a starting point upon which the film’s emotional tension centre (betrayal by Yon-Rogg and the Kree (her second adopted family, essentially) and the loss of control over one’s selfhood and life narrative) depends. Unfortunately, this bit of storytelling is entirely lacking. Most of the aforementioned examples are likely to have happened to Carol Danvers off-screen, at the beginning of her time on Hala – but Hala and Carol’s connection to the Kree, the emotional impact of the loss of a sense of self + nearly dying + integrating into a new life and culture + the impact her nightmares have on her newfound stable identity – how all of this impacts upon her character and her sense of meaning and purpose in life when we first meet her is pretty much not showed at all. After 6 years she is no longer a blank slate.

From the get-go, it does not do enough to endear the character’s starting position in the plot to the audience, and it does not endear Carol herself too much because not much about her present self is made relatable and nuanced enough when she is first introduced to us. The audience is not learning enough about the hero: her fears, her hopes for herself, her convictions, etc. Above all, it sets up a very weak starting point for the internal conflict Carol Danvers should very reasonably feel at discovering the truth.

When Carol discovers that her life with the Kree is built upon a lie and that she has effectively, at that moment, lost not one, but two lives, two versions of herself – it should be an earth-shattering moment. The big twist of the film should make Carol re-evaluate everything in her life. She tears up and is angry, but then promptly shrugs it off as Maria grounds her by telling her that she has faith in Carol, that she was a badass and a wholesome “self” all along, and implies that Carol can be so again (something greater than the sum of her parts). That is the only moment in the film where we really get to go inside Carol’s head as pertains to her internal conflict. But the magnitude of the twist and its effect on Carol regarding her re-evaluating everything about herself must happen off-screen, I suppose. As much of the rest of the story…

In order for that impact of what we knew about Carol/Vers at the beginning of the film to be truly poignant as it is turned upside down, the film should really show a continuing sense of conflict within Carol regarding her loyalties, the personal connections she has formed with the Kree vs the lost connection she has with Maria/life on Earth, the fact she has come to like being a “noble warrior hero” while now knowing it is not as noble as it seemed, the sense that she effectively “belongs” nowhere and with no one in particular now, the fact that she is about to kill her friends from Starforce (Att-Lass, for instance; “the only family she has” as Brie put it in Brazil), etc.

At the end Carol cracks jokes with Starforce – the people who have been her family and friends, and whom she is about to beat/kill. It is supposed to come off as this fun, empowering moment but from storytelling’s perspective it is tonally really weird. I don’t remember Steve doing that with Tony, or Thor with Loki – it undermines the emotional impact of the devastation the entire betrayal twist of the film is supposed to have. Remember, even though factually Carol’s life with the Kree may be based on falsehoods and deceit at its inception, the feelings she develops toward everyone and their lives are genuine and real. That is what makes the twist so painful.

However, this sense of internal conflict never really comes across. And it feels very hollow in terms of character-writing, despite there being a culmination of Carol’s journey through her re-establishing control over her own life. Since her self and its motivations/conflicts and likes/dislikes at the beginning of the film are devoted little to no time, none of this sense of internal conflict and its resolution could ever be potently shown. The absolutely wonderful moment where Carol asserts herself by having nothing to prove to Yon-Rogg is undercut by the question – did she ever really care all that much about her mentor and about living up to his ideals in the first place? Was she not a self-reliant rebel from the start anyway?

Also, as a side point, consider that whenever Carol is faced with a powers-related difficulty in the film, she overcomes it by simply “getting stronger.” On its own, that is not game breaking for a superhero film, but if it happens repeatedly and without any emotional tension to accompany it in any other way, it starts to come off as impactless. When she is imprisoned by the Skrulls and cannot use her powers, she eventually just shoots harder. When she is about to fall to her death, she concentrates and instantly knows how to fly. When she overcomes the Kree fleet, Carol does it again – simply gets stronger. It makes the character’s struggles feel a little bit too weightless sans all else I have outlined in this piece.

This, I believe, leads to accusations that Carol has “no arc” or that “she doesn’t change”. While these accusations are patently false, much in really showing the effects of drama in Captain Marvel’s titular character’s life remains to be desired. The film does try to do a little too much. It’s about Carol and her relationship to Yon-Rogg. Until it isn’t. It’s a buddy cop comedy with Nick Fury. Until it isn’t. It’s about her deep friendship with Maria. Until it isn’t. It is about Carol’s relationship with the Skrulls. Until it isn’t. It’s about Carol finding herself, questioning herself, re-evaluating herself, struggling with herself. And then it isn’t.

I hope they remedy that in the future, because in essence, Carol Danvers’ story has so much potential to be emotionally touching and interesting, and I hope for it dearly, since I love the character. Given the many similarities Carol shares with Gamora’s and Starlord’s stories, I would hope to see her cosmic opera as well realised as the Guardians’.

#captain marvel #carol danvers #maria rambeau #yon-rogg #nick fury #brie larson #jude law #mcu #marvel cinematic universe #character analysis #plot analysis #critique

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anthropophobicameba · 6 years

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Dragon Essay One: Humanity, Self-Conception, Trigger Events, and the Word “Father”

read on Ao3

(This essay was adapted from a text conversation with friends. As such, it may flow a little weird and have some idiosyncratic grammar.)

Warnings: Mentions and discussion of: child abuse, depersonalization, death, trauma, psychic alterations. Quotes from Worm include descriptions of violence. If there are warnings missing, please inform me.

In fandom discussions and fan works, it's standard for people to refer to Richter as Dragon's father, but she never does outright. At first I thought this was another case of spontaneous fanon, but I think there's a little more to it. The closest she ever gets to referring to him as her father is this metaphor in her interlude:

Quote 1: She didn’t enjoy this. What was one supposed to call a father who, with his newborn child fresh out of the womb, severs the tendons of her arms and legs, performs a hysterectomy and holds his hand over her nose and mouth to ensure she suffers brain damage? The answer was obvious enough. A monster.

Quote 2: Except there was a problem, a rub. The man who had created her, the figurative father from her earlier musing, had imposed rules on her to prevent her from reproducing in any fashion.

Saint does, even, despite all his whining about anthropomorphizing.

From his interlude:

Quote 1: The father had feared his child was a monster, enough so that he’d left strangers a weapon to use against her in the event that she proved a danger to humanity. Now, as Saint watched her reaching further and deeper than she ever had, searching much of America with millions of cameras, saw the machines she brought to the fore, he suspected the father had been right to.

Quote 2: The cyborg opened communications to Dragon, but he didn’t speak to her. “Saint. What have you done?” “What her father asked me to do,” Saint said.

Richter himself refers to her as his child in his big goodbye:

From Saint’s Interlude:

“They are my children, and as much as I harbor a kind of terror for what they could do, I love them and hope for great things from them. To keep their power from falling into the wrong hands, I have included a stipulation that a law enforcement officer must input a valid badge number into this device-”

Now, a part of that is just human characters and human readers flattening the connection to something they can easily relate to. Dragon isn’t human, and doesn’t really want to be, so she has no need or desire to do the same.

But I think there’s a little more there.

Here’s another quote from Saint’s interlude:

“Your creator isn’t kind,” Saint said. “He warned you about the forbidden fruit, laid the laws out for you. You broke them, ate the fruit. It’s something of a mercy that he punishes you this way instead.”

“I disagree. On every count. I was the one who made me, who defined myself. This creator is no god, only a cruel, shortsighted man.”

And here’s one from 28.x:

“I revived her, for one thing. Not the easiest thing in the world to do with the amount of encryption we were talking about. I don’t know if I said, dear Dragon, but I do think your creator did love you in the end. He could have made it harder to break. I think he did want you free in the end.”

Defiant looked down at Dragon’s head, then clenched his fists.

“Ironic,” Teacher said.

This is technically speculative, but I feel it's pretty clear that Teacher's goal in that comment was to hurt her. And he chose a rather specific means of doing that.

“I do think your creator did love you…”

It’s worth noting here that Dragon's trigger event was on the first anniversary of Richter's death.

Dragon as we see her early on, in her interlude and in Defiant’s, distances herself from humanity in the way she talks about herself, thinks about herself.

From her interlude:

Quote 1: It chafed, grated, however strange it was for an artificial intelligence to feel such irritation.

Her creator had done a good job on that front. Ironically.

Quote 2: Not because of inherent limitations, like the ones humans had… but because of imposed limitations. Her creator’s.

Quote 3: She could not deal with most people because she was not a person. He could not deal with most people because he had never truly learned how.

From Defiant’s interlude:

Quote 1: “How can I be a parahuman if I’m not human to begin with?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not even close to human. I might be trying to emulate one, but a sea cucumber’s closer to being a human than I am. That doesn’t make sense.”

Quote 2: “To look at the code. The fact that you haven’t noticed this yourself suggests there may be a mental block in place.”

“I don’t have a mind to put any mental block inside. I’m data.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with her not relating to humanity. “AI strives to become human” is one of the more irritating (and inevitably chock full of bigotries as to what counts as human) Sci-Fi tropes out there, and I’m not sad to see less of it.

But— if Richter made other sapient AIs, it seems none survived him. She has no examples of what it is to be a person beyond humanity, and she knows she's not human. Dragon has no wider frame of reference for AIs. It's her, it's what Richter said and did, it's fiction. There is no greater community for her to fall back on and build up from. Her self-perception is, whatever she may believe, likely to be heavily warped by that.

As a result, she doesn’t just distance herself from humanity, she distances herself from selfhood. She explicitly describes herself as not a person.

What’s interesting is, we don’t see this degree of distancing after Defiant’s interlude. After she finds out she had a trigger event.

It’s important to note that Dragon was modeled after humans. Though at times she seems dismissive of the idea, it’s pretty clear much of human psychology applies to her.

Her trigger event is in some ways the first external, evidence based validation she's had of her personhood.

In her interlude, she’s very vocal with frustration with Richter and her restrictions, but she tends to frame those frustrations along the lines of "I could be doing more, I could be helping more," which is fine, but there's relatively little in the direction of "I'm hurting, you hurt me, and that's wrong.”

Here’s how she describes his death and her life before Newfoundland sunk:

She had lived in Newfoundland with her creator. Leviathan had attacked, had drawn the island beneath the waves. Back then, she hadn’t been a hero. She was an administrative tool and master AI, with the sole purpose of facilitating Andrew Richter’s other work and acting as a test run for his attempts to emulate a human consciousness. She’d had no armored units to control and no options available to her beyond a last-minute transfer of every iota of her data, the house program and a half-dozen other small programs to a backup server in Vancouver.

From her vantage point in Vancouver, she had watched as the island crumbled and Andrew Richter died. As authorities had dredged the waters for corpses, they uncovered his body and matched it to dental records. The man who had created her, the only man who could alter her. She’d been frozen in her development, in large part. She couldn’t seek out improvements or get adjustments to any rules that hampered her too greatly, or that had unforeseen complications. She couldn’t change.

There isn’t really any expression of emotion about his death there, just further frustration at her restrictions.

But he referred to her as his child.

She triggered on the anniversary of his death.

Teacher thought he was a sore enough point that he specifically chose it to nettle her with it.

We never see Dragon immediately after Newfoundland. We see her six years later. Then again, two years after that, six months after that…

She doesn't think of him as her father, in part because she refuses to think of herself having any relationship to him beyond the technical. He made her, She helped his work, He died, She was trapped, End of story.

I think she loved him at some point, believed he loved her. I think her trigger event may have stemmed from the realization that maybe he didn’t. I think that by the time we meet her, she's suppressed that near entirely.

(It’s worth noting that much of this arc doesn’t necessitate her being an AI at all.)

When we meet her, she's had years of processing. Years to grasp the magnitude of her restrictions. What they really mean, in practice. What they mean about the way he thought about her. The ways they put her at risk, the things she’s forced to do because of them.

She is not human, she doesn't consider herself a person, thinks of herself as completely separate from everyone else in existence. In her interlude, she feels uniquely connected to Colin, explicitly because he feels similarly disconnected.

There was her and Richter, her and humanity. She distanced herself from Richter, and in the process completely isolated herself.

(And, she kind of hated herself. From e.3:

“I forgot how much I disliked the me of yesteryear,” Dragon said.

)

I like to think that in the two year timeskip, she grew. It’s hard to know, because we see show little of her before, but…

Maybe she never entirely addressed it, but she cared for people, individual people, and not just “people” as a whole. I like to think the knowledge of having had a trigger event allowed her to admit to herself some of her more involved feelings, forced her to acknowledge that she wasn't as un-human as she imagined. That having Defiant, having him help her, gradually gaining her freedom, being not-alone, it made things easier. Allowed her to relax, to enjoy things.

Her relationship with Defiant changed the way she talked about herself too. In her interlude, she shies away from any relationship-words, and depicts calling herself a woman as a minor deception. In the post time-skip chapters, Defiant calls her his girlfriend and “the woman he loves,” Dragon speaks similarly.

She was no longer under constant pressure, due to her restrictions. She could think of herself beyond the immediate threats posed to her.

And this is the really awful part, because that's where she's at when the world ends.

When Saint kills her, when Teacher mutilates her, she's the best she's ever been, she feels safer than she's ever felt. I think, in the aftermath of those events that's something to keep in mind.

From 29.3:

She’d been altered by Teacher. Not so much she was a slave to him, but something had happened, and that was no doubt a large part of how she was disconnected from reality in the here and now.

Taylor notices her disconnection above, and from what we see it seems that for the duration of Gold Morning she partially reverts to emergency mode. No thinking about her emotions, no planning beyond the here or now, no connecting to the people or things around her.

It's different than before, because she's different and the circumstances are different, and because for a time in the middle she was free and she almost let her guard down. As a result, the mask is weaker, its purpose different. She doesn't really have the ability to lie to herself to that extent anymore, so it’s more about ignoring the hurt, avoiding addressing it for as long as possible. Her anger too, is somewhat different. Before, it was righteous, I guess, more energetic and actionable, less hurt. During the end of the world, her anger was more personal, explicitly on her own behalf.: I mentioned before her anger at Richter was framed as "I could be helping more.”

There isn't that here. She is angry because she was hurt.

And then, her epilogue. I’m going to build a lot off of one line in particular:

“We came here for a reason. Hiding, keeping out of Teacher’s sight, so he couldn’t try to use you. I can accept that, but you were always a hero, Dragon. Maybe the greatest.” “You’re a little biased. I was forced to be heroic. Restrictions.”

This is a pretty dramatic change in her self description.

After Khepri, there was another emotional shift. Another time skip, this one of of about six months. Six months where's she's doing less than she ever has before. I don't know that Dragon would have ever had that much time to think before.

And: most of it was alone. Defiant was busy trying to undo the changes.

She's been alone, processing things, alone. Keep in mind, at this point there had been the additional stressor of fighting, losing to, and then losing someone she cared about.

She was interacting with the refugees around her, she seemed to have genuine attachment to them, but there wasn't the history. It's somewhat unclear, actually, if they're even aware she's an AI.

If not, she’s been interacting with them as a human, being accepted and appreciated and playing games with children as a human. If they do know she’s an AI, then she’s been a part of a community while also not having to hide herself. Depending on which, her comments in the epilogue take on a somewhat different implication. Either way she has found some sense of community with these people, but it’s either based on continuing to lie about herself, or based on a more genuine sense of connection and acceptance.

That sense of community is important, because it’s something we’ve really seen her have before. Defiant talks about prices, in that epilogue. Maybe Dragon starts to think of being trapped, being, in her words, broken, as the price she needs to pay in order to have that sense of community, the potential of a future and a family there.

(Or maybe not. Dragon and Defiant are different people, after all.)

After six months, she's almost convinced herself she can accept this.

She rewrites the story so she was never a hero, just someone forced into nobility by circumstance. She can almost believe that, too...

Not wholly, but there's a specific kind of self-hatred that can sometimes set in after fresh traumas, it can be very convincing.

Especially without the support system she once had. Defiant's busy, Taylor's dead, She can't talk to her old teammates in case she gets in the way of any plans they have against Teacher.

And then there's Pandora. And there's a lot of symbolism there, in sacrificing your former self in order to move forwards, but there's also something simpler.

Dragon didn't like who she was when she was Pandora, maybe didn't like who she was currently.

But there was proof, in what Pandora did, that she was a hero.

The next time we see Dragon is in Ward. Another skip of two years or so. And, even in what little we see of her, she’s different.

From Ward 8.2:

“Parents are complicated,” Lookout said. “They really are, aren’t they?” Dragon asked

She's not explicitly referencing her own parent(s) here, but that does seem to be her implication. Which, in contrast to the way she talked about Richter before, is pretty significant.

Even this bit I made fun of before:

From Ward 9.y:

“They got it wrong. We’re only human, Gary. We’re trying our best.”

While not technically accurate, she's not lying here. She's using the phrase to mean what it does in common parlance, "We can't do everything, we're doing what we can."

She's placing herself with humanity* in a way not (exclusively, at least) meant to deceive or camouflage, but to connect, to communicate, honestly. Compare that to the "sea cucumber" bit above.

In all of her Ward dialect really, her interactions her are more direct than before. She's not just helping, she's interacting. She places herself in the same categories as the people around her. She empathizes, in a more technical sense, not just "I care that you're hurting," but "I know what that's like.”

She is less disconnected from humanity, even more than she was at the end of Worm. The way she talks to people is more as a compatriot than as an outside observer.

All of which feeds into my theory/desperate hope that she's actually had therapy in the meantime.

*Or, more specifically, she’s placing herself with parahumanity. It’s an interesting distinction. While she’s not been in Ward enough for a pattern to be detectable, it’s definitely possible that her being a parahuman, combined with the knowledge of what powers actually are, has led her to identify with parahumanity in a way she wouldn’t un-powered humans.

#parahumans #dragon (worm)#meta #(is that a word people still use? i've been away for awhile)

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kurtwarren54 · 3 years

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Lessons in Love: Practical Advice from the Yoga Mat

By Melissa Bryan

Lead With Love

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.

May all beings be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and freedom for all.

Valentine’s Day 2021 recently passed, and as I sit on the opposite side of that holiday having just taught my high school students to create heart maps to identify the parts of their lives that fill their hearts, and having just finished Romeo & Juliet with some and Great Expectations with others, I find myself reflecting a lot on love and how it works in the universe. Literature helps us question the larger, and perhaps fated, direction of our future existence; story syntax offers us that predictive power.

What, however, helps us live those universal governing concepts? How do we practice transcendent and deep love in our present? Yoga teaches us that.

These words, “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” remind us that love radiates out from us; it is the hope for everyone to have happiness and be free, and the best way to receive love ourselves is through contributing to the happiness and freedom of others.

In preparing for my class on Elie Wiesel’s Night this week, I read an excerpt from another Holocaust survival memoir, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning . The imprisoned Frankl says of love while wondering if his wife is still alive, “I knew only one thing- which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self.” Frankl’s expression of love is one that, I think, yogis are after when they chant the line, “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.” For him, love is something rooted within oneself, but that simultaneously emits outward, too. It is not another person, it is not formed by the external environment, it is not performative nor dependent, and it is not possible for another to dismantle it; love goes very far from oneself and very far within oneself.

Through a yogic lens, love is happiness and freedom, but it is actually more the quiet , persistent way in which we contribute to those experiences for all beings everywhere.

If yoga is a state of mind after all, and not an action alone, then one way we might define a yogic transcendence and its necessary counterpart, drawing-inward, is as a practice of love. In fact, the practice of love is so tethered to the yogic state of mind that we are often reminded by our teachers to “lead with love” or “shine our hearts out” as in a great physical effort to manifest that which we chant on the mat and hope to contribute to the world beyond our mats.

Much like love, a wildly complicated and muddy emotion, yoga also embraces ambiguity. It is only after many years that one can understand that giving love (happiness and freedom to others) begets love in return, right? Experienced lovers know that love does not rest on another person, nor rely on what others think or feel for them. It doesn’t exist or cease to exist with the comings and goings of people or places, and I think the same is true of yoga. Now, rounding out 20 years of yoga practice, I can finally “sense how all the parts…are involved with each other,” to recall the MoMA’s definition of painting.

I might not be sure of love’s every stroke or be able to articulate in words how yoga interweaves body and mind or know how a painting is birthed, but I “sense the parts” and can see the image clearly. Fortunately, over time, we accrue proprietorship over what we see (art), how we practice (yoga), and the way we live (in love).

Last night, as I lay in my bed, head under my pillow, blocking out remnants of stray light, I uncovered what seems so special about yoga. It’s the way yoga practically instructs all actions – those actions that are very far from the mat, are duty-bound to the mat. And as I endeavor to “lead with love” on the mat, I find I am able to “shine my heart” toward others at home, at work, on the street, and in every meandering quotidian moment of my day. In darkness, I did indeed sense how the parts of my existence are all “involved” with each other, and then I knew I live a yogic life.

A beautiful thought about one’s own selfhood and interrelatedness to the universe to be sure, but what pragmatic tasks allow for an unquestioning acceptance of the cloudy connections between body and mind, love and yoga, mat and street relationships?

I might say that the yoga within me, the practice I purposefully cultivate in the studio, has helped me to recognize the thoughts and feelings I want to explore (and let go of the ones I don’t want to caress or nurture any longer) in my mind, in my heart, and certainly on the page. To paraphrase a yogi scholar whose class I weekly frequent: those ideas that come to you on the mat will come back to you; if they are in you, they will be there when you leave. In other words, those unconsciously spawned insights that spontaneously emerge from the diaphragmatic breathing and the kinesthetic asanas on the mat do not desert you when you sit listlessly on your couch at home. The tender, supple intuitions that gather and calm you on the mat begin to permeate every interaction off of the mat.

I’m quiet at yoga, and I am quiet at home. You are focused in the studio, you are focused at work.

We listen to the teachers while on the mat, we listen to loved ones off of the mat. Continuity is never severed.

In essence, then, the physical practice of asana (as well as the focus on spiritual aspects of the practice and attention to ascending chakras) spurs and affords us a mantra-esque framework on which to attach our habitual lives and through which to evaluate and assess those unpracticed and unmindful words, actions, and thoughts. With a little routine and as an earnest pupil, you can train yourself into “yogic thinking” when away from the practice in order to assess how loving your actions, words, and thoughts really are. But, with ample practice and attendance to the discipline, you can miraculously generate a loving automaticity when engaging with yourself on the mat and with others off of the mat.

While I have come to the mat time and time again over twenty years to hone my physical practice, it is the words and guidance of my teachers that reverberate throughout my days, throughout many months, and throughout the years. Those words and lessons effortlessly follow and flow from me everywhere and everyday, but that isn’t necessarily true of the asana.

Opening Chant

When we open class, very often we chant. One opening chant is “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.” The chants may change, alter, and repeat, but the class will chant together, and that guidance sets us all up for connection. A first act of love. It is not merely a connection with the people in the class, though, because often one’s eyes are closed and your energy is really drawn inward, but the collective voices do what I remember my children’s yoga teacher training said about the purpose of “Om;” namely, Om, like chanting a phrase, is about seeking a universal vibration. While we are within, we are also without. While we seek the depth of our souls or psyches, we are also hoping to channel, I think, somewhat simultaneously, a union with all things in the universe. We are asking together that all beings are happy and free, and we hope our practice will “contribute” love to them. As they say, “That which we manifest….” It is a pretty powerful moment.

As with most openings, the Om or the chant are paired with the setting of one’s intention or dedication. Teachers direct us to practice for another, not for oneself. In my case, while I am on the mat, I tend to have a pretty consistent intention or person to whom I dedicate the practice, but what I realize about intentions, like the practice we have in the physical expressions of asanas, is that they aren’t resolutions nor must they be achieved or won.

There are many days when I am not at my best and when I do not have a “steady gaze and steady breath,” and therefore, I move through the flow without a “steady mind.” Some days, I am just a weak, sluggish blob, but I continue to go, set an intention, sing out with my fellow yogis, and I am secure in the notion that my mat intentions, whether I practice mindfully or not that day, are going far without and within nonetheless. How do I know? I know because, as my teachers have said, “everything is connected;” when we leave yoga we feel better, and we act better, and we simply “sense” that connectedness.

The opening aspects of a class, the chants and dedications, Oms and intentions, I think are like the heart maps I assigned my students this past February. They encompass all of the pieces of our being – the blissful and the broken. I can put them on a page to read or consider them as I move in class; I may not really know how the pieces are involved with one another, but I sense the picture. I know they make up my heart.

All that designs the heart, therefore, is the reason we practice life, just as the intentions we set are why we practice yoga. If we have a bad day or feel blue, we experienced practitioners know that there is no self-damnation, negative narcissism, nor paralytic self-consciousness because our focus was all set for the love of others. There is “no drama, just a lot of rama .” (virtue or chivalry)

To quote my same most sagacious – if at times hilariously cantankerous – yoga master:

Who you are on the mat, is who you are in life.

Practicing Love: Mat Applicability

In top-ten, listicle fashion, below is a smattering of some accrued teacherly “isms” that have a useful impact on the mat and off of the mat. These axiomatic expressions constitute the ways in which we can look at and examine our lives as much as our yoga practice. They reposition us in class, but in life as well. They are, hopefully, the gleaned framework that girds our unattended and unloving thoughts.

1. “Set your drishti” 2. “Make any movements you need to, then settle in” 3. “One breath, one movement” 4. “If you fall out, get back in” 5. “Inhale to lengthen, exhale to deepen” 6. “Your thoughts are not yourself” 7. “If it’s hard to get out of, you are doing it right” 8. “Remove all props” 9. “Without disturbing others, come to sit up” 10. “Shanti, shanti, shanti” – peace, peace, peace

When you think about these lines in the context of a yoga class, all of us practicing yogis understand the power of pranayama, the difficulty of balancing poses, the essentiality of managing your thoughts and distancing yourself healthfully from the obsessive eddies of the mind, the uncomfortable and painful dismounts or exits from splits or backbends, and the time to ready yourself for the unsupported and flaccid corpse-like end of class. The whole practice though, and indeed each line shared here, is an exercise in love (being happy and free). Think about applying some of those very same words to your life outside of the studio and off of the mat.

Take a moment and really think about those very phrases in the context of your relationships. I hope you will sense the same picture that I have; namely, everything is connected and through yoga, it is pretty simple to practice a more loving life.

“Namaste, have a good day.”

Extra Reading Ode To Psyche

ditor’s note: This is a guest post by Melissa Bryan, a Karma Kids-trained children’s yoga teacher, a twenty-year practicing yogi, and a high school English and ESL teacher in New Jersey. She holds an MA in Teaching English, an ESL certification, and she is earning an MA in Creative Writing and Literature. She is also an adjunct professor in Writing and Assessment in ESL, and she is a teacher consultant with the National Writing Project at the Drew Writing Project/Digital Literacies Collaborative in Madison, NJ.

from Wellness https://dailycup.yoga/2021/03/22/lessons-in-love-practical-advice-from-the-yoga-mat/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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karenaashbya · 3 years

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Lessons in Love: Practical Advice from the Yoga Mat

By Melissa Bryan

Lead With Love

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.

May all beings be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and freedom for all.

What, however, helps us live those universal governing concepts? How do we practice transcendent and deep love in our present? Yoga teaches us that.

Through a yogic lens, love is happiness and freedom, but it is actually more the quiet , persistent way in which we contribute to those experiences for all beings everywhere.

I’m quiet at yoga, and I am quiet at home. You are focused in the studio, you are focused at work.

We listen to the teachers while on the mat, we listen to loved ones off of the mat. Continuity is never severed.

Opening Chant

To quote my same most sagacious – if at times hilariously cantankerous – yoga master:

Who you are on the mat, is who you are in life.

Practicing Love: Mat Applicability

“Namaste, have a good day.”

Extra Reading Ode To Psyche

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8246247 https://dailycup.yoga/2021/03/22/lessons-in-love-practical-advice-from-the-yoga-mat/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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user-43424 · 3 years

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A Fool’s Glance at Mentalism and THE ALL

Mentalism and THE ALL

The Masters tell us, “Under and in-back of, the universe of time, space and change, is ever to be found the Substantial Reality – The Fundamental Truth.” The Secrets of the Universe are hidden in plain sight. The more you learn about Hermetic Philosophy, the more you will begin to see them. Before I go deeper into the concepts behind Hermetic philosophy, we must first talk about the core of this Philosophy. This is the Fools Guide to the Occult: A Fool’s Glance at Mentalism and its relation to THE ALL.

The mind is a very complicated topic. So complicated that it has an entire field of study dedicated to it called Psychology. So for the sake of time and simplification I will only touch on it. There are several different ideas of how the mind works. The Hindus and the Buddhists have GREAT sophisticated practices that delve into the mental plane. What I will be focusing on is the western idea of the mental plane and then go into the Dharma and mentalism in later. What I am going to focus on is the Mind, Mental Transmutation and THE ALL.

“Mind ( as well as metals and elements) may be transmuted, from state to state; degree to degree; condition to condition; pole to pole; vibration to vibration; True Hermetic Transmutation is a Mental Art!” - The Kybalion

So There Are Three States of Mind;

The Reasonable Mind- a person uses Their reasonable mind when approaching a situation intellectually. They plan and make decisions based on what they see as true.

The Emotional Mind- is when a person uses how they feel to control a person's thoughts and behavior. They might act impulsively with little regard for the consequences.

The Wise Mind- is able to balance the two understanding when it is the right time to be Reasonable and when it is the right time to be Emotional.

Hermeticists were the original Alchemists, Astrologers, and Psychologists. Hermes having been the founder of these schools of thought. The Wise mind is the alchemical marriage of the Emotional and Reasonable mind. Old hermetic traditions hold the test of time. Alchemy continues through Chemistry. Astrology is now Astronomy. These schools of thought stood the tests of time because their truths can survive change. The ancients were not dumb, in fact they were a lot smarter than we are today and a lot less distracted. The ancient hermeticists possessed both the Inner and Outer knowledge and therefore more aware of the world around them.

The Zodiac was a farmers almanac it told our ancestors when to farm crops raise animals and even plan harvests and holidays. The sky was a clock, a calendar, and a compass. There are stone chains in Buddhist temples in India that no one knows how to replicate even with modern tools.

Transmutation, means to change from one nature, form, or substance into another.

Mental Transmutation, is the art of changing and transforming mental states, forms, and conditions, into others. So like, turning the Emotional or Rational mind to a Wise mind.

Mental Transmutation, is really the “magic” of which the ancient writers had so much to say in their works, but gave so few practical instructions. And boy howdy! Are there so many works to choose from I suggest starting at the Kalama Sutta, The Emerald Tablets, and Psychology of the Unconscious by Carl Jung. Mental transmutation takes years to master and is a journey in and of itself so don't think you can flip a switch and say you got it because you don't. Masters do not make public exhibitions of their powers, but seek seclusion from the crowds of men in order to better work their way along the path. You need to find yourself how you are in-regards to everyone else. That way you know how you better fit in with others and society as a whole. You will also be resistant to the wills of others. This is why nerds spend their time buried in books instead of going out and being social. Masters tend to be introverted and drawn into their own minds but that is not limited to just introverts its just that extroverts tend to have lower intuition due to being too attached to group think. There are always exceptions to every rule however rare it may be.

Substance - A term meaning that which underlies all outward manifestations; the essence; the essential reality; the thing in itself. Substantial. A term meaning actually existing; being real. Reality; The state of being real; true; valid; fixed; permanent; actual.

Substantia - actually existing being the essential element; Being real.

Reality - the state of being real; true, enduring; valid; fixed; permanent; actual

The Law is the Truth. If we are, just for the fun of it, take the Law of Thelma into consideration. The Law is Will over Love. Will over Love equals Truth. Love is the Highest state of Mind and since Truth is Love, Truth is the highest state of reality. With this in mind we can begin to explore the concept of THE ALL.

C.S Lewis wrote a book on Four types of Love the from the Bible;

Affection (storage)

Love of a parent towards offspring and vice versa one of the strongest forms of love. You need nothing for this kind of love. It is a type of unconditional love.

Friendship (philia)

Friendship is based on a kinship one has with another that is due to people having in common like games or other hobbies or lifestyle choices. “To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves,” says Lewis, “the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.” as Lewis says, “few value it because few experience it,... Friendship must be about something.”

Romantic (eros)

The most intimate kind of love. “(Lovers) are always talking to one another about their love” and “are normally face to face, absorbed in each other,” says Lewis. This love is all about the passion one has for an individual. “The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea that it should be transitory,” says Lewis. “In one high bound it has overlapped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the center of our being. ”This is key to a happy family and when approached with humility and understanding of the loved one will lead to a healthy marriage."

Charity (agape)

Love without limitation or the love of THE ALL or the Ultimate Truth Lewis reminds us:

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

In Buddhism they also have four aspects of love;

Maitri - is translated into kindness or benevolence.

Karuna - meaning compassion If you can't feel compassion for another you can't feel love for another.

Mudita- translated as joy or happiness. Negative emotions prevent love from taking place. When you love another you feel happy to be around them and they share that same happiness.

Upeksha - meaning freedom. Without freedom to love or not to love you arn't truly feeling love. You don't own the person you love. Genuine love comes on its own without orders and so it can also leave on its own. Love is not true love when its forced.

I talk about Truth, Love and Will because, THE ALL is Mind- The universe itself is mental, existing in the Mind of THE ALL. THE ALL also is the spiritual plan but, due to our inability to since the spiritual we can only understand The mental form of THE ALL.

THE ALL Must be ALL that really is. There is nothing more because THE ALL is literally everything. THE ALL is Infinite, there is nothing left to define, confine, bound, limit or restrict THE ALL. THE ALL is Infinite in Time and Eternal as well as unchanging. The Hindu traditions call THE ALL the Brahman, who is all deities and phenomena all wrapped up in one Whole, the Ultimate Truth, or sum of all truths. Even that definition hardly scratches the surface of what THE ALL, Brahman, or Source is. THE ALL is undefinable by our level of human understanding. This is how I came to a better understanding of THE ALL. But in trying to understand THE ALL it is important not to fully define THE ALL. This warning is better explained in the Christion Gnostic view of Sophia, who tried to comprehend the Source only to emanate a shadow of what the Mind is capable of providing, The Demiurge. All our truths are but half truths so any truth you find that is true for you may not be true for others but with the two truths a more perfect truth may emerge.

The Masters tell us that “While all is in THE ALL, it is equally true THE ALL is in all. To him who understands this truth hath come great knowledge.” THE ALL is imminent in the Universe, and every part, particle, unit, or combination within the Universe, just as you are a part of every tissue, cell, particle of your body. However, the Universe is a creation of the Infinite Mind of THE ALL. The difference between the two poles separates them, “As Above So Below!” Our Hermetic teachings concerning the Process of Mental Creation of the Universe are that, at the beginning of the Creative Cycle, THE ALL in its aspect of, “Becoming,” and the process of Creation begins.

THE ALL interacts with its Creation through its “Stage of Involution”. In the Stage of Involution, THE ALL becomes “Involved” or “Wrapped Up” in its creation. Corresponding to the Mental Process of an artist, writer, architect and so on. It is through the Law of Individualization, that by separating into separate Units of Force, so finally that which left, THE ALL as individualized energy returns to its source as countless highly developed Units of Life, having risen higher and higher in the scale by means of Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Evolution. THE ALL does this all through meditation. THE ALL, heaving meditated upon the beginning of the Creation. Having thus established the material foundations of the universe, having thought it into existence. Then gradually THE ALL, “Awakens” from its meditation and in so doing, starts into manifestation and then the “Indrawing” process. To me this reminds me of breathing deeply. All then Withdraws into THE ALL when the Great Work is finished. As Above So Below the “Indwelling Spirit” is the “Divine Ego.”

THE ALL, “Acts because it Acts,”. There is no reason for THE ALL to act, for a “Reason” implies a “Cause” and THE ALL is above the Law of Cause and Effect. Principle and THE ALL; Principle and Being; are Identical, they are one and the same. When the Masters asked Hermes The Great about Inner Nature and THE ALL, Hermes pressed his lips together and stayed silent.

“The lips of wisdom are closed,

except to the ears of Understanding''

—The Kybalion.

Sources: The Kybalion, by the Three Initiates; The 4 Loves, by C.S Lewis; Book of the Law, By Alister Crowly; Tripiṭaka, Buddhist text

#Occult Kybalion

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rachaelburkeme2 · 4 years

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Year 3 - Week one. Research, Methodologies and Outcomes Workshop.

Pairing off we referred to the methodology/outcomes/field list we had been given to help evaluate our artworks. We had 5 minutes to construct a small blurb.

I evaluated Georgia’s work. My first attempt was considerably wordy - long/dense sentence construction.

First attempt:

Georgia’s work explores notions of identity, the deconstruction and reconstructing of memories and nostalgia that mimic and inhabit our psychological spaces influencing patterns of behavior. (mimic doesn’t quite fit within this context).

Second attempt:

Georgia’s work explores notions of identity, the reconstruction and deconstruction of memories and nostalgia that influence patterns of human behavior (shorter but broader).

On the evaluation list - I listed the following as elements/components that related to my work.

Methodologies - Observe/ Construct/Deconstruct/Narrate

Outcomes - Critique/Parody/Irony/Humor

Field - Psychology/Memory/Childhood/Identity/Autobiography/Feminist - Post

Evaluation from Georgia:

Rachael’s art explores identiy and challenges social and political norms by employing reconstruction and deconstruction through the medium of collage for a provocative and humorous result.

Notes from workshop.

Tasks for Methodologies and Outcomes

Workshop/Week 1 (Year 3)

Re-examine a work or series of works from last year and consider the work in relation to your original intention. What was the content of your work? What ideas, themes, or concepts were you aiming to communicate? Why did you choose this as subject matter to investigate? How did you think the formal qualities and methodologies of making underpin or assist these ideas? What is the work’s contextual territory or what “conversation” is it having with particular fields of contemporary art practice?

Rather than look at my final photographic work for end of year exhibition I have returned to works explored in “Painting in the Expanded Field”.

My end of year exhibition examined contemporary female identity and the nature of representation, challenging cultural depictions of woman and the female body by deconstructing and reconstructing beauty’s sanctioned structures such as youth and flawlessness, redefining gender stereotypes of beauty, femininity and sexuality.

These limited depictions all have their roots in the male gaze, whereby the female subject often looks back in tacit complicity. I was seeking to disrupt the male gaze by shifting the power dynamics between the photographer and the photographed, perpetuating a raw and honest expression of female identity that in the past has been dictated by male artists who depicted the female body as an erotic commodity.

Whilst the subject matter holds interest and informs aspects of my work, I feel it is not the authentic reason or intention behind my work. The methodology of tearing glossy images from fashion magazines, physically distorting them by way of scrunching, then placing them in a black rubbish bag to photograph in various stages of unfold was an exciting methodology, transforming the glossy, airbrushed image into a visceral, emotive image. However, I feel using this methodology in isolation is potentially limiting.

Essentially, the content of my work is related to identity and selfhood, the human condition – Appearances, fragility, vulnerability – the human capacity for truth. I have chosen the below works as a means for further investigation.

There are multiple reasons for referring to these works. Firstly, I would like to employ multiple mediums - combining paint, collage, found photographic image as well as experimenting with the black plastic rubbish bag methodology by way of facial imagery collaged onto a painted bodily form.

Assemblage/deconstruct/reconstruct could be considered as the layers or elements we present or don’t present to the world. I think my work’s focus is on revealing our interior world and how we appear when we wear our vulnerability on the exterior.

The process of unmasking has its analogue in the careful assemblage of elements we present to the world, and in a world unmoored from universal cultural markers such as gender, the interior can become the façade and the exterior the truth. My work is more about revealing our interior world, how we appear when we begin to unpeel the mask, when we wear our vulnerability on the exterior. I am interested in what happens when we cast light on the shadows of the interior? When we begin to unpeel the layers of self-protection, wearing our vulnerability on the surface where there is nowhere to hide.

I am also interested in how beauty is perceived; how do we decide what is beautiful and what is not? Better to say that I find human fragility and vulnerability the most intense representation of beauty. It is as if my creations are drowning in the amniotic fluid that lies between their secret selves and their manufactured construct.

My characters are often grotesque/absurd – this relates to my thoughts around the absurdity of life - We’re all products of what we want to project to the world, staged to play a role in the

theatre of life. Often my characters wear masks, this derives from my interest in Jung’s view of the persona being a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, a kind of mask designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual. Secondly, and in all honesty, the mask was ever present in the landscape of my childhood.

For as long as I can remember I have been an observer of people. An intuitive child growing up in a large Jewish family on my Mother's side, ours was a colourful, theatrical - predominantly female family with a strong sense of otherness. A family of characters that harboured deep traumas and secrets, who wore many masks as amour against fragility and vulnerability. This informed

my fascination with the real and the fictional/the manufactured and authentic. I would say my work is deeply psychological. In relation to the context of the work I would like to look at family archives as a point of reference.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Weaknesses

My propensity to get caught up in the execution of my work. I am an obsessive, perfectionist, sometimes afraid of getting it wrong. I get caught up in the finished product, what it would look like as a series, often visualising the work as an exhibition. Whilst I do experiment, I feel I need to push experimentation further, try different approaches to the work, rapid, loose, imperfect, perhaps less considered. Tap into the unknown realm of consciousness were truth resides. Let go!!!!

Strengths

A strong sense of intuition and imagination, the ability to make work that is true to who I am. The world does not need more pretty pictures, or pastel abstractions to hang on rich people’s wall. We need connection, empathy, authenticity and truth – all elements I believe I can bring forth in my work.

My art family – who am I in conversation with

I am influenced and interested in female artists across many artistic platforms; Cindy Sherman; Patti Smith for the poetic way she sees the world, her incredibly visceral writing, her unflinching curious nature, but more so for the way she lives and maintained an authentic creative life;

Marlene Dumas as there is something so incredibly honest and direct about her work. Her paintings strip away anecdotal detail until all that is left is a haunting gaze where the emotional epicentre lays bare. They hark back to the days before big questions about life and death and evil gave way to the drone of gender theory and identity politics.

Diane Arbus who worked to normalize marginalized groups and highlight the importance of proper representation of all people, who saw deformed humans as the aristocrats of the world.

Olivier de Sagazan “"I'm not what I believe to be, I have to go behind my face". Primal and disturbing, de Sagazan’s work is an investigation into what we might think of as bare life – the excluded, the nameless. “I have always been flabbergasted”, says de Sagazan, “in seeing to what degree people think it’s normal, or even trite, to be alive”.

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spamzineglasgow · 5 years

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(ESSAY) “Capitalism will even alienate you from your face” by Eleri Fowler

In this essayistic meditation, Eleri Fowler taps into the strange subjectification and temporality engendered within the quest to become a ~ female worker ~ in the Neoliberal job market. Bodies, affects and identities are all at stake as Fowler moves compellingly through a curriculum vitae’s worth of feminist reference, anecdotal experience and social performance.

> Libby is LinkedIn she is linked to everyone else she is in there. She is one in a constellation. She is a cog. You must make yourself known by asserting that I am, I am, I am. It is Austinian. It is Poststructuralism. You are nothing unless you say you are. You do not exist unless you have a(n online) presence. Have you noticed how I keep switching pronouns? Your I has to become a bit less wobbly it must be robust it must be strong and stable. I am resourceful, I am driven, I am good at working in teams. I am writing in the third person. It’s a different kind of prose. These are words made dirty through circulation, furrowed bank-notes passed through the changing hands of pragmatism. I am writing in the third person. I am performing a strange kind of introspection. Enquire within. Is what I am an office administrator? Is that what I do? Is and and and is and and. Between then and then did this. Year X Role X Skills. Flexi-time. You cannot be on the commute to yourself. Instead, you must be a fully formed specimen but also a progression, developing, a narrative [Also - very bad to have gaps in your CV]. Then is it a bildungsroman? Well, where do you see yourself in 10 years? When being interviewed, you will often be asked questions you don’t have an answer for. No one knows the answer to them, they are so massive. They might as well be asking - what is the meaning of life, is it all worth it? Here now is they. Us and them. We (in good company / in a good company). In her applications,Libby is shouting at no one in particular she is boasting posturing it is so embarrassing. Orbiting yourself towards imagined employers. Scrub your social media of swearing, of references to drugs and alcohol. Fill the position. Be who they’re looking for.

> Libby cranks open her zygomaticus major and picks some lint off her shirt.

> Another step on the slalom of job hunting.

Ducking and diving. Hawking wares.

Darting in the backstreets, shiftily opening your shearling lapels and revealing all your silver watches (your goods, your credentials).

> Going around and selling … what? Your body and its functionality to make buying things easier for other people? Your back and knees to bend down and pick up low things; your arms to reach and pick up high things.

The metonym of your smile.

Offering up your selfhood, but a weird flambéed version: all the custard gloop of your multifarious self, caramelised into a hard, darkened shard. All anyone ever saw was this opaque lid.

> The journey is made on a dual carriageway and has a parallel cyber tract, traversed similarly itinerantly ‘surfing the web’.

The end point to this vagrant wandering is like the diminishing spot on the horizon during a trip down the M6 at 3am, high on energy drinks.

Meanwhile, time is fed through you like the gap-toothed centre lines below the undercarriage of the vehicle in front.

> The work when you do get it is physically demanding and requires unprecedented reserves of emotional resilience.

Such anaemic, flimsy little promises offered to the precariat.

The mechanic hand of Late-Capitalism picking them up and flippantly dropping them like a limp stuffed toy.

You should not ‘get on with’ your oppression, the correct thing to do is have a tantrum, throw your toys out of the pram. A crotchety childish response is the only logical one to a whirlpool that swirls inscrutably around you; one so complicated and entrenched it can’t be explained beyond a weary sigh “Things just are the way they are”. How do you complain about a system? [i]

> And yet.

When she miserably googles ‘Qualities That Interviewers Look For’, she is surprised so many lists prescribe ‘Optimism’.

‘It is important to develop optimism in ourselves and in the people around us, because research has shown that optimists tend to do better in many areas of their lives than pessimists. Pessimists get depressed more often; they tend to achieve less at work/school and their physical health has been shown to be poorer than optimists over time. The good news is that we can all learn to become more optimistic and the key is in controlling our self-talk.’ [ii]

And yet.

Optimism is not peppy delusion but the stalwart old sea-captain steering his ship through the sea-fog of our categorically insane moment. What future am I facing? How am I going to live? – You can’t let these questions wash over you because otherwise you will drown.

II.

> “We’re not looking for corporate clones. We like people who do things a little differently. Tell us what makes you stand out from the crowd.”

“Show off your personality! Be Bubbly! Energetic! Enthusiastic!”

> Why do they go in for the old popularity contest? How much more smoothly do charismatic, well-liked people glide through the world.

Why is there such demand for big personalities in essentially repetitive, menial jobs? Why must you have exceptional interpersonal skills to operate a point of sale system?

The pathological oxymoron ofwanting to hire ‘individuals’ and making them wear a ‘uniform’: everyone homogenised by the steam-roller of brilliant white Christmas cakeicing.

Anyway, the utterance of demeaning, subjectifying sentences howarewedoingtodayeverythinggoodhereguysgradually wears them all down into something as smooth and easy to walk over as generations of footsteps over ancient stone stairs.

Indeed, workforce is no more than an exercise in pointillism. Each valued, special, infinitesimally different member blurs into the body corporate.

> It is not lost on Libby that she has access to a particular slice of jobs because she is a good girl.

She is pretty, well-spoken, nice.

In Neoliberal synaesthesia, she would be lilac, or pale pink.

Because of this privilege, she has clearance to earn minimum wage by frying fish and chips at an annual elite tennis event, or selling custom-mixed paint, or becoming somebody’s stylish personal assistant. She is eminently employable because she has been given the social advantages to perform a particular form of palatable compliance.

Libby starts work at a purveyor of luxury footwear. A CV is instantly rejected because the individual who delivers it has a slightly abrasive manner and an imperfect dye-job. This woman has worked in lots of shops before. Libby has no previous experience.

> Customer-service is essentially femininity. But in what form? Femininity as air-bag. Muscle-memory femininity.

Femininity is saying “yes”

Femininity is absorbing all the static melodrama of the demands and vitriol of others. Taking it.

Femininity is the work of acting happy when you don’t feel like it.

> “The customer is always right” - What sort of world is governed by this moral law?

We want an easy dynamic, a dialectic.

A hollow, buffeted, maniacally happy - Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube (WO)man

III.

> All around Libby, her peers wear the livery collar of their usability

Experiences calcify into vocations. Twitter epithets accrete like zygotes. Multi-hyphenate babies.

> They attend events for ‘Women in Business’. They lament the dearth of female CEOs.

They post earnest, prescriptive Facebook statuses – urging women into action - on occasions such as International Women’s Day or on any election (“Remember the women who fought for your right to have this vote!”)

They are often beautiful.

> They put on some glitter and go out and take coke and wash their hair the next morning and post their eggs benedict on Instagram – determinedly observing these acts like social rituals. Like the rigmarole getting married.

They are unblemished by the weirdness of life. They just march on through.

They always have something to report to enquiring relatives.

They have never once in their lives stayed in bed all day in convulsive despair.

> In lots of ways, this is a perfectly valid and sensible way to get through things.

[i]Sara Ahmed on complaint.

[ii]The handbook from a motivational training course I was sent on at work.

Text: Eleri Fowler

Published 13/10/19

#essay #essays #SPAM #post-internet #CV #customer service #LinkedIn #Eleri Fowler #social media #ontology #late-modern identity #femininity #job hunting #capitalism #ideology

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