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carolinemillerbooks · 8 months

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New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/the-revolution-of-the-species/

The Revolution Of The Species

Senator John Fetterman (D) recently shared this observation with the public. You all should need to know that America is not sending their best and brightest to Washington, D. C. Congressional in-fighting, and scandals among the elected elite support the senator’s view. Bureaucrats add to the confusion. As specialists in their fields, they can run circles around the people’s representatives. For example, while Congress squabbles about sending money to support Ukraine’s war, the Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, proposes that President Joe Biden bypass the government’s legislative branch and delegate Russia’s frozen assets to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Adding to the fog is technology, an industry politicians little know or understand. As a result, innovators in Silicon Valley have pursued Artificial Intelligence (AI) unfettered to a degree that it has become as great a danger to us as the atomic bomb. In 2018, the Brookings Institute issued a report on the benefits and dangers of AI and provided recommendations to ensure the technology did no harm. It collected dust like most reports. But now, five years later, tech giants, have come running to Congress seeking regulations, fearing they have released an evil genie from its bottle and hoping to spread the blame. While the tech world seeks legal protection from the potential damage their invention can do, the rest of us should consider what human traits these innovators have passed along to their powerful machines. Given our current capacity to blow up the planet’s resources, including polluting its air, what could go wrong? The advent of AI will alter our lives, no doubt, but it won’t create a blank slate upon which to build our utopian dream. As historian Timothy Snyder warns, we can’t avoid dragging into our new world the debris of the past. Economic inequality will be one such and should social mobility die, the scholar predicts democracy [will] give way to oligarchy, opening the door to tyranny. Donald Trump has given us a glimpse of that future, a society where citizens are encouraged to sleepwalk through their existence, obeying their leaders without question. What these sheep mustn’t see, says Snyder, is that most of those who held power in the past will continue to hold it in the future, making changes wrought by insurrections or revolutions largely an illusion. True, the technological revolution has brought a world of information to our fingertips, but the price has been the loss of our privacy — data that the oligarchs of AI gather and sell for their immense profit. Elon Must is one of these. Having accumulated much of the world’s capital, he imagines he owns the rest of us and dares to wade into international politics, changing the course of our lives without the authority of a single vote cast at the ballot box. Such hubris leaves us to ponder the legacy of these innovators. They have given us convenience and access to endless information, but they are the purveyors of disinformation and deep fakes too. By these means, society finds itself not merely divided but fractured, and to a degree that makes determining the public good seem impossible. Will their invention, AI, come to sense the frailty of our species? As repositories of all that we know, will they see how we have dehumanized ourselves by our obsession with money, pleasure, and the pursuit of war? If so, will these lungless servants become our masters, caring nothing about us and our environment? I doubt they will miss the meadowlark ‘s song. Forgive these dystopian questions, but it’s time to consider our status as naked apes. The universe takes little notice of us. And, Nature appears to be turning its back on our species. Or, perhaps, we were the first to turn away, preferring to focus on ourselves and the petty differences in our religions, the color of our skin, and our varying lifestyles. When inconsequential variations like these become matters of life and death, are we worthy of respect even from our miraculous machines? More likely, they will judge us against other creatures on the planet and find we are not the best and brightest. I must say that I have rarely seen a community come together in order to meet a common need in a manner as beautiful as that of a handful of birds at a feeder. Craig D. Lounsbrough

#architects of AI #artificial intelligence #Brookings Institute on AI #Congressional scandals #Craig D. Lounsbrough #dystopian question on AI #Elon Musk #Funding Ukraine war #Janet Yellen #regulation of AI #Senator John Fetterman #Timothy Snyder

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anotherlov3r · 16 days

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things I have started doing lately make me feel safe and loved:

- naps. just sleeping when I’m tired instead of forcing myself to push through

- having a hot chocolate and my favorite biscuit before bed

- acknowledging when people hurt or upset me > giving myself the space and time to feel those emotions > treating them with patience instead of working myself into a state of frustration and resentment (even when that would be justified)

- when i feel triggered; just sitting in that emotion for a while

- Maintaining a disciplined schedule but trying not to working when I don’t want to work: there is usually a reason why I don’t want to work. Address that reason, or make working more desirable. Suffering for no reason is not how I want to live my life. I am not lazy, if I don’t want to work there is a valid reason that I should engage with instead of ignoring. Even if it’s something as simple as boredom or as ugly as hubris.

- eating when I am hungry and stopping when I am full

- making myself lovely meals

- giving myself little treats where I can

- becoming someone I can trust and rely on. For example I’ve promised myself that I will always treat myself with love and compassion no matter what happens. No matter how much I’ve fucked up, how impressive others find me, how scared or insecure I am: I will be there for myself. Lovingly and compassionately. Ready to hold space for and love myself. It might take me a while to respond in this way but I know with certainty that this is how I will show up for myself eventually.

- a lot of the above looks like having clear boundaries with myself:

> when I am in an intense period of focusing day after day I set clear boundaries that prevent my focus on a task from becoming unhealthy or debilitating

>I DO NOT do things that I TRULY don’t want to do. This doesn’t mean that I avoid doing things that are boring, tedious or challenging. In fact I embrace those things and complete them more successfully than I have in the past. This means that when I feel negative affect towards an activity I become curious about those emotions. How do I feel? What exactly am I feeling ? Let myself feel it for as long as the situation allows. What do I need? Am I sick, tired, sleep deprived? Do I need to reassure myself that I can do challenging things? Do I need to rely on a friend or other resource for help? Is there a way I can make this task more enjoyable if it’s something I’ve decided I need or want to do?

>I DO NOT harm myself intentionally or without reason. I ask for help and lean on others when need be. I DO NOT call myself rude names or engage in negative self talk.

> I invest in my health and my future to the best of my abilities.

> I DO NOT consistently sacrifice my own basic well being for the comfort of others.

> I DO allow myself to make as many mistakes as humanly possible. I do not shame myself for failure or making mistakes. I encourage myself to perform to the best of my ability and fulfill my potential.

- aiming to exercise five times a week

- appreciating the good qualities of others and acknowledging them where I can

- acknowledging the good work I have done or effort I have put into things

- speaking to myself and others with kindness

- voicing how I feel about things more often instead of staying quite

-having fun

#in essence #I take care of myself in the ways I always wished someone else would #because why not?#Taylor once said #You’re On Your Own #Kid

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decennia · 3 years

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i give u free reign to infodump ab all of the knights and the og army bc i am vv intrigued agjgssgsh

THERE IS SO MUCH HERE OMFG MORAL OF THIS STORY NEVER ASK ME TO INFO DUMP BECAUSE I WILL TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF IT—

I've separated it into sections:

The Knights of Walpurgis, and the motivations for their assigned sins.

Dumbledore's First Resistance, and the motivations for their assigned virtues.

The dynamics between the opposing contenders.

Given the sheer volume of information, I've included a cut. Please enjoy this manip that I am still very proud of.

THE KNIGHTS OF WALPURGIS (later known as Death Eaters) Tom Riddle (Pride)

Pride and arrogance were very large contributing factors to Tom Riddle's downfall in the end, and honestly, the whole idea for the gifset came from Florence + The Machines' Seven Devils playing while casually thinking of Dagrim and Tom, and then about how perfectly Tom would fit as Lucifer.

Dagrim Patil (Avarice)

When questioned about what she wants, and what Riddle promised her in exchange for her unwavering loyalty, her response is, quite simply: everything. Dagrim grew up starved not for affection, but recognition. And what she was denied in childhood, she would take in adulthood by force. Her philosophy is that if something is worth wanting, it is worth taking.

Cantankerous Nott IV (Lust)

We know so little about Theodore Nott's father from the source material, other than he was elderly, and he raised Theo himself. And that he was a Death Eater, of course. His name is an ode to his ancestor, the Cantankerous Nott who created the Sacred Twenty-Eight pureblood directory. I assigned him "lust" purely for the events leading to the conception of his son (sis, it gets messy).

Abraxas Malfoy (Envy)

Abraxas Malfoy envied Tom Riddle to the point of a half attempted mutiny. He was quickly put in his place, his co-conspirators made examples of, and spared only for his close friendship with Dagrim, who pleaded for his life. Riddle, who trusted Dagrim to a fault for all she'd done to earn it, conceded. Abraxas would later prove himself to Riddle again, regaining his seat among Riddle's favoured generals. He was the one who taught Lucius to never disobey the Dark Lord, and he was not a kind teacher.

Ulysses Mulciber (Gluttony)

Indulgence and excess, spoiled rotten and filthy rich. The Mulcibers were the richest of the Sacred at one point in their lives, rivalled only by the Malfoys. Ulysses never knew the meaning of "enough," and was a glutton not only in all manners of vice, but also for cruelty, dealing it out carelessly with little to no regard for the repercussions he was well protected from by his noble standing and wealth. He was one of Riddle's greatest allies and sponsors, and instrumental in his rise to power.

Carmilla Avery (Wrath)

Carmilla was in the year above Riddle, and was quick to anger and slow to calm. Her temper was legendary, and even her younger brothers – also admitted into the Death Eater ranks – feared her. She had an untempered fury, a rage at the world for no reason at all. She developed an unhealthy codependency with Abraxas Malfoy, who served to have a soothing presence over her. People seldom survive crossing her, as her reputation dictates.

Serafine Lestrange (Sloth)

Serafine is not lazy (as the sin "sloth" would suggest), she just lacks the motivations to pursue the goals that are expected of her. A particularly bright witch, and a wealthy one too, she never applied herself at school for she didn't see the need. Instead, she fell into a fascination of the Dark Arts, where she met Riddle, perusing the Restricted Section. She is rather discontented with life, disillusioned from already such a young age. She initially joins Riddle's gang for the excitement of it all.

DUMBLEDORE'S FIRST RESISTANCE (later known as the Order of the Phoenix in its official conception in 1970)

Albus Dumbledore (Patience)

Name a man more patient than Dumbledore, I'll wait. Better yet, he'll wait, because he's patient as hell. So patient, in fact, he waited until after Harry's supposed death to come to him as a hallucination and tell him about how he was a Horcrux.

Rathin Patil (Temperance)

Temperance is abstinence, and I wanted to explore the kind of toll having his sister so far gone into the dark would have on any man, let alone one who really cared for her and wanted to do right by her. Rathin is not a perfect man, he is still fallible, and unfortunately, he develops a dependent comfort in inebriation when Dagrim disappears with Riddle. He pulls himself back together, especially when he becomes Isaiah Moody's partner at the Ministry, and he begins to pursue Miraya.

Miraya Varma (Diligence)

Methodical and persistent, Miraya Varma earned herself a position at the Ministry immediately out of Hogwarts where she would later go on to form her own task force within the Ministry specifically designed for the interrogation and recommended sentencing of dark wizards and witches. She has been known to put her duty first, up until the birth of her son, Divyansh Patil, father to Padma and Parvati.

Isaiah Moody (Humility)

For a very long time, people seldom knew the Moody name, and that was the way Isaiah liked it. He believed that his line of work would endanger his loved ones (in spite of his wife being in the same profession) and so he never took credit for the numerous arrests he made. It was Isaiah who suspected something was strange about Morfin Gaunt's arrest while investigating the Riddle Massacre, and consulted Dumbledore about it. Once his identity was discovered and he was viewed as a threat by Riddle, an attack was made on his heavily pregnant wife, jeopardizing her and his unborn boy's (Alastor) life.

Minerva McGonagall (Chastity)

Mini Minnie is seventeen, my dudes. But not only that, Minerva grew up with a religious father (he was canonically a reverend), who probably taught her his values. Also given the fact that Minerva was the first of the younger generation to participate and involve herself in the war (she sought out Dumbledore and enlisted herself into his Resistance, fearing her family would be made into another statistic if she didn't at least do something to intervene), she really didn't have much time to think about something as arbitrary as the concept of virginity. Also, it's the 1950s.

Corinne Scamander (Kindness)

Corrine is honestly the greatest. She has all of the tenacity of Tina, and the best qualities of Newt. It was Dumbledore's previous bond with Newt that encouraged him to recruit her, and she willingly accepted, because of course she would. She'd always been the soft spoken girl with a tender touch and a love for life, and she was often the advocate for hope in the resistance. She was adept in a few healing charms she'd learned from her father, and was something of a specialist in magical beings, proving herself to be highly valuable while Riddle was expanding his ranks with all manner of dark creatures.

Declan Diggory (Charity)

Sacrifice is in the Diggory blood, and Cedric's grandfather, Declan, was not the first to prove it. He also, unfortunately, wasn't the last, but he sure was one of the best. Selfless to a fault, Declan would willingly get hypothermia if it meant someone else would have warmth. Diggory's contributions to the war effort consisted of offering sanctuary and shelter to muggleborns who received death threats, and orchestrating the evacuations of targeted muggle residences. He was the leader of a small faction of the resistance, including, but not limited to: Fleamont Potter, Enoch Longbottom, Wilhelm Shacklebolt, and Ramona McKinnon.

DYNAMICS (just the contenders for now because this is hella long)

Albus Dumbledore vs. Tom Riddle

Adversaries, a fair deal of mistrust and guilt from Dumbledore's side (upon reflection, he'd been the one to introduce Tom to the wizarding world; even though he knows that if Riddle had been left unchecked, the risk of him becoming an Obscurus would've resulted in catastrophe all the same). Riddle sees Dumbledore as nothing more than a foolish old man, a pest, and an obstacle to overcome at first, but learns to begrudgingly respect Dumbledore's strength and mastery of magic (after all, Riddle only knew him as the Transfiguration teacher before, and thought the accounts of Dumbledore's victory over Grindelwald had been exaggerated to great effect). Riddle's hubris was believing he could defeat Dumbledore on his own, thinking himself already stronger than Grindelwald ever hoped to be.

Rathin Patil vs. Dagrim Patil

Rathin had always been very protective of Dagrim, and loved her dearly, although his acts of affection were often misinterpreted as pity and condescension. This only served to push them further apart. When Dagrim turned to the Dark Arts and found solace in Riddle, it revolted Rathin, as he was hugely against the corruption the Dark Arts has on the performing witch or wizard, and wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy. He still very much loves her, and it hurts him to fight her. Dagrim, on the other hand, finds catharsis in duelling her brother, believing it to be justice for the way her parents treated her and the little he did to dissuade them.

Miraya Varma vs. Cantankerous Nott

A mutual respect and an academic rivalry, Cantankerous and Miraya were not friends by any means, but not enemies, either. Cantankerous even went as far as to warn Miraya of an impending attack, allowing her to evacuate the building. But although he knows she's clever, he also knows that she's incredibly stubborn, and displayed little surprise to find her awaiting him in the now vacant building. They are equally matched, and their unique relationship spans several decades, even into Cantankerous' failed run at Minister for Magic, and Theodore and the Patil twins' time at Hogwarts. She was present at his trial following the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, and watched as he was sentenced to life in Azkaban for his crimes as a Death Eater.

Isaiah Moody vs. Abraxas Malfoy

Given his profession, Isaiah has a lot of enemies on the Sacred Twenty-Eight who are loyal to the Dark Lord. One such enemy is Abraxas Malfoy. When Tom gets word of Moody's involvement in solving the Riddle Massacre, he sends Malfoy and a newer Death Eater, Evangeline Rosier, to hinder the investigation. Abraxas and Evangeline were responsible for the attack on Isaiah's heavily pregnant wife, who, if she hadn't been an Auror herself, would've never survived. Alastor Moody was prematurely born at St. Mungo's following the attack, and all of Isaiah's efforts were turned on exacting vengeance on those responsible. Malfoy went into hiding, but Isaiah, ruthless, managed to hunt down Rosier. She died under questioning, setting in motion a vicious cycle of vengeance between the Moodys and Rosiers. Once Isaiah had been killed by Evangeline's brother (Evan [who was named after her] Rosier's father), Abraxas deemed it safe to rejoin society.

Minerva McGonagall vs. Ulysses Mulciber

On the list of things Ulysses loathes, he would put half-bloods above muggleborns (although he turns a blind eye to his Dark Lord's blood status when it conveniences him). Half-bloods only serve as a reminder of the lowest and weakest of his kind; the unworthy muggleborns, the lecherous blood traitors, the vermin muggles. Mulciber prides himself as something of a "purifier," and finds great enjoyment in pruning family trees that have been poisoned by muggle blood into purity once more. He takes a great interest in Minerva McGonagall, given that she is an incredibly powerful witch at such a young age, and he wonders how glorious she would've been had she been a pureblood (a twisted and untrue belief among the Sacred Twenty-Eight during that time). Minerva, the threat of Mulciber weighing heavily on her, places her family under Dumbledore's protection. She vows to stop Mulciber and his perverse idea of justice.

Corinne Scamander vs. Carmilla Avery

It didn't take much to enrage Carmilla Avery, and Corinne had been caught in the tempest Carmilla's fury since the day they'd met. Carmilla, who took great pleasure in picking on people she deemed lesser, made a target out of Corinne, perceiving her kindness for weakness. During their time at Hogwarts, Corinne had gained the attention of Avery for being a blood traitor and a muggle sympathizer, which only strengthened Carmilla's vindication. Corinne, who had been friends with Rubeus Hagrid prior to his expulsion, and who had almost fallen prey to the basilisk when she had heard Myrtle Warren's cries from the bathroom, never lowered herself to Carmilla's level nor did she rise to any of the challenges. This hurt Avery's ego, as she thought this was Corinne's way of claiming herself better than her. It wasn't until after Hogwarts that Carmilla's growing resentment came to a head, and, without the protection the school offered Corinne, Carmilla was looking to finally put an end to the blood traitor line of Scamander.

Declan Diggory vs. Serafine Lestrange

Declan and Serafine were childhood friends who drifted apart during their time at Hogwarts, particularly when she fell in with Riddle's crowd. She is viewed by Dumbledore as having the power to sway the entire outcome of the war, for if Serafine could be persuaded into leaving Riddle, her cousins (one of whom is the father of Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange) would surely comply, and the families who held the Lestranges in high regard would be inclined to follow. This makes Declan and Serafine key pieces in Dumbledore's game of strategy. However, Serafine was disowned long before she defected from the Death Eaters, leaving the Lestranges firmly in Riddle's grasp. Although Serafine claimed to feel nothing for Diggory, she still refused to deal any real harm to him when they duel, in spite of having ample opportunity to do so; something which Riddle picked up on. She was later forced to torture Declan in front of him to prove her loyalty to the Dark Lord, something which Declan permitted her to do, knowing she had very little choice in the matter. He was left for dead, but Serafine would later secretly return with Corinne to get him medical attention. She gives her son, Francis, "Declan" as a middle name.

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witchcraftingboop · 4 years

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Re: Jbird & RainS. (Briar) Discourse

Previously, I have spoken with the person who made very serious allegations against JBird, calling him a racist, that were then used by others to spread slander against him. They have since apologized and admitted that JBird isn't a racist, and I genuinely think there was a stark miscommunication that went on to prompt such a claim. I don't want to name them or involve them here, since I do believe they've already reflected enough on the situation at hand, and is still deeply considering the multi-faceted hornet's nest of problems they've stumbled upon.

However, in light of the blatant dismissal and refusal to submit actual proof against the two, I feel as if I should share the information I offered this person before.

If you are basing your arguments against Jbird and Briar off of the previous, separate Discord group discussions of Trio & co. - screenshots of which have been, and continue to be spread years later, by Prim - then I especially implore you to be open to what I have to say. As a third party to this continually and rapidly spiralling debacle, I feel like there's not much I can say or do to assist my friends in being heard, but I feel as if I ought to try. Prim's following is large and actively prepared to follow her "do not interact even to ask questions" policy, so I worry it may be too late already. But I am not without hope or faith.

Tumblr is, unfortunately, a place where hate spreads rapidly, and while I do love the broad community it fosters, I am also aware that, even with the best of folks, it is hard to see the side of someone you've already decided is guilty and not worth approaching for an explanation.

First and foremost, I believe in innocence until proven guilty.

Now then! Onto my offered commentary/input! (Sorry to prattle on so much.)

To start, thedesertgod, also known as Trio, did go through and look for her personal information, which is messed up. But that person has already apologized, if I'm remembering correctly, and left Tumblr. And the other main user who helped spread information about Prim being a race faker also admitted wrong and left. The others in the chat, particularly Mystic and Ronan appear to just be making jokes and stating factual informative summaries, respectively. E-muete also said "ok no" after the Dolezal comment, which is a common "no that's too far a comparison/joke/statement" substitute among their forums and chats and often means they don't actually agree with what they themselves said. Ruby also politely reminds Trio that it's impossible to tell someone's race off of their appearance alone. So what I see here is definitely problematic, but entirely on Trio's part. I'm not saying it's not screwed up to find pictures of someone's parents and debate their race, but the persons who did those things have already left the Tumblrsphere.

Unfortunately, the people you've pointed out don't have a good history with Prim even before the whole "Trio nitpicking her race" thing. Prim used to follow more than a few of them and use their posts to fuel her platform, oftentimes creating uninformed mish-mosh articles with a voice of authority that simply wasn't warranted. As I'm sure you're aware, it's hard enough dealing with people stealing your content word for word, but to attempt to steal your knowledge? Your initiations and rites of passage? And use them to sell yourself as a master of a breadth of practices? The tradcrafters of that particular circle decided to band together and block her from interacting with them directly for that very reason. And because of that, Prim started telling her followers that they are all racist and elitist and ableist and gatekeepers. These terms over the years have become almost like triggers in that once they're said, everyone seems to put on a blindfold and fall into a frenzied rage. And to be fair, Prim is far too quick, in my opinion, to bring up racism as the reason others disagree with her. Most times, I've noticed at least, that if she calls someone racist or says they're unsupportive of POC, she nearly immediately brings up BLM activism in her posts or reblogs. I'm not saying I necessarily support calling all of her activistic inclinations performative, but where the tradcradt group she calls racist is more than willing to talk of and show proof of their contribution, Prim never has and avoids it if asked. I can see both sides, really. But the fact remains that calling someone performative in their actions, does not a racist make. Neither, in my opinion, does interacting with people who are assumed (without real and concrete proof) to be racist.

I can appreciate where you're coming from; honestly, I can. People have grown accustomed to hearing the prefix trad- and preparing for the worst. Racism is a systematic and prevailing problem in the society all around us, so it makes sense to be on the lookout for it. You want to protect yourself and your community. I can understand your sentiments perfectly. But I cannot support "guilty by association" viewpoints. As a WOC who grew up in some rough areas, I have seen boys killed under that very same reasoning. Jbird is a good friend of mine, and I have never questioned his morals or ethics. I have seen no sign of my being looked down upon for the color of my skin, nor anyone else who runs in that very same circle.

What I see is what I see in a lot of faces on this hellsite: hurt. Before Trio and after Trio left, the tradcraft community has been slandered and ostracized. They have shut themselves off to outsiders for the very thing you've done to Jbird just yesterday. They hold their secrets closer than most other communities now because persecution is seemingly forever at their door. On Prim's end too, there has been struggle and pain and needless arguing and hurt. If those you approach seem prickly, it is often because the world has roughened their edges, not because they personally are against you.

I asked for a couple examples from the group and one person (I'll keep them anonymous because I didn't confirm they'd like their name here) said: she has talked about saint magic (trio), hadean pamphlet (trio), hubris (Ruby), fairies, trad craft shit (Mahigan among others), etc etc

From what I personally have seen, her most recent was the Witch Fire podcast. A few tradcraft blogs had a debate/discussion about Witch Fire and its traditional eurocentric foundations in witchcraft not that long ago, and then Prim decided to put out a podcast that was so uninformed, I'm still worried about how younger or newer witches might be hurt by it.

Unfortunately the tradcraft community is vulnerable to that kind of thing [being called names or falsely accused] and an easy target. That's why being called those kind of harsh words - like gatekeeping, elitist, racist, and ableist - are met with so much anger from them. I take it very seriously because I've seen the kind of whiplash it has, especially on such a closed off group.

[A Reply.] Yeah no, Prim "apologizes" by talking about how she's been previously given a hard time with interjections of "but please don't go around spreading hate" and never directly apologizes to the tradcrafter in such posts. Unfortunately, her "apology" did more harm than good. I was hoping she'd just ignore it but . . . This tends to happen too 🤦‍♀️

I think that if both sides were able to approach it as openmindedly as you have, there would be a lot less drama and in-fighting on this app 😩 I really did enjoy talking with you though!

That just about covers everything I'd like to say on the matter.

I do not condone spreading hate, just as I don't condone misinformation or blind allegiance to what one person says. So if you can respectfully and openmindedly address your questions/comments/concerns, I don't see why you can't interact with Briar, Jbird, or myself. I understand it's easy to get caught up in the first perspective you're given, but it is my hope that Witchblr as a whole can be more open to hearing both sides of the story. Blindly blocking and cancelling certain bloggers is something I don't support nor encourage. I understand Prim must be tired of addressing all of the drama that churns around her, so I won't speak as to what her reasoning could be for suggesting such a solution. I'm simply stating what I hope for the community as a whole.

| | Note: The statements above were written early (I think, my sense of time is off) yesterday, and as of yet, I have still seen no concrete evidence that Briar or Jbird have ever made racist comments. On Briar's part, I have seen her observation that activism on a performative platform such as Tumblr can come off as performative, but she never once said she doesn't know or see why Prim would support and promote BLM activism. Something I think was misconstrued and lumped all together to sound as if she thought Prim were faking her contributions altogether. | |

#witchblr #witch community #witchblr discourse #discourse #disappointed #tradcraft #traditional witchcraft #primrose #nightshadeandroses #gabrielle #chthoniaa

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goddessdoeswitchery · 4 years

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Hellenic Polytheism 101 Transcripts: Pillar of Hellenic Polytheism Sophrosyne

Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Hellenic Polytheism 101, where we will be moving onto to the next pillar of Hellenic Polytheism: Sophrosyne, which is, essentially, moderation, prudence, self-control, self-discipline, or temperance based upon thorough self-examination. Since we are coming up on a holiday season in the US, this seems like the perfect time to focus on Sophrosyne, and to remember it’s opposite, hubris, and how to avoid it. It is also important to remember that even in Ancient Greece, it was well understood that Sophrosyne could be taken too far, something we also understand still today.

“Earth shaker, you would not consider me sophrosyne if I were to fight with you for the sake of wretched mortals” Apollo says this to Poseidon in the Illiad, as Homer brings us a look at what Sophrosyne would mean to the same deity who brings us the Delphic Maxims, such as know know thyself, know by learning, exercise prudence, praise virtue, nothing in excess, know who is the judge, keep secret what should be kept secret, take sensible risks, be well behaved, be self disciplined, be sensible. This is not the only example in Homer’s work of Sophrosyne. In fact, there are a really a lot of them. I would definitely suggest you read both of them and look closely for examples of sophrosyne. Homer was very sensitive to the need for Sophrosyne in society and in an individual. On an individual level, sophrosyne prevented people form getting into serious trouble, both with themselves and on a religious level. After all, someone exercising sophrosyne would be very unlikely to become a spider after being cursed by Athena, right? On a modern level, someone exercising sophrosyne is less likely to face personal problems as well. You won’t wind up drinking to excess and getting into a car accident. You won’t find yourself challenging someone better than you to a fight. You won’t find yourself taking on more tasks than you can manage. You won’t find yourself spending more money than you can spare on things you don’t need. By exercising sophrosyne you can avoid a lot of trouble. On a societal level, we should try to exercise that same self control and temperance. After all, there is no reason for any country to spend more than 56 countries combined on defense spending. There is no reason for a city to cut taxes and not invest in repairing roads or assisting those who need it the most. There is no reason for a group of friends to go out in the middle of a pandemic to a bar just to have a good time. We can bring the ideals of sophrosyne to our own lives and encourage others to do the same, through voting and talking to others and being an example.

When we do not practice sophrosyne, we tend to fall victim to hubris. For someone who has spent any sort of time practicing Hellenic polytheism, we should all know exactly how bad hubris is. We’ve all probably seen it or heard it online. Recently, there was a lot of talk of witches online cursing the moon, specifically aimed at making Artemis or Apollo angry. Now, in the end, it was revealed to be some big hoax, a lie they told to make other witches start saying things about how they could tell someone had hexed the moon because their own spells weren’t as effective. Then the original hexers could say “Ha! We told you witch craft and the gods weren’t real, see? These guys said they noticed a change but we didn’t do anything, so clearly they must be faking!” The whole ordeal was a perfect example of what could happen if people fell victim to hubris, and many more sensible folks online pointed out that it was hubris, believing anyone could have an affect on a deity by cursing the moon. We’ve all seen other examples of hubris. Hellenic polytheists who say that Artemis would never let a man worship her, or a straight woman, or a woman who has had sex with a man. People who gatekeep, projecting their personal bigotry onto the Theoi. We’ve all come across. Hopefully, most have us have rolled our eyes and ignored it.

Even in mythology, hubris is painted to be among the worst things a person can be. Niobe lost her sons and daughters to Artemis and Apollo after she bragged to Leto that she was better than Leto for having more children. Arachne, turned into a spider for daring to compare herself to Athena. Antigone’s father, who lost his son and his wife for believing that his life was higher than the law of the gods. Oedipus refuses to accept his own fate and wound up falling victim to it because of his hubris. Ajax, believing he was entitled to the armor of Achilles and being driven mad and eventually killing himself. Icarus, flying to close to the sun, too prideful to listen to his father’s warnings. Orestes taking it upon himself to avenge his father by killing his mother and being driven mad. Greek stories are teeming with examples of people who have fallen victim to hubris. In many of these stories, sophrosyne is pointed to as a virtue to aspire to strictly to avoid it’s opposite, hubris.

And yet, we can also take sophrosyne too far. For example, in the Bacchae, Pentheus holds himself as a champion of sophrosyne, as fails to understand that by being overly self-controlled and self-discplined and holding himself up as the model of sophrosyne, he ignores the moderation and temperance part. He tried to force everyone listen to him, to oppose the Bacchic rites, and, in the end, his obsession with only a part of sophrosyne causes his own death. The Ancient Greeks understood that there was such a thing as being too controlled. There was such a thing as a fatal exaggeration of one side of the many-sided virtue of sophrosyne. Thus one of the biggest keys to sophrosyne is moderation. Nothing in excess says one of the Delphic Maxims, not even self-control and self-discipline.

As we go through this holiday there a lot of ways you can apply sophrosyne to your life. One of the dangers of the holidays is becoming over-extended. For example, I have a large family. Like…..over 100 people kind of large. So large that we could probably fill a high school basketball stadium kind of large. It’s also got a lot of different branches. Mom’s side, which has dad and mom in separate houses. My ex-stepdad, whose family we still see. My dad and his family. My dad’s ex wife and her daughter and her kids, who I’m also close to. My girlfriend. My kids’ dad and his family. I always joke that we’ve got our own little 12 days of Christmas skit between grandpa jones, grandpa long, Uncle Cody, Uncle Andrew, my dad, his ex wife’s house, my girlfriend, the kids’ dad, his family, and we’ve still got to squeeze out time for our own holiday celebration too. Factor in the fact that, like most customer service based companies in the US, my job doesn’t allow us to take more than half of Christmas Eve and all of Christmas day off. Sure, we’ve got the Sunday before and after when I’m off as well, but that’s barely 3 days for 4 states and 10 places to visit. Factor in the budget for all those places and all those gifts, not to mention the drama that comes around when we decide where we’re having Thanksgiving at and you can understand why I bring up being overextended as a danger of the holiday season. Now, maybe that isn’t a problem for you. Maybe you become over extended by volunteering to work too many hours to help your more Christian friends have time off. Maybe you offer to do too much during Thanksgiving and wind up having to wake up at 5 am to get started on a meal that you can’t believe you promised to cook. Maybe during Halloween, you spend too much time focused on parties or trick-or-treating and realize that you would have had a much better time sitting at home, watching Halloweentown with a bowl of candy and some friends. Either way, we all tend to push ourselves too hard, especially once the holidays roll around and we start wanting to do everything so we can get every experience. We need to remember sophrosyne during this time. Exercise self-control and stay home when it’s something you want to do. Exercise self-discipline and avoid getting gifts when you can’t afford it, there is no shame in saying “Look, finances are strapped and I can’t manage more than X”. Exercise moderation and remember that you can’t actually do everything. Be prudent and accept the reality of whatever situation you are facing. Practice sophrosyne.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Hellenic Polytheism 101 where we discussed another one of the Pillars of Hellenic polytheism, Sophrosyne. Today, I relied on the Odyssey, The Illiad, Sophrosyne: Self Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature by Helen North, A Period of Opposition to Sophrosyne In Greek Thought also by Helen North, Mythology of the Greeks by George Grote, and the Wikipedia entry for Sophrosyne. Remember, all links to the resources I used can be found on my tumblr at goddessdoeswitchery.tumblr.com, along with a transcript of today’s episode under the tag “Transcripts”. I look forward to speaking with you all again on October 18th, where we will be discussing Eusebia.

#hellenic polytheism #hellenic polytheism 101 #transcripts #sophrosyne #pillars of hellenic polythiesm

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thedearidiot · 4 years

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One of the reasons the Oedipus myth resonates, I think, is the same reason so many other Greek myths do. Their stock-in-trade is not merely crime and punishment, heroism and reward; rather, these myths deal with taboo-shattering transgression: homicide, filicide, patricide, incest, cannibalism, bestiality, sacrilege — an anti-bucket list if ever there was one.

Unfortunately, the myth continues to hold fascination due to centuries of misinterpretation. If you read Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus in high school, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that when the smoke cleared the big takeaway was “fate vs. free will.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Anyone who reads the OT or teaches the OT needs to read this article by E.R. Dodds and take its lessons to heart:

Oedipus is not a plaything of the gods. He is not a helpless victim of fate. In Greek myth, prophecies exist to come true. There’s a sticky situation in the Odyssey where a prophecy might have been avoided (in Book 13, re: the extermination of the Phaeacians), but in every other instance prophecies have a 100% completion rate. This fact does not, however, preclude Oedipus’ own agency in his (and others’) ruin. If memory serves, Dodds illustrates this point about free will by citing the example of Peter’s betrayal of Jesus in the Bible. At the Last Supper Jesus predicts that Peter will deny him three times. Jesus doesn’t make Peter do so — he just makes an accurate prediction. And so it is with Greek prophecies.

Ah, comes the objection, but without the oracle Oedipus would have lived footloose and fancy-free in Corinth for the rest of his life. But the Delphic Oracle wasn’t a door-to-door enterprise. Oedipus went to them. Some random drunk questioned his parentage. Now, Polybus and Merope could have done a lot of people a big favor by leveling with their adoptive son, but they were more interested in protecting the line of succession at Corinth. We mustn’t judge too harshly. They told Oed to let it go, but he just had to know the truth — his very name is suggestive of knowledge. (Gr. oida = “I know”)

Now. Two Greek words get tossed around a lot when studying this play. The first is hamartia — typically rendered as “tragic flaw.” And the word can have that “innate character flaw” connotation. In the New Testament it is the word used for “sin.” The only reason we know this word in connection with tragedy is that Aristotle used the term in his Poetics; and he applied it directly to Sophocles’ OT. Here’s the thing: the context makes it clear that Aristotle is not attributing a character flaw to Oedipus. Rather, hamartia here means an error in judgement. When describing the role of hamartia in Greek tragedy, Aristotle pairs the OT with the lost play Thyestes. Thyestes’ deal in Greek myth was that he mistook his butchered children for regular barbecue and ate them. So Oedipus, then, made an error in judgement: in order to avoid killing his father and marrying his mother he took steps that achieved the opposite result.

This error, in fact, is really a series of errors. Oedipus tells Jocasta that he asked the Delphic Oracle who his real parents were. He goes on to tell Jocasta that the Oracle did not answer his question, but instead told him that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Wrong! The Oracle did answer his question — Hey, dumbass: you’re going to kill a man who turns out to be your father and marry a woman who turns out to be your mother. Learning this new piece of information, Oedipus compounds his mistake by now treating as certain (Polybus and Merope are his birth parents) the very idea that had filled him with such doubt.

But cannot an error in judgement stem from some innate flaw? If Oedipus has a flaw, it would seem to be his hubris — his pride. Right? Yes and no. Oedipus is a proud man, sure. And he has reason to be. He solved the riddle of the Sphinx when no one else could. This success encouraged him to believe even something as ineluctable as an oracle issued from Delphi was just another problem to be solved. It’s been a while since I’ve read the OT in English and even longer since I’ve read it in Greek, but it is my recollection that Oedipus uses a fair amount of scientific/mathematical vocabulary — indicative of a problem-solving mindset.

But back to hubris. It doesn’t mean pride:

Greek Dictionary Headword Search Results

As understood by the ancient Greeks, hubris was an act of violence against another (human or divine) in an attempt to assert dominance beyond what is proper. In the play that bears his name, Agamemnon displays hubris when he tramples on tapestries meant for the gods. In the Persae, Xerxes’ hubris entails crimes against both man (trying to enslave Greece) and nature (bridging the Hellespont, lashing the uncooperative sea). Unlike Agamemnon and Xerxes, it is difficult to find fault with Oedipus. Of course he’s going to try to outwit the Delphic Oracle. Patricide is generally frowned upon and makin’ bacon with your mom is icky, MILF or not.

We find the story of Oedipus (Sophocles’ OT, in particular) so compelling because it shows us a good man trying to do the right thing with spectacularly disastrous results.

- Chad Turner, Why is it that the Oedipus myth resonates so much with a Westerner (Generic collective)? /Quora.

#chad turner #words #prose #oedipus #aristotle #e. r. dodds #greek mythology #to remember #re tag #la tour d'amour #mythology

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sparklyandchic · 4 years

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🦋 MINI MIND MAKEOVER 🦋

okay i started the idea for this mini little mind makeover when i broke up with my boyfriend in like january. instead of being sad or angry, i wanted to be grateful for this time and take it as an opportunity to make life better for myself. then quarantine happened, so some of these are related to things i’ve learned since that started. either way, these aren’t all concrete things to do for your mind; some of them are just ways of thinking or pep talks. but if you can find one little piece of information or thought that makes you a little bit happier for a moment, that’s all i can hope for!

5-htp: okay first off- please ALWAYS consult your psychiatrist or medical professional before taking a supplement! taking 5-htp with, for example, serotonin-increasing medications can lead to a fatal illness called serotonin syndrome. personally, i started taking it because i had been on 10 mg prozac for a few months. it definitely dulled a lot of my anxiety and had a lot of positive aspects to it, but it dulled them almost too much to the point where i felt apathetic and detached from myself and the situations i was in. i was in a very unhealthy relationship and felt like i needed my mental clarity and “overthinking” processes back in order to identify what i was feeling and how to deal with it. i felt a lot more “sensitive” after coming off it, which was actually really welcome for me at first, but then it sort of dropped off into withdrawals. i was having constant panic attacks and crying very often. after a while, i was debating going back on prozac, but remembered i had taken 5-htp before. 5-htp is an amino acid that is a direct precursor to serotonin being produced in the brain. when u eat turkey, tryptophan is converted into 5-htp which leads to your brain producing serotonin, thus why you feel calm and happy afterwards. after taking 5-htp for just a few days, ranging between 200-300 mg per day (again, do your research, ask your doctor, and start small) i stopped crying constantly and really felt this sense of calmness and wellbeing but without the detachment and apathy i felt with prozac. i could still think clearly but didn’t feel overly sensitive to every emotion which arose. personally, it is really a lifesaver and really does make a noticeable difference.

cognitive behavioral therapy: ive tried therapy a million times. well okay, like 5 or 6 different therapists. at its worst, therapists told me i needed to use my sexual power as a woman in order to get what i wanted from men, told me i’m bad at socializing and should do group therapy, said my mom shouldn’t have encouraged me to “be myself” when i was younger because it made me less likeable than if i had conformed to normal societal standards of dressing. i had gone to “therapists” who claimed to be trained in CBT, but when i told them about my experiences with dissociation, the only feedback i got was to “take more baths.” while going through a few unpleasant experiences in my personal life, i decided i should try CBT once more, but like the real kind. i found an ivy-league educated licensed psychologist (NOT a “licensed clinical social worker” who doesn’t even have a psychology degree!!) who SPECIALIZED specifically in cognitive behavioral therapy. just after the first session, i was so elated with my experience. as opposed to just telling me that i needed to be more normal or more kind or a better person, she tried to identify WHAT was making me feel that way about myself in the first place. she pointed out the positive things i do and reassured me i was kind, good, and deserving of good things. she pointed out many aspects of my situation that would have taken me days or weeks to come to on my own. i’ve realized my hubris isn’t that i’m not socially acceptable or not perfect enough, but its just that i tend to THINK that i am these things despite having no evidence of it. so, over time with therapy, my positive self image about who i am as a person has grown and strengthened and i dont just randomly feel like a bad human being anymore lol. moral of the story, if you wanna do therapy but it keeps sucking, dont give up. go to a legit psychologist, find someone who specializes in the type of therapy you’re seeking, and also be vocal during your sessions. stand up to your psychologist when they continually push a narrative onto you, and explain why you don’t agree with it. sometimes it’s their job to try different narratives to see what fits, and if you just passively let them say what they want to, you’ll never find the truth of your experience! it’s a communal effort! therapy isn’t usually a magic cure-all where one session fixes everything that goes awry in your brain. but if you find someone who knows what they’re doing they can in fact really help your thought processes become less twisted up and more clear and healthy.

meditation and mindfulness: a few weeks ago i felt anxious and overly driven to get things done to the point where i spiraled into a space of guilt or a panic attack over not getting enough things done. meditation can be so so helpful here. it’s better to spend an hour sitting and doing nothing, but doing it peacefully and then calmly moving on to doing something else, than to spend 5 hours stressing yourself over every single thing you need to get done and how much time you’re wasting. the things that need to get done will get done. another thing that i’ve realized and say to myself a lot is: “focus not on doing all things perfectly, but on doing the small things well.” by this i mean, stop thinking about the 20 things you need to get done and how it all needs to be perfect, but instead take your time with the task that presents itself as most beneficial right now and focus on enjoying it and giving your whole self to the process. for example, stop thinking about how you need to clean your room, your closet, donate clothes, take a shower, take out the trash, read, workout, etc. think to yourself; “which task would bring me the most joy right now?” if the answer is taking a shower, then take that damn shower. bring your speaker into the bathroom, scrub every inch of your scalp with shampoo, scrub your feet and behind your ears and your neck with body wash, brush the conditioner through your hair fully. you may end your shower with 19 other things to do, but god damn if you can’t enjoy a single one of them and be present for it, what’s the fucking point! go light a candle and bask in its glow, go make your bed and huddle up in your neatly arranged covers, go take a long bath or a thorough shower, and be proud of and content with that today.

relationships, with others and yourself: okay, if you missed the memo, my ex-boyfriend sucked. like genuinely was a bad person. he was a drug dealer, so that’s red flag number 1 (which i ignored of course), he hadn’t graduated high school (he was 18, i was 20, he was supposed to graduate the last semester but refused to do the work and ignored me and his mother when encouraged to do it, which is uhh definitely red flag number 2 which i also ignored), he habitually did not show up for dates on time or lied about what he was going to do or what he did (literally everything he did was a red flag and i rlly ignored all of it). the worst part was how he responded when i worked up the courage to speak to him about it. if we had agreed upon a time for our date but he showed up literally 8 hours late, he would blame it on me because i “could have called” him, or that i was “demanding too much of” him, or that i “should have said something earlier so now [i was] just dragging it out because it already happened.” basically, whatever narrative he pushed at me, i eventually gave into. i’ve dealt with gaslighting in a relationship before and a part of me knew what was happening to me, but a part of me also kept having hope for him, kept empathizing with him, kept wanting to believe in him. after a bit too much time, i finally realized you have to trust yourself, empathize with yourself, and believing in yourself over anyone else. at first i felt bad for him not being able to graduate because i had my own struggles with high school and getting work done. i thought he may have issues but he deserves someone to be there for him because i wanted someone to be there for me. despite the pain and stress he was causing me, i sat around crying over him because i cared about him and tend to over-empathize with people close to me, whether they deserve it or not. my therapist told me something that at first i did not understand, but over time came to grasp in its entirety: “some people do not deserve your love or kindness.” after our first session, my homework was to “consider when you are being kind and when you are being taken advantage of.” this made me realize that what feels like your instinctual nature to be nice to others, can in fact be a self-sabotaging unfair action, depending on the other person’s response. i might be dishing out a lot right now, but bear with me. think of it this way: you regard an action as a “kind action”. you might think “kind actions” include: forgiving someone for large mistakes, putting someone’s needs over yours, sparing them some change when they ask for it, listening to the problems they are dealing with every day. BUT when their actions include not forgiving you for minor mistakes, not giving a sh*t about your needs or considering them, not caring how much money they take from you and how much money you need to have around, or habitually glossing over your problems because it doesn’t benefit them to care, THEN those actions you performed are NOT “KIND ACTIONS” anymore. the act of continuing to give them leeway is now the act of being taken advantage of. the act of giving them money is now the act of being taken advantage of. the act of buying into their story at the expense of your sanity, is now the act of being taken advantage. basically, all i’m saying is START PUTTING YOURSELF FIRST AND TRUSTING YOURSELF WHEN YOU FEEL SOMEONE DOESN’T HAVE YOUR BEST INTERESTS IN MIND.

ending thoughts: i know quarantine is difficult right now. the desire to grow contrasted with the inability to move. maybe try and follow that old 2008~ quote; “bloom where you are planted”. you might not be able to reach the goals you thought you would during this time. you might not be able to run a marathon or make a bunch of new friends or wake up at 6 AM to workout or redo your bedroom or get a rhinoplasty or join a gym or get an internship. working towards productivity might be unrealistic right now. but you can work everyday towards becoming the woman you want to be, mentally. you can work on learning to be content, learning to make the best with what you have, learning to appreciate the little things, learning to slow down. these are all qualities that i for one want to have just as much as i want to be attractive or successful. if you can’t enjoy success, what’s the fucking point! life is on pause right now, take this moment as a gift and consider your internal world and what parts of your mind need a makeover. there are horrible things happening in the world right now, do what you can to help, but if you’re safe and healthy then be grateful for the things you can learn from this difficult time. take it slow, but keep moving forward!

#happyandchic #happy and chic

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teawiththegods · 4 years

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1/3 This might be hubris, but honestly... I can struggle to take Hellenism seriously sometimes. The community is on social media for most of us, and I think some people take this way too casually and not as a religion and philosophy and way of being. It’s almost began to desensitize me? And I’m trying to take it seriously, but as a former atheist who already struggles w connection to the gods, the environment doesn’t help. I don’t have that reverence I feel like I should.

2/3 I wish I didn’t have to come here for my religion. I wish I didn’t have to look to you, I wish I had a church or temple, I wish I had someone like a priest to talk to. I wish the world recognized us. Hellenism is so personal and that’s truly wonderful, but it also means that usually it’s just you alone with the gods, and you have to figure this out by yourself.3/3 I really do love this religion. I’ve always been searching for spirituality and I’ve only found it here. It’s a path you have to choose to go down. You aren’t just a Hellenic, you have to /do/ Hellenism. You have to think for yourself. But sometimes I wish there was a serious, irl physical place to turn to. Idrk what I came here to ask. Maybe how to have more reverence for the gods, or just to hear what you think? Thank you for reading all that, I hope the universe treats you well today :-)

What you’re saying isn’t hubris at all. I think it’s something all of us struggle with to some degree, especially with how dominating Christianity and Catholicism are. It’s kind of hard not to look at their followers and feel a little envious of what they have access to. And with those religions as kind of the primary example of what religion is supposed to be and how it’s supposed to operate, i think we can’t help but feel some doubt in what we believe since it doesn’t fit that mold.

But I do think a lot of it is based on perspective. For example, you talk a lot about the religion being taken “seriously” but i wonder if what you really mean is “more like how you worship”? The thing is our religion is has many different forms of worship and ways to go about it that just because maybe it’s not something you agree with doesn’t automatically mean the worshiper isn’t serious about their religion. I’m sure there are plenty of Hellenic Polytheists who don’t think my devotion is all that serious because it’s just not the way they go about it. But I do take my devotion extremely seriously, i just have a different definition of what that means and entails.

I also don’t think you should allow what other people are doing to affect your own view of the religion. People are going to do what they’re going to, you can’t control them or stop them, so having them cast doubts in your worship and beliefs is only going to continue to hurt you. Let people be and instead just find those who view worship similar to you.

I do understand the whole wishing there were physical places to worship. I think we all wish and hope for that. I know I have visions of setting up an Aphrodite temple one day. Maybe. But for now unfortunately we have to work with what we got. You can’t let what you DON’T have get in the way of making the most of what you do have, which is the internet. I mean at least you have access to the community. Think if the internet wasn’t around?? How lonely would we all be if we didn’t have the option of being online?? You know you gotta look at the positives. You can’t focus so much on what you’re lacking or how we don’t have the same things that other religions have.

Instead of letting it all get you down I challenge you to do something about it. Shift your perspective and create a community online with more like-minded people. Create content that expresses your views of Hellenic Polytheism and help educate those you may not be taking it “seriously” enough. Whatever it is, I encourage you to put some action behind your emotions because unfortunately the issues you have with our religion aren’t going to change at least not anytime soon. So your approach and perspective are going to have to change instead.

#worship help #Anonymous

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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#8yrsago David Byrne's How Music Works

Former Talking Heads frontman and all-round happy mutant David Byrne has written several good books, but his latest, How Music Works, is unquestionably the best of the very good bunch, possibly the book he was born to write. I could made good case for calling this How Art Works or even How Everything Works.

Though there is plenty of autobiographical material How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) -- inside dope on the creative, commercial and personal pressures that led to each of Byrne's projects -- this isn't merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art. It's a compelling story about the way that art comes out of technology, and as such, it's widely applicable beyond music.

Byrne lived through an important transition in the music industry: having gotten his start in the analog recording world, he skilfully managed a transition to an artist in the digital era (though not always a digital artist). As such, he has real gut-feel for the things that technology gives to artists and the things that technology takes away. He's like the kids who got their Apple ][+s in 1979, and keenly remember the time before computers were available to kids at all, the time when they were the exclusive domain of obsessive geeks, and the point at which they became widely exciting, and finally, ubiquitous -- a breadth of experience that offers visceral perspective.

There were so many times in this book when I felt like Byrne's observations extended beyond music and dance and into other forms of digital creativity. For example, when Byrne recounted his first experiments with cellular automata exercise for dance choreography, from his collaboration with Noemie Lafrance:

1. Improvise moving to the music and come up with an eight-count phrase (in dance, a phrase is a short series of moves that can be repeated).

2. When you find a phrase you like, loop (repeat) it.

3. When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it.

4. When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over.

It was like watching evolution on fast-forward, or an emergent lifeform coming into being. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. At first the room was chaos, writhing bodies everywhere. Then one could see that folks had chosen their phrases, and almost immediately one could see a pocket of dancers who had all adopted the same phrase. The copying had already begun, albeit in just one area. This pocket of copying began to expand, to go viral, while yet another one now emerged on the other side of the room. One clump grew faster than the other, and within four minutes the whole room was filled with dancers moving in perfect unison. Unbelievable! It only took four minutes for this evolutionary process to kick in, and for the "strongest" (unfortunate word, maybe) to dominate.

I remembered the first time I programmed an evolutionary algorithm and watched its complexity emerging from simple rules, and the catch in my throat as I realized that I was watching something like life being built up from simple, inert rules.

The book is shot through with historical examples and arguments about the nature of music, from Plato up to contemporary neuroscience, and here, too, many of the discussions are microcosms for contemporary technical/philosophical debates. There's a passage about how music is felt and experienced that contains the phrase, "music isn't merely absorbed above the neck," which is spookily similar to the debates about replicating human consciousness in computers, and the idea that our identity doesn't reside exclusively above the brainstem.

The same is true of Byrne's account of how music has not "progressed" from a "primitive" state -- rather, it adapted itself to different technological realities. Big cathedrals demand music that accommodates a lot of reverb; village campfire music has completely different needs. Reading this, I was excited by the parallels to discussions of whether we live in an era of technological "progress" or merely technological "change" -- is there a pinnacle we're climbing, or simply a bunch of stuff followed by a bunch of other stuff? Our overwhelming narrative of progress feels like hubris to me, at least a lot of the time. Some things are "better" (more energy efficient, more space-efficient, faster, more effective), but there are plenty of things that are held up as "better" that, to me, are simply different. Often very good, but in no way a higher rung on some notional ladder toward perfection.

When Byrne's history comes to the rise of popular recorded music, he describes a familiar dilemma: recording artists were asked to produce music that could work when performed live and when listened to in the listener's private playback environment -- not so different from the problems faced by games developers today who struggle to make games that will work on a wide variety of screens. In a later section, he describes the solution that was arrived at in the 1970s, a solution that reminds me a lot of the current world of content management systems like WordPress and Blogger, which attempt to separate "meaning" from "form" for text, storing them separately and combining them with little code-libraries called "decorators":

[Deconstruct and isolate] sums up the philosophy of a lot of music recording back in the late seventies. The goal was to get as pristine a sound as possible... Studios were often padded with sound-absorbent materials so that there was almost no reverberation. The sonic character of the space was sucked out, because it wasn't considered to be part of the music. Without this ambiance, it was explained, the sound would be more malleable after the recording had been made. Dead, characterless sound was held up as the ideal, and often still is. In this philosophy, the naturally occurring echo and reverb that normally added a little warmth to performances would be removed and then added back in when the recording was being mixed...

Recording a performance with a band and singer all playing together at the same time in the same room was by this time becoming a rarity. An incredible array of options opened up as a result, but some organic interplay between the musicians disappeared, and the sound of music changed. Some musicians who played well in live situations couldn't adapt to the fashion for each player to be isolated. They couldn't hear their bandmates and, as a result, often didn't play very well.

Changing the technology used in art changes the art, for good and ill. Blog-writing has a lot going for it -- spontaneity, velocity, vernacular informality, but often lacks the reflective distance that longer-form works bring. Byrne has similar observations about music and software:

What you hear [in contemporary music] is the shift in music structure that computer-aided composition has encouraged. Though software is promoted as being an unbiased toold that helps us do anything we want, all software has inherent biases that make working one way easier than another. With the Microsoft presentation software PowerPoint, for example, you have to simplify your presentations so much that the subtle nuances in the subject being discussed often get edited out. These nuances are not forbidden, they're not blocked, but including them tends to make for a less successful presentation. Likewise, that which is easy to bullet-point and simply visualize works better. That doesn't mean it actually is better; it means working is certain ways is simply easier than working in others...

An obvious example is quantizing. Since the mid-nineties, most popular music recorded on computers has had tempos and rhythms that have been quantized. That means that the tempo never varies, not even a little bit, the the rhythmic parts tend toward metronomic perfection. In the past, the tempo of recordings would always vary slightly, imperceptibly speeding up or maybe slowing down a little, or a drum fill might hesitate in order to signal the beginning of a new section. You'd feel a slight push and pull, a tug and then a release, as ensembles of whatever type responded to one another and lurched, ever so slightly, ahead of and behind an imaginary metronomic beat. No more. Now almost all pop recordings are played to a strict tempo, which makes these compositions fit more easily into the confines of editing and recording software. An eight-bar section recorded on a "grid" of this type is exactly twice as long as a four-bar section, and every eight-bar section is always exactly the same length. This makes for a nice visual array on the computer screen, and facilitates easy editing, arranging, and repairing as well. Music has come to accommodate software, and I have to admit a lot has been gained as a result.

Byrne is well aware of the parallels between music technology and other kinds of technology. No history of the recording business would be complete without a note about the format wars fought between Edison and his competitors like RCA, who made incompatible, anti-competitive playback formats. Byrne explicitly links this to modern format-wars, citing MS Office, Kindles, iPads and Pro Tools. (His final word on the format wars rings true for other media as well: "Throughout the history of recorded music, we have tended to value convenience over quality every time. Edison cylinders didn't really sound as good as live performers, but you could carry them around and play them whenever you wanted.")

Likewise, debates over technological change (pooh-poohing the "triviality" of social media or the ephemeral character of blogs) are played out in Byrne's history of music panics, which start in ancient Greece, and play out in situations like the disco wars, which prefigured the modern fight over sampling:

The most threatening thing to rockers in the era of disco was that the music was gay, black and "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings.

Like mixtapes. I'd argue that other than race and sex, [the fact that disco was "manufactured" on machines, made out of bits of other peoples' recordings] was the most threatening aspect. To rock purists, this new music messed with the idea of authorship. If music was now accepted as a kind of property, then this hodgepodge version that disregarded ownership and seemed to belong to and originate with so many people (and machines) called into question a whole social and economic framework.

But as Byrne reminds us, new technology can liberate new art forms. Digital formats and distribution have given us music that is only a few bars long, and compositions that are intended to play for 1,000 years. The MP3 shows us that 3.5 minutes isn't an "ideal" length for a song (merely the ideal length for a song that's meant to be sold on a 45RPM single), just as YouTube showed us that there are plenty of video stories that want to be two minutes long, rather than shoehorned into 22 minute sitcoms, 48 minute dramas, or 90 minute feature films.

And Byrne's own journey has led him to be skeptical of the all-rights-reserved model, from rules over photography and video in his shows:

The thing we were supposed to be fighting against was actually something we should be encouraging. They were getting the word out, and it wasn't costing me anything. I began to announce at the beginning of the shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good.

To a very good account of the power relationships reflected in ascribing authorship (and ownership, and copyright) to melody, but not to rhythms and grooves and textures, though these are just as important to the music's aesthetic effect.

Byrne doesn't focus exclusively on recording, distribution and playback technology. He is also a keen theorist of the musical implications of architecture, and presents a case-study of the legendary CBGB's and its layout, showing how these led to its center in the 1970s New York music scene that gave us the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and many other varied acts. Here, Byrne channels Jane Jacobs in a section that is nothing short of brilliant in its analysis of how small changes (sometimes on the scale of inches) make all the difference to the kind of art that takes place in a building.

There's a long section on the mechanics of the recording business as it stands today, with some speculation about where its headed, and included in this is a fabulous and weird section on some of Byrne's own creative process. Here he describes how he collaborated with Brian Eno on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

The unwritten rule in remote collaborations is, for me, "Leave the other person's stuff alone as much as you possibly can." You work with what you're given, and don't try to imagine it as something other than what it is. Accepting that half the creative decision-making has already been done has the effect of bypassing a lot of endless branching -- not to mention waffling and worrying.

And here's a mind-bending look into his lyrics-writing method:

...I begin by improvising a melody over the music. I do this by singing nonsense syllables, but with weirdly inappropriate passion, given that I'm not saying anything. Once I have a wordless melody and a vocal arrangement my my collaborators (if there are any) and I like, I'll begin to transcribe that gibberish as if it were real words.

I'll listen carefully to the meaningless vowels and consonants on the recording, and I'll try to understand what that guy (me), emoting so forcefully by inscrutably, is actually saying. It's like a forensic exercise. I'll follow the sound of the nonsense syllables as closely as possible. If a melodic phrase of gibberish ends on a high ooh sound, then I'll transcribe that, and in selecting the actual words, I'll try to try to choose one that ends in that syllable, or as close to it as I can get. So the transcription process often ends up with a page of real words, still fairly random, that sounds just like the gibberish.

I do that because the difference between an ooh and an aah, and a "b" and a "th" sound is, I assume, integral to the emotion that the story wants to express. I want to stay true to that unconscious, inarticulate intention. Admittedly, that content has no narrative, or might make no literal sense yet, but it's in there -- I can hear it. I can feel it. My job at this stage is to find words that acknowledge and adhere to the sonic and emotional qualities rather than to ignore and possibly destroy them.

Part of what makes words work in a song is how they sound to the ear and feel on the tongue. If they feel right physiologically, if the tongue of the singer and the mirror neurons of the listener resonate with the delicious appropriateness of the words coming out, then that will inevitably trump literal sense, although literal sense doesn't hurt.

Naturally, this leads into a great discussion of the neuroscience of music itself -- why our brains like certain sounds and rhythms.

How Music Works gave me insight into parts of my life as diverse as my email style to how I write fiction to how I parent my daughter (it was a relief to read Byrne's discussion of how parenting changed him as an artist). I've been a David Byrne fan since I was 13 and I got a copy of Stop Making Sense. He's never disappointed me, but with How Music Works, Byrne has blown through my expectations, producing a book that I'll be thinking of and referring to for years to come.

Byrne's touring the book now, and as his tour intersects with my own book tours, I'll be interviewing him live on stage in Toronto on September 19th, at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors.

How Music Works

https://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/david-byrnes-how-music-w.html

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ariainstars · 5 years

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Balance in the Force

“Don’t lecture me, Obi-Wan! I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the Dark Side as you do.” (Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith)

„If once you start go down the dark path, forever it will dominate your destiny.” (Jedi Master Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back)

Did anyone ever suspect that even Grand Master Yoda might not be quite right?

Are the Jedi entirely good? Is the Light Side meant to be “virtue”?

The Jedi we get to know in the prequel trilogy are neither free from flaws nor are they perfectly wise. They like to believe they are so, but looking at the facts they often don’t see what’s going on under their very noses. As Luke himself pointed out many years later, it was their hubris that led to their downfall.

We are speaking of a Council that had a Sith Lord among them for decades without realizing it.

Yoda wanted to preserve peace, but by teaching Jedi adepts for centuries to choose the Light Side, he unwittingly created an unbalance which favored the ascent of the Dark Side users, the Sith.

Besides, what was it with taking small children from their families, forcing them to become Jedi (i.e. having to live a life of sacrifice) whether they wanted it or not? And why did they equip children with a deadly weapon?

Both Obi-Wan and Yoda wanted to push Luke to commit patricide, Obi-Wan even telling him an obvious lie (that Vader had been Anakin’s murderer) for the purpose. In the Mos Eisley cantina, Obi-Wan cut off the arm of an importune although he had not attacked him, displaying an unnecessary cruelty. When he still was Anakin’s teacher he suppressed him, belittled his ideas and his need for approval, even denied him the right to worry about his own mother. Yoda did not take Anakin’s fears seriously either. The Jedi’s code of non-attachment was fatal because it made their commitment to compassion hollow. They were so far off from “mortal” issues in their ivory tower (it literally looks like one) that they no longer saw what was really important.

Are the Sith entirely evil? Is the Dark Side meant to be “evil”?

We are led to think that the Dark Side is all evil, but looking closer, it’s not: while Obi-Wan and Yoda try to manipulate Luke, Vader is always brutally honest.

Anakin never was in denial. He got married despite the Jedi code. He decided to embrace his feelings, including his sexuality. Not only was he obviously calm and serene (balanced and strong) after his marriage;

had he not married Padmé the children who would later bring down Palpatine’s Empire would not have been born. These children always reached out to others, no matter what they went through.

Palpatine himself had encouraged the Jedi Council to set Anakin at Padmés side to protect her, most probably speculating that the two young people would fall in love and thus Anakin would have another weak spot; he assuredly did not imagine the role the children of this couple would play, as little as he imagined that Luke, lured to the Death Star by compassion for his father, would in the end refuse to turn, pushing Vader to redemption.

It was Snoke who bridged Ben’s and Rey’s minds, with the purpose of manipulating Rey to come to him; he did not count with the strong connection that would arise between the two, and that this would finally mean his end.

I remember that I was initially irritated when Han seduced Leia - I thought he was giving Luke, who was his best friend, a backhanded turn making a move on the girl they were both crushing on as soon as Luke was not around. But eventually this turned out to be the right thing, because Luke’s crush on Leia faded before he found out that she actually is his long-lost twin sister.

Luke briefly considered killing Ben because he was afraid of losing everything he loved, yet in doing so he pushed his nephew to the Dark Side, which on the long run caused the death of Han Solo, who had been Luke’s dearest friend.

So, from something that is or may seem bad, good can come, and vice versa. Dark and Light are not intrinsically separated from one another as Jedi and Sith like to believe. Ironically, they are very alike in this fundamental mistake.

Looking back, I believe that Anakin was not “consumed by the Dark Side” as was said by Obi-Wan and Yoda. Half of his descent to darkness began with his training as a Jedi; when we see him again in Attack of the Clones he is already teetering on the edge, he is no longer the pure and idealistic boy he used to be. Palpatine manipulates his weakness, but that weakness was - albeit not consciously - caused by Jedi’s efforts to stunt him emotionally. They wanted to force him to make a choice, but Anakin couldn’t; he instinctively felt that it was wrong and that the Force is naturally made of both sides. He was told over and over that it is wrong to care for others, but that was the one sacrifice he was not willing to make in order to become a Jedi.

Darth Vader’s “creation” visually illustrates this, too. Anakin is almost killed by Obi-Wan, the Jedi, and Palpatine the Sith creates Vader from his miserable remainders.

My impression is that, being the strongest Jedi of all and the central figure in the conflict, he got between both sides and was crushed. The fact that beneath all of his power he was indeed physically and psychically broken would emphasize this.

Also, it would explain why Palpatine did not immediately contaminate Anakin’s mind but left him to the Jedi first: he needed both Forces in him. Vader’s enormous power did not come from the Dark Side, but from the conflict raging inside of him.

In A New Hope, Vader is still mostly Tarkin’s lackey; in Return of the Jedi he is oppressed by Palpatine, his master. He is at the height of his power in The Empire Strikes Back, where he is on the hunt for his son! Which means he is yearning for the Light. (See also the symbolism of “animus” hunting for “anima”, a common trope in fables and myths.) Vader did come back from the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi; and his son could feel the conflict inside of him. But if there was a conflict, this obviously means that Vader had not chosen one side once and for all.

Luke said to Palpatine “I will never turn to the Dark Side.” However he did so, if briefly, when he contemplated killing his own nephew. A further proof of the fact that with the Force, one cannot make a decision and pretend to stick to it for the rest of one’s life. Temptation can come at any time.

Luke’s / Anakin’s blue light sabre, the one that calls to Rey, is commonly seen as a symbol of hope and justice. In his time as a Jedi, Anakin indeed often used it in order to help others. However he also used it when he raided the Jedi Temple and killed everybody, including the padawans.

Kylo felt so torn apart by the conflict that he was willing to commit patricide to finally join the Dark Side for good. To no avail; he was traumatized, regretful and deeply hurt, proving that there still was good in him despite the horrible deed.

His power, too, came from the fact that he grew up with a good (at least well-meaning) family but was secretly influenced by Snoke all of the time. Like his grandfather, he was at his strongest while on the hunt for his equal in the Force: in this case, Rey in The Force Awakens.

And both of them are never so impressive as while they fight the Praetorian Guards together as one.

The Force As the Human Psyche?

From the psychological point of view, one might say that the Light Side represents human conscience (Superego) and the Dark Side the impulse (Id). Now the Id is not “evil”; aggression and sexuality stem from the Id, which often leads to believe that it is. But the Id also means impulse, creativity, belonging. In other words, the Superego alone without the Id cannot know love. Without love, an individual cannot reach out to others, and who does not reach out to others is not evil but also not really good. For evil things to happen, not only the active participants are responsible but also the ones who do not see it, or see it too late to do something against it. The Jedi are a tragic example of this.

Though we get to know the Jedi as the “good ones”, one of their major faults is that they live in denial. Anakin / Vader never is in denial, and neither is Ben / Kylo: both are brutally honest, to themselves as well as to others. Which is often painful for their surroundings, but both Luke and Rey need them to tell them the truth, and to force them to look at it. Luke was traumatized learning the truth about his father, but afterwards he finally became the last and strongest of all Jedi; Rey was deeply hurt when she had to accept that her parents not only were dead but had indeed not wanted her, yet later on we saw her so grounded in the Force that she could make massive rocks float.

It may seem the most natural thing to do, and also a great honor, to become a Jedi (or a Sith) if one has the Force; but so far, we have never seen any Force user, Skywalker or not, finding happiness with this choice, whether he made it himself or whether it was thrust upon him.

I assume there must be a way that someone can learn to use the Force without having to choose to be a Jedi or a Sith. Both of these extremes do not ensure peace and happiness, neither for the Force user nor for the ones around them. Only a balanced Force user can find happiness, and bring fulfilment to others, too.

Leia would be a very good example for this: she always used her power for knowledge and defense, and she embraced her desire for belonging and her sexuality, too. She is very rightly paired off with Han, who used to be a small criminal but never was actually evil, and later used his shrewdness, earned through his many adventures, to help others.

So, what does this mean for Episode IX, the ending and culmination of the saga? Since the classic trilogy ended with the victory of the Light Side and the prequel trilogy told us the victory of the Dark Side, it can only end with Balance.

However, I am not sure that Ben Solo and Rey will “bring Balance to the galaxy” with their union. They must first and foremost find balance within themselves, and thus be the first of a new kind of Force users.

Rey was not tempted by the Dark Side yet; I am positive however that it is an important experience she must make, and her approaching the ruins of the old Death Star, where Palpatine is most probably lying in waiting, would hint at something like that.

Ben Solo, on the other hand, must prove that he has overcome the resentment in his heart. He needs to be an example for the fact that someone can go down the dark path, come back to the light and survive, and still want to reach out to other people. He needs to find forgiveness and new life despite his sins, not to be punished for them and forgotten.

Ben and Rey need to show the galaxy at large that Balance is possible; that a Force user, whether he is a Skywalker or an absolute nobody, needs not choose one side but that they can very well use the best from both sides; and that to preserve peace and justice one does not need to become a Jedi, but that anyone can do so who is balanced inside.

Because in the end, the Force is neither simply Light and Dark, nor is it grey; it creates diversity and binds everything and everyone together.

“You refer to the prophecy of The One who will bring balance to the Force. You believe it’s this boy…?” (Mace Windu to Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace)

It is largely believed in the fandom that Darth Vader ultimately brought the much-needed balance by killing Palpatine. However, that act meant the destruction of the Dark Side and the victory of the Light Side of the Force: and if one side remains stronger than the other, that does not mean balance. Which could explain why, when we see our heroes again about 30 years after their “happy ending”, they do not look happy at all and we learn about a lot of disappointment and disillusion which they had to live through.

Nevertheless, I do believe that when all will be said and done, we will realize that Anakin Skywalker was indeed the Chosen One.

“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” (Yoda in The Phantom Menace)

Logically this must also mean that trust leads to serenity, serenity leads to love, and love leads to happiness. The old school Jedi may have been wise, but we never saw them display affection for anyone. Their fear of the Dark Side and philosophy of detachment was literally their doom; they feared Anakin Skywalker too much to show him the love and offer him the belonging he so desperately wanted.

It is true that fear and anger lead to the Dark Side, but the quickest way to fall prey to fear and anger is to deny that one feels them in the first place. Denial was the Jedi’s first step down the path that led to their doom, and plunged the whole galaxy into darkness. That he never denied the truth of his own emotions, nor of anyone else’s, was perhaps Anakin’s greatest strength of all.

To value love enough that he was willing to die for someone he cared for was perhaps the hardest, but most important lesson the Chosen One had to learn, and which he passed on to his successors.

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nestofstraightlines · 4 years

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The Dæmon-Cages

I went to a preview screening of episode six of His Dark Materials,’ The Daemon Cages’, followed by a Q&A with the senior creative last night.

I’m not even going to give broad expectation spoilers for the episode above the cut (I’ll include a bit right at the end under the cut just giving a broad overview of whether I liked it or not).

As for the Q&A, it was very interesting.

The team were asked several questions (by a very positive audience) about themes and research; things like ‘how did you decide which of the many themes to focus on? Did you go back to the inspirational material of the books such as Milton and Blake?’ and I would characterise the answers as a slightly defensive ‘we just went back to the book’.

Call it confirmation bias, but for me that tallies with what I’ve perceived of the writing/creating flaws of the series.

Because what does that mean?

I’ve been going back to the book for 22 years now and unpacking more depths and more angles. It really did feel like there was a rejection from Thorne and series Exec Producer Jane Trantor that adaptation would involve unpacking something and repacking it into your own storytelling form.

Their tone was much more enthusiastic when it came to discussing detail: they talked about wanting to know exactly what every moment of Lyra’s day at Jordan would be, what she would do for breakfast etc. And that’s got merits; it can suggest nice images (I’m guessing this is where the idea of Roger bringing Lyra breakfast every morning comes from).

But for me, in general, it’s an approach that fits badly with Pullman as a source material. Pullman writes intuitively, discovering the story as he writes is.

At one point in Northern Lights he uses the metaphor for reading the Alethiometer that it is like climbing down a ladder in the dark, and trusting that, though you can’t see the next step, it is there. I believe that he was describing his writing process there too.

He writes indirectly, using negative space to let the reader infer a fact or an idea. For example, with daemons. We are told a little and shown a lot. Pullman is showing himself the story too.

I don’t believe Pullman knew when he was writing Northern Lights what Lyra would do for her breakfast every morning. But if the story had wanted to contain a scene set during her breakfast, he would have known.

And okay, different writing processes, whatever. But actually it is fundamental to the text and I think where the problems have crept in.

Genre storytelling can be broken up into two rough camps: character-led and ideas-led. The senior creatives of this programme, almost inevitably coming from a British TV background, fall into the wrong one - character-led.

Now both camps contain both things: if I call a story idea/s-led it’s not saying its characters aren’t important and good or vice versa. It’s about which is the ultimate point o fthe story.

For instance, Harry Potter is, for me, character-led. Its fantasy trappings are rather unpacked or picturesque dressing used to heighten basically mundane human interpersonal drama. Yeah, it’s good versus evil, acceptance versus discrimination, but those topics aren’t explored, they’re not a priority, they’re a situation to throw the characters into.

Where Thorne has worked in genre shows before, the same can be said. There is a specific situation, even a mission statement, but these are not shows constructed around telling an idea as story, but rather focusing on interpersonal drama. The premises are settings, real or imagined, which are already neatly packaged for the audience. They’re not about inventing fantasy, they are about using it to tell small-scale human dramas. Events serve nothing larger than character and relationship drama.

In Pullman’s His Dark Materials, character and relationship drama are a but not the greatest priority of the series, they are in service to broader ideas and themes.

That’s the other camp of genre fiction, where the fantasy is not a static setting used to heighten charater stuff, but an active agent used to tell a particular story.

Calling this camp ideas-led sounds like its an inherently grand sort of a category, and His Dark Materials is of course an example that is grand and important and epic and so on. But for a show to be ideas-focused, it doesn’t have to be a Big Important Theme with Big Important Execution.

Some ideas are ‘what is it to be human?’, some ideas are simply ‘whodunnit?’ or ‘what if a monster got into your house?’

Anyway.

Pullman’s HDM is ideas-led. He creates a world (and later worlds) of things we need to pay attention to. This is not Harry Potter – school, castle, wizards, you pretty much got it – this is unconstructed fantasy. And it’s not constructed for picturesque ends either. Pullman isn’t inventing this stuff because it’s independently cool or pleasing or whatever, or at least not only that. He is creating it to express a set of ideas through the medium of a story.

So story and world are perfectly bound together. And he understands the difference between convincing a reader and making your world CinemaSins-proof. It’s a story, not a world.

The series is over-invested in the details; over-invested in the tools, and misses what they are used to build in the book/s. Sometimes it even breaks what they are meant to build.

I think the failure of daemons is the biggest casualty of this.

At the screening the creatives talked about the challenge there, the unprecedented challenge of making a show in which every human character is accompanied by a unique CGI creation. They mentioned the impossible budget challenge this presented as well as the challenges in visual storytelling and presentation. I.e. even if one can afford to put a whole crowds of daemons in every wide shot it looks impossibly cluttered and like Doctor Doolittle.

And yes, of course, but it baffles – and frankly annoys – me that the imagination seemed to stop there. Or rather, the understanding of storytelling stopped there.

They talked about having spitballed pragmatic adjustments to daemons, such as making them be semi-invisible, flicking in and out of visibility. But in the end they ‘wanted to stay true to the book/s’. Again, I think we’re looking at a profound lack of understanding of what ‘true to the book’ even means.

Creatives more suited to the material would have found creativity borne of limitation. They would have had a deep and confident enough understanding of the idea they were dealing with to find the solutions from within their own storytelling field, to create daemons for screen in a way which worked.

It feels like this teams’ reaction to the challenge has been ‘to do our best and tell people they don’t understaaand it’s haaard when they complain we haven’t got it right’.

I’m sorry if that sounds harsh. But they took on this challenge and there’s a little hubris in that. I’m not sure what made them feel they were the people for the job here, but they’ve failed to convince me of that fact.

People have been telling fantastical and profound stories on screen for a long time before CGI became so photorealistic. And I think CGI has both a limiting effect on the imagination, and it encourages directors and writers with a limited sense of visual storytelling to imagine that they are equipped to deal with stories that they perhaps aren’t, because they can unthinkingly assign fantasy ideas to the ‘literalist CGI’ box.

I just get the feeling that none of the head creatives, as a mix of character-focused storytellers and details-people, really get what daemons are in a storytelling sense.

They mentioned that when they had conversations with Pullman, he advised them not to focus on daemons, that he novel included them only when they were important. And that’s true, and I can’t put words in Pullman’s mouth, but it’s my belief the TV series team misunderstood what he was getting at, and I’m basing that on stuff Pullman has said elsewhere (such as in his essays and speeches collected in Daemon voices) as well as my own reading of the book/s.

Daemons don’t appear important but the story is carefully constructed, without ever seeming to be on the surface, to explore the idea of the daemon.

It’s a practical issue too. You employ people to write and direct this stuff who are used to stories made up of human characters interacting in rooms, and they’re going to lack experience in showing stuff which is vital to this story, which includes the relationship between the human heroine and her shape-shifting animal-shaped companion, a giant talking polar bear, a city in the Aurora Boreales, fights with demons during a hot-air balloon fight and so on.

A lot of the stuff that matter in HDM isn’t just mundane drama in fantastical settings. The most vital emotional scenes include a girl interaction with a giant talking solar bear; the threat tot he bond between a person and their shape-shifting soul-manifestation etc

The human/daemon relationship is like a lot of things at different times and in different ways: human/animal, siblings, friends, parent/child etc. But it’s not a mundane human relationship clothed in light fantasy disguise. It's an idea and thus needs careful building for screen just as it did on the page.

Russell Dodgson, the head of VFX on behalf of Framestore for the series, talked about how fans always focus on daemons while there are so many more ideas in the book. ‘People love talking animals, I guess.’ He joked.

And OK, he was being off-the-cuff and deliberately glib, and in any case he’s not the writer and thereby not responsible for getting the overall imagining of daemons for this series right. But he’s so off the mark here in a way which helpfully sums up the misses of this team.

Daemons are not talking animals in the book and that is what the series has rendered them as through this lack of understanding that they amount to more than an emptily whimsical note.

EXPECTATION SPOILERS FOR THE DAEMON-CAGES:

... Having said all that; a really great episode! Best episode of the series yet.

It benefits from coming from a part of the book which is perfect for an episode of TV: it is very dramatic and climactic, while also being something of a great self-contained story in form. Lyra goes into a situation with very clear parameters of tension, fears, goals and a ticking clock. The production plays on all of those very strongly.

The weakest element of the episode is predictable given what the weakness element of the adaptation has been all along: daemons of course. As with last week my feeling is that while the show is so far from doing justice to certain ideas and moments it might as well be on a different continent, it finds enough strengths in other areas to stop the bottom dropping out of the episode.

The production design is absolutely incredible. It’s the boldest imaginative leap from the book so far. The staging of some of the events plays out differently due to a differently imagined Bolvangar and I adore the new approach. Again, I’ll have more to say when the episode has aired. I can’t wait to get into the detail of this!

#His Dark Materials #The Daemon-Cages #crit

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icequeenjules26 · 5 years

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The Butterfly Effect - Part I: If a butterfly flaps its wings...

Summary: It is said that if a Butterfly Flaps its wings it can cause a tsunami at the other end of the world... When nature photographer Dan and god of the forests Phil get caught up in the flap of a butterfly's wings, everything could change forever.

Word Count: 2,6k

Tags: Strangers to lovers, God!Phil, Photographer!Dan

A/n: The first chapter of my third fic for this @phandomreversebang. The second part will be up as soon as I can, I promise. Art will be included in the second part and is done by the AMAZINGLY talented @anotherweirdblog (really guys. holy crap.) and beta'd by my Angel @succubusphan.

Read on AO3

Dan never really called himself a horse-boy. He was someone that loved beauty, elegance and aesthetics before anything else, so he told whoever was willing to listen that loving horses just came along with it. If you loved those things, you’d come across horses sooner rather than later. They were majestic in the purest kind of way, and they could take everyone’s breath away with their stunning beauty if the person would just let them. A horse in action would put everything else to shame.

As a photographer his first ambition was to capture the beautiful essence of real moments and make people see the world like he did. The downside of working with horses was you never truly knew what they would do, but the upside was no pictures with them ever were truly staged. You couldn’t ask them to smile for the camera, and even if you could, there was no guarantee they would truly do it.

Theoretically, Dan was also a nature photographer, taking pictures for magazines and blogs, but he tended to combine the job with the hobby and made the journey to his photography destination on horseback. Mostly so he could take pictures of his horse as well to post on his personal horse blog and social media pages.

This particular day he had been commissioned to take forest aesthetic pictures with wildflowers - Dan’s specialty. There was a beautiful landscape made for that commission just a few hours over on horseback, so he decided to take his horse and get some beautiful pictures of her as an added bonus. He also brought his lady dog around to keep his mare in check if anything unforeseeable would happen while taking pictures of her running and playing freely.

They had been on the way for almost an hour. Diana was running around at their feet, barking at flowers and trees. Athena, the love of his life and best friend through everything, was used to her antics at this point and just huffed from time to time to keep Diana’s excitement in check.

They were a good trio like that. Dan adored them both with all his heart, his black ladies, and they just worked.

So they made their way towards their destination, unaware of the fact that they’d never get there.

___

Phil was a god.

And no, that wasn’t said with arrogance, or hubris. It was an actual fact.

He wasn’t what christians would call god, the one, all-knowing entity - not that it existed - but he was still a god. The god of forests.

Which had a sense of irony, undoubtedly, since he wasn’t allowed to leave his forest. He was forever cursed to stay in his little part, to take care of its animals and plants. And it was nice, he supposed, to have a connection to his particular stretch of forest, to know all the animals by name, being able to communicate with them; nice and exciting - it was just that it had been like this for millennials. Literal millennials. Phil was about as old as the earth itself, and he had been here all his life.

He was getting tired of it.

Saying that might have made him sound ungrateful or selfish, but that didn’t make it less true. It wasn’t only the fact that he felt like a bird locked in a cage with no way to get out; but also that things in his forest had been the same - or around the same - forever, basically. Nothing new or exciting happened - or at least very rarely. The forest was fairly secluded, hardly anyone ever passed through, and Phil meeting those people happened even less. Even his animals stayed the same - a strong enchantment kept them from growing old, and if they got hurt Phil had the magical ability to nurse them back to health.

The only exciting thing was animal babies getting born from time to time, but even those were rare.

What brought him the most joy in life were his best friends. Sure, they weren’t typical friends, not human or at least human-like as he was - save for his pointy fairy ears - but they were real friends nonetheless.

He loved all of his animals, whoever was living in his forrest, even if he was envious that they could leave whenever they wanted to, but the ones he loved the most were his best friends. Shikamaru, nicknamed Shika, and Temari, sometimes called Tema (but only by Shika if he wanted to piss her off), were deer that had lived with him for millennials. They had been with him through a lot, and somehow, they’d always managed to make him laugh.

They shared stories of the outside world with him - they were bound to his forest as well but where allowed to leave from time to time, even if they weren’t able to stay away for long - and just overall kept him upright. Shika was too smart for his own good and the laziest creature you could find, often getting chastised for it by Temari, who was fierce and strong and brave. Even though they fought a lot, they both had the biggest crush on the other and watching them dance around without making a move tended to make Phil’s grey days a lot brighter.

As every morning, they had started this one with breakfast. Phil was a god, so thankfully, he was able to get whatever food he wanted, even though he could just as easily live from grass, tree barks and bugs.

That morning, he had decided on a ridiculously sweet stack of pancakes basically drowning in syrup, and his fingers were sticky just from touching the plate. He brought it outside to eat while Shika and Temari started grazing in what he’d consider his front yard. They said good morning without many words, just casually nodding at each other, and started eating in comfortable silence, just a few birds chirping in the distance.

When they were done, Phil brought his dishes inside to take care of them later, and when he came back out, Temari and Shika had started the first fight of the day. It was never anything too serious, mainly just Shika using the word bothersome too often. Phil laughed as he stepped outside.

Temari groaned in frustration. “Please, don’t encourage him!”

Phil chuckled again. “Sorry, deer.”

This time, both Temari and Shika groaned about the bad pun and just started walking, not even checking if Phil came after them or not.

Something in the air was different this morning, Phil mused as they strolled through the forest. He couldn’t lay his finger on it, but it was there, hiding steep below the surface. The two deer sensed it as well, stepping closer towards Phil, who laid his hands on their necks and started tickling them to calm them down a bit. He could’ve easily just send them a sense of calm mentally, but he didn’t like dictating what they had to feel. They were their own beings with their own personalities and if they felt anxious or nervous they had the right to do so.

That’s how they walked on, deeper into the darker parts of the forest, neither of them having any clue that their lives were about to change forever.

____

No matter what you call it, be it coincidence, faith, destiny - it is a funny thing, isn’t it? This fickle, irrational thing that sometimes jumps in and changes the direction of everything. That thing that out of nowhere takes ahold of a situation, flips it around, reverses it just to put it back in order, just to mess it right back up again. We call it Butterfly Effect - this bizarre set of motions that just all cause the next thing to happen - this abstract phenomenon where a butterfly flaps its wings and sets off a multitude of occurrences that end in the apocalypse. It’s like a line of dominos, positioned in increasingly complicated twists and turns, getting just a tiny bit taller with every stone that falls, until a domino the size of a fingernail causes one to fall that’s easily the size of a door.

Sometimes, usually, moments, occasions, go by unrecognized, unnoticed, like a tiny pebble lying harmlessly on a concrete floor, multitude of people passing by without ever touching it, until one comes by, driving over it with their bike and ending up literally crashing into the love of their life.

In this case, it’s fairly similar - just a lot more complicated.

How does this relate to our two heroes? You may ask. Well - in retrospect, it is what caused the entirety of what comes next.

Looking at Dan, for example, him and his mare were fairly experienced. They’d made it through several hairy situations, sometimes barely pulling through, and yes, she lost her head sometimes, stormed off and left Dan sitting in the dust, but usually, his lady dog managed to have her calm down within just a few canter strides; and the mare never, ever, ever ran too far from her point of takeoff.

Or Phil, centuries, no, millennials old - about as old as the earth as we know it - and omniscient, at least concerning his forrest. He hadn’t been surprised by much in ages, especially not hugely surprised, surprised enough to cause his animals to loose their heads and go riot - in fact, that might not have happened in more than a thousand years.

Yet, both happenings were set off by two completely different and unrelated occurrences causing everything the boys had planned for their futures, good and bad, to shatter, crumble into dust. Two incidents at roughly the same time, how is that even possible? Might some of you ask now, and, by all means, you have the right to question, it’s just that - this… This thing, this coincidence, faith, destiny, whatever - it works in mysterious ways, so that at this certain point in time, there is no correct way to answer this particular question. It just happened, and it will have consequences reaching deeply, deeply into the future.

Because it caused them to meet each other.

On Dan’s end, it was merely a gust of wind and old, slightly broken electrical wires that, over several different stations, caused Athena to flip and forget all the education she had experienced in her life, all the trust she had in Dan, her best friend.

It was a gust of wind that has a tiny, innocent little spider falling into the open window of the powerhouse closest to Dan’s estimated destination. It managed to take a hold of one of the fuses, where it just sat for a while, stunned. When the electricians came in for the daily check-up - just to see if everything was still in order - it moved, startling the electrician, causing him to stumble backwards, just one, two steps… Where his foot landed exactly on a weak point in the wiring on the ground. That weak point had been there for years, proverbial ages, yet nothing had ever happened - just now, when the electricians weight causes the wiring to bent just a little bit further… The wiring broke. The breakpoint stopped the electricity to flow, causing a significant area to be without power.

Usually, that was not much of a problem. There were just a few houses that far away from everything, barns and cottages that were mostly void of humans at this time of the year, and especially midday hardly anyone even noticed the power was out. Just one cow, a brown steer named Lory, was trying to get to the other side of her electrical fencing - as we all know, the grass on the other side is always greener - and touched the fencing in the progress… Realizing there is no electric shock keeping her back. So she strained the two laces, stepping through between them, easily getting on the other side. The fencing snapped back into place afterwards and none of her friends followed her.

For a momentwhile, nothing happened. Lory kept grazing, the herd kept doing the same on the other side of the fence, all was well. Until she wanted to get back, back to her herd, her friends, touched the fencing and got a small electric shock, just a slight pinch, that had her stepping back and realize - her one way back was blocked. She was isolated from her herd.

Like every cow in her situation, she flipped, trotted back and forth on her side of the fencing, calling loudly, almost violently for her friends. Her herd came by and panics as well -

And that was the point where Athena, Diana and Dan came across the herd. The mare was usually okay with cows, even though she’s always found them creepy, but this - this was simply too much for her.

She freaked, storming off, Dan barely hanging on to her, so fast Diana was barely able to follow, let alone trying to calm her down.

She ran, almost headless, just trying to get away - unintentionally crossing the border into Phil’s territory.

On Phil’s end, it’s not that complicated. It’s just that usually, storms didn’t reach his forrest. The magical barriers he had put up to defend it kept them away. But his wards were wearing off, and this midday, as he strolled along the familiar paths, he discovered a tree almost burned down by a bolt of lightning. Admittedly, not a big deal, but for Phil, who’s life hadn’t held new and unknown happenings for millennials, it was a shock.

He didn’t have himself in check, and both Shika and Tema reacted to his sudden mood swing, jumping around violently.

And this is where their parts crossed. Where Dan and Phil, literal worlds apart and under normal circumstances further away from meeting than the sun and the moon, suddenly clashed, with a tremor so severe nothing would ever be the same again.

___

If Athena wouldn’t have flipped, if Levy wouldn’t have left her herd, if the electricity hadn’t been cut off - all the way back to if the gust of wind hadn’t knocked that spider in through the window - they never even would’ve gotten to Phil’s forest. And if the tree wouldn’t have been hit by that lightning bolt, if Phil’s wards wouldn’t have started to wear off exactly the night before and if Phil wouldn’t have freaked, Shika never would’ve jumped around so mindlessly. But both, no, all of those things did happen exactly that way, and that was the only reason everything was about to change.

Instead of running straight through the forest, not even realizing what they’d set foot in, they passed Phil and his deer, who were going wild. Shka, not paying attention to where he was jumping at all, managed to somehow step exactly on Athena’s path, and that’s how it happened - the still panicked mare only became aware of the equally freaked deer at the last second, had nowhere to go… And by some miracle, instead of crushing straight into him, she managed to somehow step around him, completely losing her footing in the process, crashing onto the ground mercilessly. Being the smart mare that she was, she managed to keep both Diana and Dan relatively unharmed as she went down.

Just for one blink of an eye, it seemed as though time was standing still, nothing moving. Blue eyes met brown ones and with a feeling of severity for both boys, the world started moving again like a long dormant suddenly springing back to life, spitting out lava and burning everything around it in the process.

#phan #phanfiction #phanfic au #my writing #go follow pia guys she makes the most beautiful art in history

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dysphoric-affect · 4 years

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Judge For Yourself

As this decade ends and a new one begins, I find myself waxing reflective, as I’m sure many of you are, about what gaming has brought us over the last ten years and where it’s poised to head next. Just to be clear, when I say what gaming has brought us, I don’t simply mean the new consoles and games that have come out during that time, but even more broadly the trends in game development on the one hand and in the gaming community on the other.

It’s also noteworthy that the 2010’s mark the first decade in human history where social media has been a prevalent part of our daily lives the entire time. The ability to share our interests and opinions with anyone anywhere is now a power in everyone’s hands. This has correlated with the growth of gaming, leading to the ability for the communities surrounding a game to support each other and inform the public at large about every facet of a given game much more easily, making games more approachable than ever before. In this respect, the ubiquitous nature of social media has impacted gaming for the better.

Unfortunately, this is not the limit to the impact such outlets have been able to have. With the ease of ability to share your opinion with anyone around the world has naturally come the ability for negative opinions to be disseminated far more easily and widely than ever before, too. While everyone is certainly within their right to avail themselves of that resource and share their feelings when they don’t enjoy something, or at least are let down somewhat by it, it is to me quite another matter if one is to deliberately encourage negativity in others in the gaming community, whether out of seeking validation they are “right” or more simply for the sheer act of garnering attention toward their existence and validating them as a person more generally. With our lives being limited in length and with there being enough daily sources in said lives to incur negative feelings from for any of us, I am of the opinion that nobody who makes their modus operandi encouraging negativity deserves the dignity of our attention, lest we encourage more of the same.

Yet, clearly my opinion doesn’t seem to be shared by as many as I wish it was. Everywhere you look, the monster of toxicity now runs rampant. While that expression may have preceeded this decade, this is the one in which it truly manifested itself into the household expression it is today. We now exist in a state where a single cut feature by a given developer to make room for a newer idea within a given series or trying to do anything different in general will be met with angry backlash online by people who denounce the game in question as “trash” and the developer as “dead” or deserving of going under.

Claiming any given game’s quality in such a derogatory way and wishing those who made it would go out of business for offending our delicate sensibilities as consumers when they put a great deal of time and effort into such projects and when their failure would hurt their livelihood and that of the families they are supporting would be excessive enough even if it were the case that those making such statements had all played the games in question in any particular case. I probably don’t need to tell you that this is rarely the case, however. A great deal of this kind of vitriol often comes before a game has even been released, with those angered professing a certainty about how series/developer-destroying a new aspect of the story or gameplay will be that betrays a great deal of hubris on their part, a hubris divorced of any experiential basis. This has grown to the extent we now find games being judged on their graphical quality in advance of release, in spite of the fact that graphics are one of the last things finished in the development of any video game.

Even once games have come out and are deservedly open to full critique born of playing them, it is often the case that those condemning them haven’t even played the titles in question still. Many who claim they have are curiously absent the kind of specific, detail-oriented knowledge one would expect anyone who has first-hand experience to be able to provide. Others will admit they haven’t but claim they are informed enough because of seeing the reviews and various critiques on social media that they “know” it’s quality in essentially the same way as anyone else who has played it. Any equivocation between experiencing a thing for itself and experiencing someone else’s opinion of a thing as essentially the same thing is a false equivocation, especially when someone else’s opinion isn’t even based on actual experience of a thing, as is so often found to be the case right now with the gaming content in question.

I hardly need point you to specific examples of this, because if you are interested enough in gaming to be reading this post, then you know the sort to which I’m referring. There are any number of YouTube “content creators” - and I use that in the loosest conceivable sense of the label - who have clearly made their entire approach to content based around promoting and fanning the flames further of any current trend of toxicity within the gaming community. A facade of “concern about the creation of better games and better practices by game studios” scarcely hides the interest in drawing the sheer number of hits negative content is liable to incur for them, a likelihood which I’m not naive enough to believe isn’t something they aren’t aware of in advance and actively working to solicit. One has to wonder, at a certain point, how many of these creators even believe in the viewpoint they draw attention to, or how much they truly care about games in general, for that matter. I’ll not be naming any such “content creators” here, as I feel no obligation to draw the curious toward giving their content more attention when it has already garnered more than it deserves, but as I said, if you’re reading this...you know the kind I’m talking about.

As a snowball starts an avalanche, so too has it become the case that these specific instances of toxicity create a greater issue than what to me seems really called for in most situations as well, as in recent time I’ve noticed a new trend in more offical gaming publications online picking up on these cases and reporting it as a newsworthy story, rather than such controversies staying on the forums they used to be relegated to. Forum users’ message board comments and their online handles are now even being quoted in stories about such controversies in a manner not dissimilar in tone from what one might expect of the eyewitness of a car accident, though I have genuinely seen such stories about the latter published with less somber an overtone than stories about the unfair cost of some DLC.

This state of affairs is so ridiculous to my perception as to be laughable, but for the fact that its ever-growing and tangible impact on the gaming community is so corrosive. For a community centered around a medium we seek out and take part in to feel delighted and entertained, we have a preoccupation now with relishing in feeling hate toward various aspects of it, or at least in watching others do so, which is hardly better as it is encouraging such behavior by gifting it the dignity of attention. Look at the number of views and comments any given negative article or video on a controversy has, and compare that to the aggregate of those on anything related to more positive content concerning the same game, or simply news about the game in general which is neutral in judgement, and the difference will tell you the tale in where we currently sell our time and attention.

I’ve said before in this blog and I will say it again: my goal here is to promote positive content in relation to being a gamer. However, considering my interest in promoting a healthy positivity in the gaming community - one not irrationally positive but not irrationally negative, either - and looking forward to the next decade and what changes it will bring to gaming, I felt compelled to speak up and pass my indictment on the current toxic culture of the gaming community. We should be ashamed things are in this state, and we should all do what we can to put a stop to it. Again, not a stop to any criticism - that is needed, and vital at that - but the excessive, unproductive and profiteering-oriented hate-mongering that is so prolific.

A simple way to start is to abstain from watching videos of that nature and checking out other kinds of content which are clear from the surface to be promoting that kind of toxicity. Beyond that and more simply, even, we can also just discuss what we love about games more. It’s not that we don’t still talk this way about them, but we certainly could stand to do it more. The more we vote on the tone of content we would like to see with what we are all choosing to talk about, the more we discourage the toxicity that divides and corrodes this community.

Further, I would encourage more people to depend less on reviews and try out titles for themselves. Borrow from friends or check out titles through one of the various subscription services available these days if you are wary of paying the full cost for a title you may not enjoy; there are plenty of options that minimize the cost to you as a gamer to get the most accurate assessment of how quality a game is to you: first-hand experience. I. The end, no reviewer is ever going to have their finger on thhe pulse of how you would feel about a game as much as you will have yourself playing it, so don’t let these people decide for you how good something is to you.

In the end, I’m essentially just asking that we try to be a more happy and thankful community around this medium that gives us so much reason to feel that way toward it. I hope you’ll do your own part, and together that we can make the next decade of gaming an even brighter one for all of us. Let’s make it so when we look back at the end of the 20’s and what gamers were like during it, we can say unequivocally that we’re a gamer and proud of it, not just out of love of games, but knowing what that represents in the quality of tthe people who play them. I look forward to being there with all of you through it.

———-

Thanks for reading this post! If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a like, commenting and following, and especially reblogging so it can reach more people. Any support like this is greatly appreciated. Happy New Year, gamers.

#games #video games #gaming #online gaming #microsoft #sony #nintendo #pc games #pc gaming #xbox #playstation #nintendo switch #toxicity #content creator #2019 #2020 #retrospective

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sinesalvatorem · 5 years

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My First Day (Back) In College

Today I went back to school! I am now officially a student of the City College of San Francisco. I was last in uni when I was 17 - hence the “17 year old grad school drop out” bullet in my description. This year I decided to bite that bullet and drop back into school, where I will presumably learn such academic writing techniques as “not mixing that many metaphors”.

The only class I had today that I was already registered for was Philosophy of Knowledge, which I eagerly attended once I found the building. I made sure to sit at the front of the class - ostensibly to signal attentiveness, but to be honest it was 60% to have an excuse to not react to most of the students in the class. I intend to get to know all of them over time, but G-d are classrooms overwhelming the first time.

As this was day one, it was a class about the class. In it, we learned that professor Johnson is going to be spending most of his time each day in that classroom, whether or not he has a class, which is something I expect to take advantage of. He also directly encouraged us to (*gasp*) speak in class - by which I mean he addressed me specifically while saying this, and I did in fact gasp.

We also learned that the class is structured in such a way that it should be near impossible to fail as long as you consistently apply effort. Which is good, because while I have no doubt I’ll do excellently in philosophy per se, I can tell that my presence in the class (and the college in general) isn’t about that - it’s about the much more difficult problem of learning how to meaningfully engage with the world. And good G-d am I a dumbass there - but I can definitely put in the effort and keep trying as many times as it takes.

Halfway through the lecture, the power went out, so Dr Johnson wrapped up early. I stuck around to ask him questions about his class, the college, and I’d intended to ask about joining the philosophy club but forgot in the moment. However, the question I opened with was the one I cared most about, and which I least expected to get an answer on:

“I have the feeling that everyone at City College already knows who I am. Do you know what’s going on there?” His eyes went wide at this one, then after a moment he said there was not aware of anything like this and had never met me before. The way he said it felt rather unconvincing, and throughout the rest of the day people (especially professors) continued to act like they already knew me, but I didn’t expect to get the Big Reveal at this point anyway.

(While I’m gradually piecing together more parts of the ‘Panopticon Puzzle’ - just the other day, I realised that people have been sharing videos of me dancing on BART, for example - I still know very little about the motives or mechanisms. Plus, I’m concerned that it gets more overt as I look more closely at the lens looking at me. These days riding the train is damn stressful because now there are people waiting for me to dance.)

After Phil 4, I got some academic counseling, which helped me determine potentially interesting future classes. However, as there’s limited counselor availability at the start of the semester, I was not yet able to do in-depth plotting-my-course stuff. So after my counseling session, I was kind of listless, but wanted to stay on campus because it seemed like the best questing location.

Eventually I figured out that there was a Music Fundamentals class happening at the time, and I went to the classroom and asked the professor if I could drop in. He said “For you, definitely”, which I just accepted with only a hint of internal “What do you mean for me?”

Dr Blea’s class was very much worth dropping into. Early in the class he said that he makes sure every student in his class ends up telling their story, even if they claim not to, before turning to me and saying “I know you have a story”. To which I replied “Don’t worry, I fully admit to having a story”. He then went around the class asking what instruments we played, with the first person saying they don’t play an instrument but just move their fingers - while looking at me, prompting me to say “Called out”.

Through this intro exercise, I learned I was surrounded by pianists, bassists, violinists, vocalists, and a percussionist. During the intro, Dr Blea asked the percussionist to clap a 6/8 beat, and I matched the beat with my fingers. The professor was very pleased by this exercise, and his enthusiasm was high going forward. He soon pulled out his violin and said he was going to play Bohemian Rhapsody, to which I said that I could sing that. This was sort of true - I can sing the sections of it out of order - but he was quite ready to make me put my music where my mouth is.

So I belted sections of Bohemian Rhapsody to Dr Blea’s violin in the Music Fundamentals class I was not registered for. At several points, my classmate Ryan accompanied me, which helped me have the confidence to do this damn fool thing. At the end, the professor told me to take a bow, so in a state of surprised confusion I got up and bowed toward him, before being told I was supposed to bow for the class, as they’re who I’d performed for. I did so, and said that Ryan should also take a bow, as he had sung with me, but he didn’t take the stand. #relatable

We then got on to discussing more theoretical aspects of music, such as intervals and harmony. One of the students asked Dr Blea if he had perfect pitch, because everyone always wants to know if musicians have perfect pitch. He said no, but he courageously took the empirical approach by playing notes on a piano without looking at the keys and guessing, in order to show us he was fallible.

However, he then said that he thinks some people have perfect pitch without even realising it, and said he thought I did. To which I said I highly doubted it, but would be interested in finding out. However, as this class had stoked my hubris, I admitted that I suspect I have ‘perfect rhythm’, if there’s such a thing. This, of course, was not going to just pass, and the professor immediately had the percussionist clapping a beat for me to match. He then split the whole class into sections and had us clap different rhythms, while he played his violin over our beats.

However, I nearly lost my beat from how distracted I was by his violin. The playing was beautiful, but I couldn’t move my hand to (ie, integrate) it while clapping the beat. So after he signaled the end, I rapidly repeated my memory of his piece by hand-motion, while focusing intently on the violin in his hand. However, I could still see from my peripheral vision that he was watching what I was doing and was quite pleased/intrigued. I have no idea where the Music Fundamentals course is going to go, but I definitely expect it to be a radical journey of discovery.

After class, I walked with Ryan and a dancer named Louise. I commented to Louise when she offered to walk with me to the registration office that I was not accustomed to having people to walk with. We discussed the experience of music, the human facility for rhythm, and what goes into dance education. Tomorrow I’m planning to drop in on a class on dance and find out for myself.

But the important thing is that, on day one, I’ve already made some progress on my top college priority: Making friends. (Well, my top priority in returning to college is something like “Not reflexively shrinking back from the world for fear of damaging it”, but I believe making friends is the most important part of operationalising that.)

Those are the two classes I had today. Outside of classes, there was a lot of navigating the college, and navigating my own difficulties knowing how to approach the world. I continue to have no idea where to point my eyes as I walk. Worse, I continue to feel bad about that. I long to just look around how I like purely based on interest and without calculation. Alas, I don’t seem to be there yet, so I tried various crappy heuristics instead.

Out of class was far more stressful than in class, though of course every bit of that stress was in my head. Doesn’t mean I know how to make it go away, though. For now. My first day at my first college was similarly disorienting. However, within two weeks I was happily settled and had my clique, and by the end of the semester I was on top of the world. I’m hoping for that arc here too. Growth mindset!

#heroic growth arc #education #city college #to touch the world

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creationshortstory · 5 years

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Part 3- Designing Characters

For those of you starting here a brief recap of what this blog is. I am somebody who creates stories whenever I’m bored. I do tend to write quite a few of them out, and subsequently put them up on this platform if I feel like they are worth it, or not going to get me shouted at for being overly graphic. However, I have decided that with the creation of the next short I will create a short series of posts to try, and explain my though process on different aspects of the story. So, without further ado let’s continue.

What’s changed since last time?

Okay I have written the first draft as of this point, but I am not going to publish it yet because that is the draft where I am simply getting the idea out of my head. The story needs some refinement before it is ready to be criticized for its own good. The one you will be seeing will be a more refined draft although it still won’t be that good because it is just me at this point, and another perspective is necessary for it to become better.

Back on track the story has turned out quite well, but it didn’t exactly click for me until I used a metaphor that worked weirdly well given the story subject matter. I won’t go into it next week simply because the next blog will be me talking about that sort of thing. For this blog I will be talking about designing characters.

How I design characters

When designing a character, I start by thinking about what are some of the traits that I want this character to have. This falls under the traits the character will possess, and the flaws in they have. For example, a character might be very confident and not afraid to speak their mind, but they can be so stubborn at times that they frequently anger some people. The reason for me starting with this is it gives a good base to start with, and allows for a straightforward answer to question what would (insert character name here) do in this scenario?

Only once that is done do I decide on the secondary elements like gender, and ethnicity. This is because with most of my stories the secondary elements don’t really matter. For you this might be different. Certain stories tackle different subjects, and some do require a protagonist to be a specific race or gender. That is the key for me. If the secondary elements are important then it has to be for a reason that the story backs up. If not then it should be random with these elements getting attention during the establishing scenes.

There are, however, some things that when I never ever want to do when it comes to character creation. This is because I find that if I do then all sorts of problems happen.

Binary Good vs. Binary Evil

One of the main things that I don’t like when it comes to some stories is binary good, and evil. By that I mean I don’t like a story where a character is given the label of good or evil simply because they have been given the role of protagonist or antagonist. My reason for not liking this is because I think it is very restricting, and severely limits the type of story that can be told. It encourages some bad behaviours like protagonists being doll-like models who are one step away from being Mr./ Mrs. Perfect. Then there are the antagonists who get the side-lined as evil in a cartoonish, and simple way. For me a better story than binary good vs. binary evil would be one where the protagonist has to fight an antagonist who is in fact a puppet to a person the protagonist looks up to, and is also being used so this puppet master can cling to their throne of power. The only way the protagonist can save the day is by doing something that would vilify them in the eyes of society. The key lies in motivation. The only thing that should define a protagonist and antagonist is conflicting motivations, and who we are following.

I guess an example you could look to off something starting out interesting, and becoming binary good vs. evil, and suffering as a result is The Terminator Films. These films started out with the antagonist, Skynet, being created as a by product of human hubris that was yet to happen. As such it did carry some weight to the proceedings as we watched the characters, especially in the second movie, debate whether or not they should try to stop this. After that film though it turned into humans, yay, machines, boo. Shut up and watch the pretty spectacle, and don’t ask for anything more especially out of character motivation.

How do I avoid this? It’s a little difficult in my situation because the protagonist, Verity Randalls, has amnesia, and the story is one that is more focused on the setting. A counter to this though is that she is more of an audience surrogate character who is learning things at the same speed as the reader. As such her motivation closely mirrors the reader, and when the antagonist is revealed her response is a very human response when weighing up the difference between being alive and devoured by a carnivore.

The antagonist, Mother, is more straight forwards, but it isn’t outright evil despite having the goal of global conquest. It wants to turn humans into husks so it can feed, and grow bigger. This is similar to most carnivorous plants like the venus flytrap, or the pitcher plant. It’s killing because that is what it has genetically engineered to do in order to get food.

The Characters vs. The Writers Ego

One of the biggest things a writer has to fight against is their ego. It is very easy for a writer get carried away and put something into the story that is only there to appease the ego. With characters this usually comes in the form of self-insertion characters. The characters that only exist to be awesome, and give the writer a chance to show the world how they view themselves. This is not recommended because the audience can see it, and subsequently laughs at it. Remember After Earth. Remember how in that film how one of the main characters had the name Cypher Rage (if that’s how its spelt), and both protagonists were obviously written with the intent of being ego-stroking to the actors playing them. It made the film subsequently laughable in places that weren’t boring.

This isn’t specific to self-insert characters. We live in an age where certain groups like to praise certain elements of a film as progressive which gives the film a popularity boost. Nothing is wrong with this by itself until a writer’s ego tries to prematurely ride this wave of positivity, and designs a character specifically to appeal to these people and nothing else. As such this runs into the same problems as the self-insert. Both are in extreme danger of being given a specific label.

The Dreaded Mary Sue

Now we come to the subject that is a hot button for some people, but I’m talking about characters so it’s relevant. The Mary Sue. For me this is a character who (gender regardless) has certain traits that cause this. One, the character can say whatever and not offend anyone to a significant degree. Two, they can do anything without any repercussions while the other characters just stand their marveling at them. This is usually achieved by these characters ignoring a law of Newton’s that does apply here. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”.

My key rule for avoiding making a character like this is simple. The character has to have some kind of negative effect constantly there, and weighing on their mind. For example, the hero could save the day, but could destroy the planet in the process.

That covers this particular rant. The next blog will focus on what stories tell us, and why a writer shouldn’t avoid having them.

All images used are not owned by me. I obtained them from Google Images.

#writing

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