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labeckinator · 22 days ago

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Burnt the Fuck Out and Why it's Not Creative Block

This is a topic, that unfortunately, needs to be talked about. Since announcing to everyone that I am in burn out (and how much it sucks to be burned out), I have had both former mutuals and strangers online decide it was open season on me in the comments and in dms, because these folks have decided I must be lying about it since I sometimes post something new, once in a blue moon.

Folks who are neurodivergent run into the problem of experiencing burn out more often and longer than those who are neurotypical. This related to the way our brains work. Even if society accommodated neurodivergent folks as well as neurotypical folks, we'd still run into burn out at some point. ADHD in particular is often compared to a race car without brakes. Eventually, you crash from going so hard for so long.

How do I know it's burn out though and not just creative block? In my experience with creative block it's more of a phase of running out of ideas that I like that can last a short period of time or longer (like maybe a week to a couple months). When I have creative block and I have a project that I have to do, there are ways to reawaken the idea center of my mind. Going for a walk, trying out something new, spending time with other hobbies, trying art challenges, etc. I don't like creative block. I think no one does, but it doesn't feel awful to be in so much as annoying.

Burn out is so much different. The things I listed to get beyond a creative block don't work at all, and if attempted, often make it worse. Burn out is very much tied to your energy level, and also your desire to do something. The thing is, I have a lot of ideas. A lot of creative projects I want to do. I have started a comic that the progress on it has almost ground to a halt, and many other things I'd like to do. But I can't do them. When I try, it almost hurts. A lot like looking at a food you once liked, but since the last time you had that food it made you sick to your stomach so now looking at it makes you feel sick.

That said, if you're wondering why I do sometimes post something new? Well, a couple of things. First, my energy level and desire to do art is very, very low, but it isn't 0. Once in a while, I have a couple hours of energy a month to throw at art, and whenever possible I use that couple hours a month to do just that. The other reason you may see something new is that it's really something I started months or years ago, and now it's getting "done".

It's not been easy since being in burn out, and part of what is slowing my recovery effort is that I am the sole-provider for my small family. I can't afford to take the time off necessary to help my brain repair itself. I also cannot afford to see a doctor on a regular basis. I have the added stress and anxiety of not knowing whether or not I will still have a job in the near future. So, you can imagine that when people who decide to play doctor from behind their screen are adding to the problem.

Healthcare professionals don't make a diagnosis based on someone's social media. If they don't, then people who definitely aren't health care professionals shouldn't either. No matter your personal level of research into mental health and burn out, you should not be telling people off just because you don't think their problem is presenting "correctly" enough for you.

That said, if you're the type of person who just thinks you're right and that people like me are wrong, and stealing "resources" from people who really need it, I'm just going to start liberally using the block button from here on out.

Remember, it costs nothing to not be a dick.

#personal #burn out

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labeckinator · 24 days ago

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Episode 1: Fateful Confession, Part 1

DIRECTORY

The first chunk of episodes of The Vision of Escaflowne open with a little dreamy narration from Hitomi, the protagonist. After the first episode, it is used to recap the one previous.

"Was it a dream? Or just a vision? No, it all really happened, all right.”

Apparently, when The Vision of Escaflowne first aired in Japan, the first episode began without the opening theme. This decision was done in order to enhance the feeling of being transported into another world, and to make the series stand out from others. Right from the rip, the creators were thinking about every part of the audience's experience. I'll find the source on that later sorry!

Scene 1 - Recap

The first shot of Escaflowne is a rolling pull out of the clock tower at Hitomi's high school. It is fall, and the students are leaving for the day. At the track and field club practice, the coach yells "GO!" and the scene cuts to Hitomi, running to practice. As she cuts across campus, a student off screen shouts, “Hey, Hitomi! Do a reading for me!” She shouts back over her shoulder, "Maybe later!"

Cut to Yukari, Hitomi's best friend and track club manager, looking frustrated and saying, "Geez, where the heck is she?" Hitomi bounds into practice, running to Yukari at the bleachers. Yukari greets a breathless Hitomi with, “Damn it, Hitomi!” Hitomi doubles over, hands on her knees as she catches her breath, and Yukari laments, “You’re late! Late, big time! When a member of the track team shows up late for practice… It's the manager... me... that gets yelled at. Got it?"

Yukari teases Hitomi about her crush, and Hitomi is embarrassed. Cut to the boys lined up for their trial, and one of them has long hair so we know he's the one! Amano-senpai!!!

As he runs, this little easy listening, smooth jazz number plays lol. He pulls out to take the lead. Note his red shirt. In a complicated low angled zoom on Yukari and Hitomi, the camera goes into an extreme close up into Hitomi’s right eye:

Yukari hits her stopwatch and blinks in disbelief, “10.64 seconds…”

“Amano beat 11 seconds!” She squeezes Hitomi tighter and shouts, “He’s incredible!”

Zoom into a medium shot of Amano’s back as he catching his breath, before cutting in on a medium close up, where he turns around to smile, but not necessarily at Hitomi and Yukari. Hitomi doesn’t care, her eyes are sparkling with love for this guy.

Scene 1 Analysis

I think this introductory scene is so masterful, because it appears to be incredibly mundane and cliche. It could be on the edge of boring, if not for the artistry present in the direction and motion. But Escaflowne is a rare story in that it is extremely coherent. Every scene, every drawing, every narrative choice is always pointing in the same direction. It is always telling the story.*

So the real question for every scene is: what is happening? When you really put it under a microscope, what is objectively being shown?

As an anime/cartoon, the audience expects the behavior of the characters to be exaggerated due to the nature of the medium. The stylistic choices present here support that, such as Yukari’s mouth when she says, “it’s the manager…”. The kind of yelling Yukari is doing is never presented with that style of drawing again — maybe on Merle,** but not other characters. It’s a tipoff that the audience is meant to find this exchange between Yukari and Hitomi as humorous and unserious. We are being led to believe that Yukari takes her role as manager seriously, and that Hitomi is an easygoing, lighthearted girl with a crush.

But what happens is this: Hitomi apologizes to Yukari with a silly expression, and when she immediately turns her head away, her expression becomes more serious as she looks for Amano. She does not dwell on what being chewed out by the coach will be like for Yukari.

The audience wants to be entertained and wants to enjoy the characters they are spending their time with. We want to like Hitomi. Everything in this brief scene focuses on her — her breakneck speed, her emotions, her crush — the creators aren’t presenting her to us, but presenting the world through her. The direction shows us the world through her eyes. She gets the close ups, literally, until —

Yukari scrunches up with joy and clings to Hitomi over Amano’s record. It is the first close up on another character besides Hitomi, which means it is important. We are being asked by the creators to really look at Yukari when Hitomi isn’t.

Amano appears in her right eye. Hitomi’s name is not officially written as “瞳,” but the symbolism and use of the word in the theme song are made relevant here. Her name means “pupil.” The etymology of hitomi from Wiktionary, “Likely 人 (hito, “person”) + 見 (mi, “see”), in reference to one's own reflection when staring into someone else's eyes. Compare Latin pūpilla, of the same derivation.”

Daruma (だるま) are small figurines used as luck charms for making a wish in Japanese Buddhism. An abstract representation of Bodhidharma, the monk that brought Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism to Japan, the figurine is purchased with eyes that do not have a pupil. A pupil is painted into the left eye when casting a wish/making a prayer, and when that wish/prayer is granted, the right pupil is painted.

*I am one person and my perspective and knowledge is very limited! I do not know why Allen named his owl Christmas!!!

**Merle gets this treatment because she’s a child, and a cat lol.

Scene 2 - Recap

The coach hollers for the girls to line up for their timed trial, but Hitomi is too lovestruck to move. Yukari tries to get her attention, and eventually does so by ripping off her track pants to reveal her running shorts underneath. Yukari yells at her, "Get your butt out there!" Both girls are annoyed with each other but it is an unserious moment.

Hitomi takes off her track jacket and tightens her laces on her red shoes. She rises out of frame and now, with her jacket off, her pendant is revealed very briefly for the first time. The next shot is of her and the rest of the track team getting lined up. By just visually teasing this unexpected part of her design, the audience is already looking for what it is and why she has it, seconds before she does this:

She holds her pendant in her hand briefly. She gets into starting position, looking determined. From Hitomi's pov, we see Yukari talking to Amano, before Amano looks away from her and at Hitomi. Yukari keeps looking at Amano before looking at Hitomi, too. Hitomi gasps and smiles, surprised by the attention.

Then, she runs. She almost takes the lead before the world disappears in a bloom of white-blue light, and she gasps as the camera zooms into her left eye. Reflected there is Van, the other protagonist of the series:

He turns and looks at her, shocked at their oncoming collision, but it never comes. Hitomi phases through Van, and where their bodies meet, there is a green glow. Once passed completely through him, another close up of her eye shows his reflection is gone.

Scene 2 Analysis

As said above, the pendant is the most unique part of Hitomi’s simple and naturalistic design so far. This particular outfit of hers is one that is only seen in three episodes (1, 23, and 24) — but we see it now, because it deliberately draws attention to the pendant. Escaflowne is largely crafted with contrast as the backbone of its written and visual choices. There is an inherent contrast between an athletic uniform and jewelry, and it sets up the audience to ask, “why does she wear that?” When she clasps her hand around it, eyes shut and head bowed, we see why: it’s clearly a lucky charm, even before she says so.

The fact that the pendant is introduced at the same time as her sudden vision means the audience is meant to understand there is a connection between that object and this event. But there is something else that binds the two together: Hitomi held the pendant in a sober, private moment before the race began. She did something.

What did she do? The series tells us outright in Episodes 16 and 17. But the entire plotline of Escaflowne is occurring already, it is already in motion — where the audience gets brought into the story is when Hitomi begins to affect the plot.

Back to Daruma. We were shown Amano in Hitomi’s right eye, and now, a different boy appears in her left eye. The left eye is for casting wishes. You can consider that the left eye looks toward the future, because the left eye is painted to remind the owner of the Daruma to work towards their wish coming true. The right eye is for the fulfillment of wishes. In that way, the right eye is looking towards the present, the immediate.

This different boy is gone from her left eye when she passes through him.

Scene 3 - Recap

Suddenly, the world is back, and she stops running haltingly, head tilted up and eyes wide and hollow with distress. She passes out by falling backwards, and into a black abyss. Stars swirl and fall after her, zooming out to almost-but-not-quite look like the constellation Orion:

That white radiating light breaks through the abyss, and we see Hitomi, eyes shut, in her school uniform, surrounded by white light. "What's going on...? It's hot... The wind's hot..."

She opens her eyes, and her visions begin, along with the song 'Charm' by Yoko Kanno:

The scene fades out on the angel, into white.

Scene 3 Analysis

What is happening!!!

This is the moment where the series is trying to grab the audience and never let go! It’s the hook, it’s the draw, it’s the sensational! And just like Hitomi’s track uniform and her pendant, this moment is made through contrast.

The scene starts with the black abyss being overtaken by white light, which Hitomi is swaddled in before she opens her eyes.

When she sees the huge, hulking, slow-moving mechs marching through the burning ruins of buildings set to ‘Charm,' the song is unlike any other so far in the series. The echoing tick of a clock (or metronome) swings between the left and right channels before foreboding, but twinkling, percussion instruments fill in the rest of the song. Emotionally, it is threatening and almost joyful.

Before Hitomi or the audience can get their bearings, she is thrust into a nearly monochromatic blue scene. It’s that boy she ran into, being deferentially called Prince Van by a huge warrior named Balgus. The scene is somber and tense, and we are given a lot of information: Van is setting out to kill a dragon, a task his brother failed at. Van's left eye is covered.* When he becomes upset at the mention of his brother, he turns his head away and closes his eyes. Given the amount of importance the previous scenes have placed on Hitomi’s eyes, this indicates that Van's covered left eye indicates he is looking at the immediate, present world only. When he shuts his eyes at the mention of his brother, we are shown that he is both unable and unwilling to see some truth regarding his brother's failure.

The scene rapidly changes to a battle, which Hitomi witnesses with a dazed expression. The palette has changed to searingly warm colors — creating a rhythm within this vision, repeating back to the hot gusts of the burning landscape at the start of her vision. The color red is now attached to these mechs, and in particular, the cape of Escaflowne. But so too is the pink of Hitomi’s pendant, present on the energist (gem) on its chest, with green present on the other two on its shoulders.

The falling tower’s palette is green and pink, and the cracking ground Hitomi stands on is pink. So far, pink has been associated with Hitomi, specifically through her pendant. Green has been present as well: green is the color of her eyes, and the aureola surrounding her glows green.

And then back to blue, when the radiant angel comes to save her. The blue here feels peaceful and calm, reminiscent of Christian art** featuring angels and divine light, especially when compared to the scene with Van and Balgus. In that scene, the blue is darker, sadder, the room lit by a single white-blue flame.

Hitomi's joy at being saved by the angel is still set on a black background, but the angel's light casts her cream-colored sweater in nearly the same color as the light. The angel experiences the reverse, shadowed by the light behind it, and made unrecognizable to her (but not the audience lmao).

These colors are all important. They remain relatively consistent throughout the entire series, and they tell the story as much as the dialog and music.

A quick note about angels: Escaflowne is a series inspired by Asian and European histories, cultures, and religions. Winged humanoids are found across the globe in modern and ancient religions, like Eros from Ancient Greece, peri from Persian folklore, angels in Christianity, and tennin in Japanese Buddhism. This imagery and concept is not strictly Christian and isn’t portrayed as such in Escaflowne.

*One scrapped idea for Van’s design was for him to have heterochromia, and this was going to indicate that he's mixed lmao (Fanelian father/Draconian mother). Like many ideas from the tv series, this was repurposed in the 2001 Escaflowne film, for his older brother Folken’s design. Btw I LOVE the film.

**Blue historically is a captivating color because of how rarely it appears in nature in certain shades. As a primary color, it is also hard to create as a pigment, making dyes like indigo, woad, and Egyptian blue (calcium copper silicate) very valuable. It was only until the wide trade of lapis lazuli that richly pigmented blue could be incorporated into European oil paint. Ground into a powder, lapis lazuli is the base of the color ultramarine, which the Vatican told painters to use as the color of the Virgin Mary’s robes in the 12th century due to its value. This is why I make the connection to Christian art here — they frequently appear with the color in European Christian art traditions.

DIRECTORY | CONTINUE TO Part 2 ->

#the vision of escaflowne #escaflowne-unofficial #i love the in-depth analysis #it's made me fall in love with this show all over again

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