#i get humans are the most commonly used in fantasy settings as The Wrong Opinion race

[snail-speed]

I'm watching the Dragon Prince and for the most part it's good but I'm honestly not as against the humans as the story wants me to be

Elves and dragons are like "haha stupid humans you're not born with arcanum you're not magical :)" and then go suprised pikachu face when the one magic humans develop is dark magic that draws in power from magical beings

[chibimyumi]

I do appreciate the “Sebastian is trash” because you’re right but as readers it’s so hard not to think he’s becoming more human or experiencing emotions. I know that’s the point of him being a demon and master liar but it does hit the audience hard sometimes

TW: WW2 cruelty mention

【Related post: What is Evil in Kuroshitsuji? - Kuroshitsuji’s philosophy】

Dear Anon,

My apologies, but do you mean that Sebas being called trash despite being human-like hits the audience hard sometimes? Or do you mean that him being trash but also showing human-like sides hits the audience hard?

Like I said before in this post, I have always found Sebastian’s expressions of himself quite human. He experiences happiness, irritation, boredom... anything us humans do, and potentially more. Sebastian has many, many emotions and expressions, so many Yana easily pulled off the 30-faces challenge. The only emotion he has not shown so far is romantic affection, but there are plenty humans who also don’t.

I think I do kind of know what you mean though, Sebas has gotten cuter and cuter lately, and it is not something commonly associated with demons. But I think it is in part because 1. Yana’s art improved significantly so that she can draw a wider variety of expressions, and 2. because Sebas has more respect for his master now, therefore is more cooperative, and thus seemingly happier, and 3. a certain actor whom she admitted was more Sebas than her own Sebas waltzed into her life influencing her in turn.

About Sebas being Trash™ and human-likeness though. Something very important I wish to draw attention to: In my opinion ESPECIALLY because he is Trash™ it is very dangerous to distance his actions from something “human”.

As I have written in the post about evil in Kuro:

Rather than teaching morality, I think Kuroshitsuji is a disclosure of  the inherent human potential of being evil. Us humans are very prone to calling an evil person or act ‘inhumane’ or ‘monster’, but is that not just a way to distance oneself from the idea that as a fellow human they share the same potential of being evil?  

Perhaps this will become the absolute least popular opinion ever spoken in this fandom, but so far I have yet to see any evil carried out by Sebas in his current manifestation that humans have not yet committed or done even worse. And still we need to bear in mind that most of these evils were under his human master’s instructions.

Massacring people? Us humans have fought wars, colonised, and mass-executed fellow humans for no valid reason at all.

Burning children alive? We have had Joseph Mengele and the Imperial Japanese Unit 731 during WW2 that did unspeakable horrors to adults and children alike. (TW extreme cruelty before you click the links to Wiki!)

Manipulating people in their weakness like Beast and O!Ciel? Classic predatory human behaviour.

Eating human souls? Well... if demons can’t life off anything else, it’s basic survival. If they can survive without, then it’s the same as human meat-eaters who can also without any meat.

Mistreating a human before eating their soul? Looking right at you, meat industry!

Insert anything else we know he has done, and I dare say I can find an equal or worse example at the hands of humans!

The only difference between Sebas and evil humans is that Sebas is faster, has reach to a grander scale, and usually doesn’t need help. Humans however, have done the same, just with help and tools. What makes somebody evil however, is not their power but their intention to execute evil.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying Yana wrote a demon poorly! On the contrary. Sebas is very interesting and as I have written in this post, the way Sebas has seen everything but understands nothing is incredibly convincing that he is a creature who is ancient and just has a “different” set of moralities. This “different” set however, is strictly speaking only "different” because of his use thereof: What most humans would not dare do to a fellow human, Sebas would without scruples. Yes, that is awful. But the same things humans do not dare do, they would to an insect, likewise without scruples. And canonically, humans are all insects to Sebas. So does that make Sebas worse than humans or “inhumane”?

As I have explained in this post, the most shocking thing about Sebas is just his sheer indifference for human lives, much like most humans don’t care about stepping on ants as they walk or slapping a mosquito.

I would never question Yana’s morality for writing an evil demon with crimes hardly worse than humans’. Yana as a (probably normal) human, will probably find it hard to imagine anything worse than whatever the worst of our kind have ever come up with. I myself for one cannot, and I have a very dark taste for fantasy.

So is Sebas “inhumane”? Shockingly, “no”, only if “inhumane” means “doing something bad to only human beings specifically”.

Related posts:

What is evil in Kuroshitsuji - Philosophy

Character analysis - Sebastian the eternal scientist

Dynamic analysis - O!Ciel and Sebastian

Sebastian’s indifference - Humans are socks in a drawer

Sebastian grown softer towards O!Ciel?

[spac3-em0]

Hi due to some things happening I’d like to say a few things about the webcomic The Glass Scientists because I keep seeing lies about it.

First off, if you don’t know, TGS is set in VICTORIAN LONDON because it’s a mad science fantasy comic with a dark academia twist. This is extremely important to the story, considering how easy it is to set things on fire, how the two of the three main characters have a shitton of Victorian repression, and how Hyde, the other main character, came to be in the first place.

Now, I’ll be talking about Hyde’s actions/what happens to him throughout the comic, the way Sabrina, the author represents POC, the two white main characters and how that’s not a bad thing, the claim that it’s a bad representation of D.I.D, when consuming problemactic media becomes a problem/why problematic media is needed, and finally what is and isn’t a lie. And, spoiler warning for the entire comic.

Edward Hyde’s Actions and the Plot Points Surrounding Him

Edward Hyde is the on and off narrator for TGS, and is also, in my opinion, one of the main characters. His actions have greatly befitted the plot, from when he manipulated Jekyll into letting him go free for a night so he could visit Blackfog, when he set a third of London on fire on accident, when he started using “nightmares” to torture Jekyll into letting him out to go to Blackfog again, him discovering he could take control of Jekyll’s body, becoming what my friend and I call Green Eye, and finally Rachel and Hyde’s relationship which started before the comic even began. These are just the ones off the top of my head, but there are more.

I’ll talk about Rachel and Hyde’s relationship first, because it’s used as a plot point multiple times. At first glance, it could appear that Rachel is abusive towards Hyde. One could make that arguement, and I only slightly agree. The reason for Rachel’s actions towards Hyde is because her deceased little brother, Eli, looks an awful lot like Hyde. Rachel blames herself for Eli’s death, and believes if she was there for Eli more he wouldn’t have died. This is explained by Rachel’s older brother, Patrin, to Hyde. I don’t believe Rachel is trying to be abusive, commonly people don’t realize their actions are, in fact, abusive. That gives others time to show them the error of their ways (However, there are people who know they’re being abusive, and that is not a good way to view the world). Rachel is not intending to abuse Hyde in any way, she simply believes that she can “rescue” Hyde from a life of crime and thievery, doing what she couldn’t with Eli. This, in and of itself, is not bad. Their relationship is only slightly toxic. If Rachel can get over Eli’s death, and stop blaming herself for it, I’m sure their relationship will be less toxic.

Now onto the things Hyde does. Hyde is meant to be a bad person. Hyde is everything Jekyll’s repressed, and clearly Jekyll has had some nasty thoughts. It’s also good to keep in mind that neither Hyde nor Jekyll are a full person. Jekyll drinking the HJ7 split his personality in two. Both Hyde and Jekyll are missing important parts of themselves, so, in my opinion, neither of them could be classified as a full human, but they are the same person. I bring this up because Hyde relied on Jekyll to take care of maintaining looks, paying bills, and other responsibilities that Hyde didn’t want to deal with. And Hyde has been shown hating the idea of being trapped. So, what does Hyde do? He manipulates Jekyll into giving him what he wants. But we run into a problem when people expect Hyde to be perfect and a saint. That isn’t his character at all. His character is supposed to be considered evil by Victorian society. So he’s not going to be unproblematic. He’s based off the book Hyde, who literally trampled a little girl and committed murder. The explanation I just listed is the reason behind most of Hyde’s actions throughout the story, and they commonly carry the plot forward.

Sabrina’s POC Representation

I’d like to go on record and say that the representation in TGS is nice to see, however I am white myself. I’ll be going off of what I’ve heard other POC say about the representation, and my own personal opinions. The main criticism I see is Lanyon and Lucy being portrayed as black stereotypes. Except they aren’t. First off, Lanyon isn’t even a full black man. He’s biracial (half white half black). I’m not too sure about Lucy, but given the fact she is darker than Lanyon I believe she is a full black woman. Neither of them play into stereotypes. Now you could say that Lanyon is the gay black best friend, except that would be diminishing him to half of his racial identity, his sexuality, and his relationship with Jekyll. The comic is good at showing that Lanyon doesn’t fit that mould perfectly, or in fact at all. Lanyon’s actions are fueled by the want to keep the Society for Arcane Sciences afloat, and keeping Jekyll alive and well. His sexuality also plays a role in the plot because before the comic started, it’s shown that Lanyon and Jekyll clearly have a history, and as you read further you can infer that it was sexual in nature. Why would a straight man in Victorian London sleep with a man?

Now, onto Lucy. We don’t know a lot about Lucy, but we do know that she was poor as a child, and was able to create an empire of thieves and provide housing, childcare, and income to a lot of women. Now, tell me how that’s playing into a stereotype for black women. Or, really, black people in general. From what I’ve researched, a lot of stereotypes about black people are rooted in racism and slavery. You could argue that because Lucy’s a thief, it’s negative and racist. But if Sabrina was racist, wouldn’t Lanyon also be a thief instead of being well off? And wouldn’t Lucy not have been able to create something of this magnitude, because the entirety of London knows about her empire.

Another criticism I saw is the fact that Rachel’s name doesn’t fit her race. And that Eli being a thief is a negative stereotype. As far as we know, all of Rachel’s blood-bound family is Romani. But here’s the catch, we don’t know if Rachel’s parents are immigrants or not. They could have very well have been raised in London themselves which is why Rachel has her name to begin with. I’m not entirely sure about the Eli stereotype, but I know it wasn’t meant to be like that. Eli is meant to be like Hyde, and Hyde has problematic traits and does problematic things. It’s supposed to be a parallel between the two, which is why Rachel acts the way she does with Hyde.

Why Having Two White Men as Protagonists Isn’t a Bad Thing

I know I’ll get backlash, but not every piece of media needs a POC main character. Especially not when it’s set in Victorian London. However even with my first statement, in TGS there is a biracial gay man as a protagonist. And even though Hyde and Jekyll are white and are men, they aren’t straight. Jekyll is bisexual and Hyde is pansexual. So there’s still some representation for the LGBTQ+ community, which I am a part of. I’m a transgender man and bisexual myself and I like seeing bisexual men be represented.

Why Jekyll and Hyde Isn’t the Thing You Turn to for D.I.D Representation

J&H was never meant to be D.I.D representation. And even if it was, it was written in the times where people were sent to asylums for briefly thinking they heard something when they didn’t /not serious, joking. As someone who has two systemmates, I can assure you that J&H isn’t meant to be D.I.D representation. And if people are trying to claim it is, you should maybe just try and talk to them to see where they’re coming from.

Problematic Media

Consuming problematic media doesn’t make you a bad person. Creating it doesn’t make you one either. It becomes a problem when the person or you creating it tried to romanize certain toxic behaviours, or claim problematic actions are perfectly okay. We need problematic media because we don’t know the story behind it. The person making it could just be venting and trying to heal, or if they write a success stories, like I do, it creates a well of hope in them. Because they believe if this character can do it, then so I can I. Now, how does this tie into TGS? Characters in the comic have shown behaviours that are problematic. Rachel, Hyde, Frankenstein, Moreau, and even Jekyll to an extent. However, their behaviours are framed in a way that puts them in the wrong, but they aren’t bad people, aside from Moreau.

What is and isn’t true?

TGS is not a “yaoi uwu gay soft bois” comic.

Characters are allowed to be problematic because no one is perfect.

No one’s sexualities have been the butt of any jokes.

No one has been sexually assaulted within the events of the comic or what has been shown.

Lanyon and Lucy are not black stereotypes.

Hyde and Jekyll being white and men aren’t a problem.

[scripttorture]

Not sure if this would really be relevant, but you're the best resource I can think of for prison systems. In a secluded supermax prison with all male staff & all male prisoners, they suddenly get a single (like 19 or 20 y/o) female prisoner who "can't go anywhere else & needs to be kept heavily restrained." What's the warden's best option for making sure she's safe & treated with respect for the first few days/weeks till they can get female guards? Modern setting, mostly American style prison.

I feel like I know enough about this to be helpful but I’ve never claimed to be an expert on prisons and I think you should try to double check what I say. Partly because I think that the ‘best option’ in a case like this would be heavily biased by opinion and what you consider the best outcome to be. I don’t want you to mistake my opinion for fact or discount the idea that you might think differently presented with the same evidence.

 I also think this is the kind of case where there’s a big difference between what should happen and what would likely happen.

 It’s also worth stating at the outset that, in my opinion, the American prison system is set up in a way which inherently makes abuse more likely. And that makes a difference. When the system itself is already set up in a way which makes torture more likely the efforts of individuals within those systems are… less likely to be effective.

 We’re talking about a system where solitary confinement is the first rather then the last resort. Use of solitary confinement over the safe period (1 week) is routine, with prisoners in maximum security facilities often being kept in isolation for months or years.

 Which causes mental health problems to a disabling degree and drastically increases the chances of suicide or self mutilation.

 Rape is still common and while it’s often discussed in terms of attacks by fellow prisoners, a lot of attacks are by guards. Especially when you’re talking about women prisoners and juvenile prisoners. Incidentally it was only in 2012 that the US started recommending against cross-gender searches of women prisoners.

 And a lot of guards in American women’s prisons are men. I found figures of 40% based on data from 2007 and up to 70% for federal facilities from 2011. Both of these were cited figures from books I don’t have full access to. I can’t confidently say how accurate these figures are or how the authors came by them. I can confidently say that there are male guards in female prisons and that this has been linked to abuse (based on the testimony of rape survivors in American prisons).

 While we’re on the subject the kind of restraint use I think you’re referring to is torture. You can find descriptions of its use in Chinese prisons over here.

 Essentially humans are not designed to withstand long periods with little to no movement, or holding the same position for a long time. It is unhealthy. It causes a significant amount of damage to the body. Sometimes it’s lethal.

 Now if you didn’t know this that is OK.

 I’m here because I know a lot of this kind of information isn’t common knowledge and that it’s hard to find. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing something, we all learn sometime.

 We’ll circle back to restraint tortures and alternatives in a moment. For now let’s focus on prisons

 I think that the most likely thing to happen in an American prison is that this character would be thrown in solitary confinement and kept there.

 You can read about how harmful that would be here.

 I also think that it’s unlikely an American prison, having decided to house a woman in a male prison, would hire female guards specifically to accommodate one prisoner. And I think a woman in this environment would be especially vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.

 You can read about that here.

 There’s an in-depth Reuters investigation on the deaths of women in American jails that you can find here. It contains a graphic description of a dead baby, born in a jail, as well as descriptions of systemic racism towards black women and abuse of the mentally ill. (Seriously if you’re a black woman and pregnant or a mother of a young child don’t read it.)

 If you want to write a female character being put into an institution designed for men in America… that’s what it looks like. Higher rates of preventable deaths.

 Here’s the thing though: You do not have to make the situations in your story as bad as they are in real life.

 There is nothing wrong with deciding that the characters in your fiction get treated with more care and respect then is the norm in real life. It might not be realistic but we are writing fiction.

 And there is a difference between a story which is unrealistic in favour of the torturer and one which is unrealistic in favour of the victim.

 Having said that: If you want to create a fictional, less abusive prison system for this story it will not look anything like an American prison.

 I have… some rather complicated feelings about the idea of setting the story in America and then presenting the prison system as better then it is. Remember that I am a pacifist and I was raised in Saudi Arabia. I say this because I feel as though the abuses in the American prison system are whitewashed in the media America exports.

 If I was writing a story set in Saudi which involved imagining a better, less abusive prison system I’d feel confident my readers would know this didn’t reflect the reality. I feel like they would understand without being told that I was trying to imagine a better version of my home rather then trying to accurately show the prisons there.

 I do not think that would be the case if you did the same thing in an American setting.

 I’ve talked enough about the negatives. Let’s move on to how we can make this idea work.

 The way I see it the big choice here is whether you want to keep the setting and the abusive use of restraints or whether you want the character to be safe and treated with respect while incarcerated.

 If you’re picturing the character being held in a way that renders her more or less completely immobile (like a restraint chair or a bed) then there’s a pretty decent chance she’d die within the first couple of weeks regardless of any other abuse. There’s a reason restraints aren’t commonly used in hospitals and mental health facilities any more: they increase the chances of sudden death. Even in young healthy people.

 There’s a case you can read about here that’s a decent example. Young, 27 year old man, partially restrained for ten days after a mental health episode. Dead from a heart attack in ten days.

 Obviously not everyone who is completely restrained for weeks dies of a heart attack. But bed sores exist. So do bladder infections caused by catheters and muscle wastage and a host of other ailments that are cured by simply letting someone move around.

 Honestly combined with solitary and the high chance of sexual abuse I think that full body restraint is probably throwing too many tortures into the story. Because all of these individually are complex issues and the harm each of them does is routinely downplayed. Handling all of them in the same narrative would be really tough and the restraints are the easiest one to get rid of.

 If you’re picturing something more like the restraint torture (constantly wearing hand and leg cuffs) described in the Chinese case I linked to above, survival is a lot more likely. That’s to do with the degree of movement victims are capable of.

 A person who is immobile with their muscles under strain is in a stress position. The death rates for those rise sharply after 48 hours. A person who is immobile when their muscles aren’t under strain (eg restrained to a bed with six point restraints) is not in a stress position. But they’re at greater risk of a heart attack or stroke and after weeks they’ll start to develop bed sores (assuming they’re not lying in a pool of their own waste.)

 A person who’s restrained in a way that lets them walk, but slowly, lets them stand, but not straight, is experiencing a restraint torture. They probably won’t get kidney failure (the cause of death in stress positions) and they’re less likely to get a heart attack or a stroke.

 There are still serious health effects. Muscle wastage and weakness afterwards is very common. Survivors of this particular torture tend to report chronic pain and joint problems. I’m not entirely sure what causes this but since it’s very consistent I’d guess it’s a physical effect of long term restraint use.

 Survivors also tend to report some mobility problems afterwards. There’s a loss of fine motor control and often some difficulty performing day to day tasks that require raising and lowering the arms. Like putting on a jacket unaided or hanging washing on a line or taking things down from a cupboard above the head. This could be due to nerve damage, damage to muscles or ligaments at the joints or both.

 These sorts of restraints don’t leave victims in a stress position; which is why they can survive for months or more rarely years while restrained (stress positions are only consistently survivable up to 48 hours.) But nonetheless they do leave victims in a constant state of pain. The restraints dig in. The position and inability to straighten is painful, especially for the joints. A lot of victims report being unable to sleep because of the restraints.

 And sleep deprivation causes it’s own problems which you can read about here.

 I might be on the wrong track here but generally no one has to be restrained. So the inclusion of that in the ask made me think this story might have elements of fantasy, sci fi or super hero genres: a character with a special ability that can only be used under certain circumstances.

 I had a problem with something like that in one of my stories recently. The character in question can manipulate how people think and feel using her voice. And I racked my brains trying to think of a way the police in the story could keep her imprisoned once they caught her. I looked up all sorts of sedatives, thought about solitary and all kinds of over the top abusive stuff that fiction teaches us is a go-to practical solution.

 I didn’t want to use them. I didn’t want her to be tortured.

 And then it hit me: her guards could just wear noise cancelling headphones.

 Sometimes the answer really is that simple.

 Think about this character’s power set, if that’s part of the problem here. Really consider what she can do and how she does it. Have you got an underlying chemical process going on? If it’s magic what’s the cause and effect for it? What are her limits? What is her range?

 Use that to think about when the power breaks down and why. And if you’re writing fanfiction based on a canon with poorly defined magical abilities…. Make something up to define how she does what she does.

 Focus and concentration is a commonly used way of doing this. I saw a brilliant program a while back where the main character actually had no idea how his powers worked and was as surprised and elated as everyone else when they did. I try to come up with strict, simple definitions of a character’s powers/abilities. Then I work to try and find inventive ways of applying that. Find a method that works for you and don’t be afraid to try a few different approaches.

 Unless you’ve written yourself into a corner, chances are this character (like mine) doesn’t need to be restrained or isolated.

 And if you have written yourself into a corner, you can write yourself out of it again. Either with the choices you make now or by going back and editing what you already have.

 On a similar note if you want this character to be in a better, less abusive system does she have to be in a male prison and does she really, absolutely have to be in America?

 Because if you want the lowest possible rates of violence and abuse today that means the Scandinavian prison system. You can find out more about it here and here for Norway.

 You can read more about global prison systems here.

 The gist of it is that there are huge systematic differences. Prison guards in Norway are trained for 2-3 years on specially designed course and the ratio of staff to prisoners is almost 1:1. (For contrast in the UK, which is closer to the US system training takes 12 weeks and the ratio is 1:4.) Prison guards in Norway are well paid, facilities are well staffed and guards are allowed generous breaks and holidays.

 This creates a system where staff are not overly stressed, sleep deprived or pressured to achieve unreasonable ‘results’. Training focuses on conflict resolution, this along with a less pressurised working environment this creates a better overall environment for staff and prisoners. Force is really considered a last resort and staff are provided with the tools, training and support necessary to make that a reality.

 There’s also effort put into the physical construction of these facilities: cells aren’t cramped, overcrowded or unsuitable for human habitation.

 I’m not trying to claim these prisons are perfect. There is still a big trend of prolonged solitary confinement use in Norway and other Scandinavian countries. There is still abuse in prisons.

 But- Well I can’t compare directly with US prisons because I didn’t find statistics using similar measures for violent attacks. However I can compare with the UK. With a prison population of about 3,200 Norway had 181 attacks on staff. The UK, with a prison population of 83,300, had a little over 10,000 attacks.

 I think if you really want to write something with the least potential for abuse then you’re better off imagining an international (or explicitly Scandinavian) institution built more along the lines of the Norwegian system.

 If you’ve got your heart set on an American, male prison being the only place this character can be then I think the ‘best’ thing a well intentioned warden in that position could do is throw her in solitary and have her kept on suicide watch.

 The safe period for solitary confinement is about a week.

 After that she’d start to show signs of mental health problems which would get worse the longer she was held. By about the 1-2 month point these problems are probably going to be permanent. Beyond that the chances of self harm and suicide attempts starts to rise. So does the chance she’ll have a psychotic break and start hallucinating. After a year you’re looking at multiple suicide attempts and chances of self mutilation. By which I mean things like trying to destroy your own hands, legs, face etc.

 The decision about what’s right for your story is always yours. You know these characters, the setting and the kind of narrative you’re telling best.

 Pick the options that best fit with what you want from the story and the characters. Because that’s the best decision for the story.

 But if you’re writing about an abusive system don’t gloss over the abuse. If you’re writing about a torturous practice in prisons (like solitary confinement) don’t ignore the life long damage it causes.

 I hope that helps. :)

Disclaimer

Available on Wordpress.

[betterthedevilyouknowuk]

Cannibalism, Blood Drinking & High-Adept Satanism by Kerth Barker

We read this book so that you don’t have to. Upon discovering Satanism, one thing you might do, is browse Amazon in search of reading material. If, like many of our readers, you’re money savvy and like to hunt for deals, you may be tempted to find the cheapest satanic books. DON’T. This was one of the first to come up on the list. At only £5 for a physical copy, it looks like a bargain.  It is not. You will lose brain cells.

Please be aware that this book talks about child abuse, and so this review may be triggering for some.

Kerth Barker is a man who has written many fictional titles in which he depicts his own “Satanic abuse”, committed by various Satanists; most of which are apparently part of the illustrious Illuminati. They control everything in the world, want to see it destroyed, and yes, they all want to have sex with him. It is a classic example of Satanic Panic and is further proof that to this day, we still need to fight these unfathomable, despicable excuses of human beings who spread such codswallop. Spoiler alert. This guy (pictured below) is a con artist.

The Satanic Panic was born in the United States in the early 1980's. Evolving mainly from rumours of Satanic Ritual Abuse (commonly referred to as SRA). Allegations involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. By the late 1990's this epidemic of paranoia had spread to many parts of the world.

The first written account of SRA, which was a major trigger for Satanic Panic, was Lawrence Pazder’s 1980 book Michelle Remembers. Much like Kerth Barkers book, it was written in the form of an autobiography of Michelle Smith. Told by Smith and her husband to her Psychiatrist, Pazder himself. It is easy to see where Barker gained his inspiration. Michelle Remembers has now been completely discredited, but not before major uproar and accusations stemmed from it. Triggering what was essentially a mass witch hunt.

Mike Warnke is another example of how the Conservative Christian right added fuel to the fire. After appearing on ABC'c show 20/20 in an episode titled "The Devil Worshippers" Mike Warnke was frequently cited as an expert on the occult. After all he claimed to be an ex high ranking member of a Satanic organisation. He was debunked in 1991.

We bring up Warnke’s ‘The Satan Seller’, as it has the most in common with this month’s book. More importantly it's author Kerth Barker.  The whole book reads like twisted fantasies of repressed sexuality and identity. And is dangerous in its accusations. He seems intent in ushering in a new age of Satanic Panic! In a failed attempt to seem like he isn’t trying to create unneeded panic, he states in his first chapter that he is not talking about all Satanists. He ‘acknowledges’ that there are some Satanists, who are not into cannibalism. It is almost like he is expecting there to be a #notallsatanists trend as we cry out in anger about how we are being misrepresented.

After a warning that adorns one of the first pages, it's plain to see that this was not going to be a light read. Amy (who regrettably suggested this book), read the whole thing in one sitting, fueled by pure hatred. With Lynsey and Cato getting through it almost as quick, they found it to be equally as excruciating. It left Cato wondering what dark secrets the author is really trying to hide, and Lynsey feeling as though it had taken all of her white blood cells, which where then shat on. 

Going down the list of chapters, it becomes clear fairly early on that Barker is either insane, or he is  taking the piss.

The first chapter starts off with Barkers need to announce that he is a Christian and that Satanists ruined his life. It escalates at a rapid pace from 0-100. Paedophilia, murder, cannibalism and ritualistic abuse, none of which are a laughing matter, spring out of nowhere.  Barker, in all his inability to convey himself maturely sees it as an opportunity to put himself as the centre of an entirely fictional world. According to his book, from a young age he was a candidate, who was primed to become ‘one of the greats’.

The book is scattered with accounts of blood drinking, aliens, surgery and a resistance that communicates via discarded cigarette cartons and rubbish piles on the streets. Somehow Barker knows how to instantly interpret piles of garbage into something meaningful, which is more than we can say about his own work.

Barker often speaks of his enforced alter ego Kathy, and her special meetings. These ‘multiple personality disorders’ are still being used for fuel satanic panic today, and it is something that The Satanic Temple is working to fight against.

It is clear upon reading that this book is in fact less to do with actual satanism, and more to do with his lustful desires and need to be admired in a sinister sort of way. This comes in a range of forms, mostly being preyed on sexually, even talking of his own ejaculation and public sexual acts. Some of them are just laughable. At one point in the book, he tells of how the ‘Baron’ was walking up a set of stairs in front of him.

Barker sure does have a wild imagination. It is a shame the same can not be said for his choice in character names; the ‘Baron’ and ‘Dark Mother’ being the most excruciatingly cliché.

The deeper you get in, the more apparent it is this book is about spreading fear and attempting to force conservative christian opinions in disguise. One such example is Barkers take on the ‘Gay Agenda’.

This sort of damaging propaganda is not only inaccurate, but it is giving homophobes everywhere an excuse to stop the LGBTQ+ community having rights.

‘But where were his family?’ we hear you all ask. Conveniently all of Barkers close family are Christians, and only an older, lesser know family member was a Satanist. It begs the question, while he was being carted around by the ‘Baron’, what did his family think he was doing. There isn’t much talk of his actual family. He has been careful not to mention them too much or claim that they were in fact in on it, because that would be too easily debunked.

The worrying thing about all of this, is that there are so many people who believe the rubbish Barker has written. In fine-combing this book it is easy to see the tactics used by Barker to convince the reader. The most prevalent being the illusion of rationality. He states he believes in religious freedom, and that he isn’t trying to convert anyone.

The main tactic used in this book, is making the characters seem human. If you stand up in court and give a character assessment on someone whom you have spent a vast amount of time with, but only share with them the negatives, you may well fail in convincing the jury. It can make it seem like you are ‘trying to hard’. It doesn’t sound logical, but even Hitler was nice to people sometimes. By talking about some of the nice things that these so called ‘Satanic Abusers’ did for him, it makes his story seem more believable. Because surely if he was making up this whole entire story, he would make it all murder and horror. Wrong. He has added in these ‘niceties’ to make you think exactly that.

There are people out there, who genuinely go through sexual abuse as a child. There are victims and survivors of horrific crimes. This whole entire book is a kick in the face to the people who really have suffered. 

Towards the end of the book, he goes all ‘David Icke’ on us and claims some of these high ranking Satanists are part of a reptilian race that are controlling us and taking over (I don’t suppose that has anything to do with the fact he is a fan and David Icke recommended his books). Also in case you weren’t aware, the moon is actually a hollow space station.

The biggest contradiction written throughout, it whether or not we are actually doomed. At one point he claims we aren’t far away from being completely ruled by these high-adept, alien Satanists. Only to then write a whole entire paragraph as to why they’re going to fail. It's almost as though he knows it isn’t going to happen because he made it all up, so he has to write a reason why it doesn’t come true. 

If these Satanists were ever nearly as powerful as claimed, and the stories true, he would have never been able to write this book. All the time he happens to just know everything about the destruction of the world as we know it and has access to books that nobody could ever possibly prove existed because after all… Illuminati.

He talks of the weakness of others and how he can help them overcome their blood addictions. But the entire time he is on his own high. A throne of disillusion.

To sum things up, ‘Cannibalism, Blood Drinking & High-Adept Satanism’ is one of the worst books we have ever had the malignant displeasure of reading. There is just too much wrong with to be able to cover it in one blog. 

Again, we do not recommend you read this book. We read it so you don’t have to. But if you so wish, you can read part of it for free here or you can purchase it from Amazon here.

Ave Satanas!

This book was published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (16 Nov. 2014). It is copyrighted to the author, Kerth R Barker and we are not endorsed by him or anyone else to write this blog.

Kerth Barker image source Blood drinking image source Illuminati pyramid image source Alien image source

[jbrentonparker]

Plotting Method #1: The Freytag Pyramid

Now that I’m over a particularly nasty, week-long cold, I’m going to jump into breaking down the plotting methods I briefly covered in an earlier post! Here’s the quick overview I gave of the first method:

The Freytag Pyramid:

Developed by German novelist and playwright Gustav Freytag, the pyramid was really developed to map out the story structure of five act Greek and Shakespearean dramas, but it can often be modified and applied to short stories and novels as well.

In Freytag’s pyramid, there are five parts (acts) to a narrative:

Exposition, in which the background of characters and events that occurred prior to the plot are given; Rising Action, which is the series of events that lead up towards the greatest point of interest, or the turning point in the narrative; Climax, which isn’t the same as what other people refer to as the “climax” of a story–Freytag means the turning point that changes the protagonist’s fate; Falling Action, when the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist comes to a head (what is actually usually called the “climax” in novel writing); And Denouement, all the stuff after the Falling Action to the very last scene, in which the narrative is wrapped up for better or for worse.

As mentioned above, Gustav Freytag developed this story structure map specifically in relation to Greek and Shakespearean plays. With a little bit of tweaking though, it can be used to structure prose as well.

Exposition: In Shakespeare plays, this literally comes in the form of exposition in which the background for the play is stated outright to the audience. “In fair Verona where we lay our scene...” etc etc. In a novel, this would be the first chapter of Harry Potter (again, I’m going to frequently use Harry Potter as my example, since most people are at least familiar with the story). In chapter 1, “The Boy Who Lived”, the audience is given the background. Takes place in England in modern times. Strange things which are revealed to be of a magical nature at the end of the chapter are not common, or commonly known about. Wizards are a thing, but they hide from the non-magical world. Harry Potter is special, but he will not know that for many years. We learn the setting, and the state of “normal” within the bounds of the narrative is established. This is important!

Even if you are reading the most wild, out-there fantasy or scifi story ever, the reader has to know what is considered normal in the context of your world before things can start going crazy, otherwise it’s easy to lose their attention along the way. That being said, the establishment of normalcy can be quick. I’ll reference Artemis Fowl, since it’s another fairly popular middle grade book many people have read. The first book starts off in Ho Chi Minh city--bam, we know it’s set on earth. There is a cafe, Artemis and Butler are wearing suits, they drive a hummer. We know it’s set in modern day.  It is explained that Artemis is searching for something, and he worries this may be another failed attempt. We know that whatever is going on isn’t common or usual. We meet the fairy, and it is established that this is not an everyday occurance, and that Artemis’s knowledge of them as a human is singular.

So the fantasy aspect of the plot is introduced very early on, but even so, we are given a very clear concept of what the normal state of things is in these books: fairies exist, but humans do not know about them. Therefore, Artemis knowing about them is unusual, special, and worth writing a book about.

So exposition and establishing the state of “normal” in the context of your novel often go hand in hand. Neither usually last more than a chapter or two however; you don’t want to leave your readers waiting for the “good stuff” for too long.

The Rising Action: All the stuff leading up to your main character taking action, or being forced to take action, or what have you. In Hamlet, this would be all of Hamlet’s whinging about what to do, whether to take revenge or not. In Neverwhere, this would be the bits where Richard is just “along for the ride”, just trying to get his life back while staying as minimally involved in Door’s actual drama as possible.In this part, the protagonist is usually trying to avoid the conflict, or keep it from happening.

Climax: The climax in Freytags’s pyramid is very different than “the climax of a novel”! They are two totally different creatures. I like to think of Freytag’s Climax as “The Point of No Return”. This is the moment the protagonist must face the conflict for better or for worse. This is a major turning point in the story, and there is no going back to the way things were after this moment. In Romeo and Juliet, this is when Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished. Things can never be resolved peacefully now, he has slain a member of Juliet’s family, he is banished, they are now physically as well as socially separated, the rift between their two families is bigger than ever, worst has come to worst (or so they all think at the time). Often during the Climax/Point of No Return, things have gone very wrong. The protagonist is forced into action because there is no other alternative. The can no longer avoid or prevent or flee or peacefully deal with the conflict, they must face is head on like a freight train barreling down upon them. Then comes the:

Denouement: the way the characters deal with the fallout of the climax. Juliet gets her hands on some poison and sends Romeo a letter--which he never gets. Hamet stages a play “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”. Now this is the part where Freytag’s model as it applies to plays does no align so well with prose. In Freytag’s model, who more substages follow: Catastrophe, and the Moment of Last Suspense. Catastrophe is Romeo believing he finds Juliet dead, and killing himself, and then Juliet awakens and kills herself as well. In the Moment of Last Suspense, the two families come together and see how their behavior has led to two such bitter deaths, and finally let bygones be bygones. In Prose, however, you have the Climax instead of Catastrophe (though your climax could be a catastrophe, but it doesn’t have to be obviously).

The conflict comes to a head, the protagonist and the antagonist often clash especially in fantasy, tensions are as high as possible, the stakes are as high as possible, and the protagonist must deal with the conflict and deal with it now. In a narrative without a human antagonist, this would be, say, the scene where the protagonist gets trapped in an avalanche but claws their way out of the snow and drags themselves, half-frozen, to the side of the road where they collapse, only to be found (alive? dead?) hours later by a passing hiker. In Monsters Inc, it’s pretty much the entire last twenty minutes of the movie.

Then, hopefully, if you’re a kind writer, you end with your wrap up, your own Moment of Last Suspense--which usually isn’t really all that suspenseful, but the same concept applies. Tensions are released, loose ends are tied up, questions are answered, and we have a sense of how the conflict was resolved. You could, of course, end your story with your character half-frozen on the side of the road after an avalanche for dramatic reasons, but most readers like to see the “after” bit of the “happily (or not so happily) ever after”. I know I once read a trilogy that I otherwise adored, but the ending killed me--it just ended immediately after the villain was defeated, with the characters standing of the edge of a cliff, hundreds of miles from home, after a harrowing, month-long journey to get there in the first place. As a reader, I wanted to see the characters I loved get back home safely as much as I wanted to see the antagonist defeated, so that ending disturbed me a little. An excellent example of a satisfying wrap up, in my opinion at least, is Neverwhere. I won’t go into it because I’d hate to spoil it for those who have not yet read it, but I think it is fantastically satisfying.

I believe that more or less covers the aspects of the Freytag model and how it can be applied to prose. Stay tuned for the next detailed overview, the Three Act Structure!

[sagebodisattva]

Interconnectivity of Reality and the Mind

So, the basic building blocks that compose the bedrock of the prison that is constructed around your mind, consist of many many tiny bits of conceptual mass that combine to form dense conceptualizations that become manifest as a belief that the mental state is but a byproduct of physicality. This is a learned belief that is so ingrained into the psyche of consciousness that there isn't even a need to teach this description. It has become the foundation upon which all subsequent inquires and explanations about reality are formulated. And this is exactly why all of these inquires and explanations are going to be false, no matter what the different specifics might be.

Rule of thumb, if you want to ensure that someone will never arrive at the truth, ensure that they begin with a false premise that is accepted without question as a default axiom. Once this is accomplished you can be sure that they will never find the truth, unless they somehow find their way back to questioning the premise, and this can usually be avoided by diversions, distractions and controlling both sides of the arguments that are taking place, of which, BOTH are based on the false postulation.

In other words, just sit back and let them endlessly argue both sides of a faulty pointless argument, and if anyone even shows a hint at questioning the false premise, distract and divert them with fear or excitement of some kind. Always encourage confirmation bias, and don't be the least bit shy about using an overabundance of sophist tactics and red herrings.

And this is exactly what has happened to human beings in this current paradigm. Atheism or theism? It doesn't matter. Physical vs metaphysical? It doesn't matter. The false premise at the root of all these arguments is that reality is an objective medium; that is, existing independently of the mind. And there is no way for you to argue against this, as your mind awareness is the only real sure thing you have that is undeniably self evidently true; that which is experiential, clear, ever-present, and already the case firsthand, before any such idea as a mind independent reality can even be considered... whereas objectivity is a leap of faith; speculative at best, and based on many assumptions that attempt to externalize projections into having some kind of separate existence of their own. This is called delusion; because it doesn't recognize a mirage as a mirage. Delusion is a state of mind that is being fooled; tricked into investment into the trappings of an illusion.

The inner connectivity of reality and the mind has been explored for thousands of years by a select few and has most certainly found to be the case, empirically. Whereas objectivity is merely an intellectual theory based on a false hypothesis. And you will notice, that any argument, any speculation, any assumption, any belief, any opinion, any observation, any measurement, any ideological proposition, all begin with I. They may try to refute the inner connectivity of reality and the mind, but that cannot do so without the context of a mind. So you are gonna hear: "I argue that" or "It is my speculation that" or "I put forth the hypothesis that" or "I believe that" or "it is my opinion that" or "based on observations, it is seen that" or "I have taken a measurement and found that" or "it is my idea that.”

So you see.. They cannot put forth a single argument or theory that isn't rooted first in a subjective context, and yet they want to ultimately infer that the subjective context is somehow a secondary offshoot of some objective framework. I would posit that objectivity is complete and utter fantasy, as neither one of the main commonly known held definitions of it are true. Objective, as in, (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts, is not true, because there is no such thing as a subject that is not influenced by their own innate bias. People just pretend that this is the case to circumvent the cognitive dissonance that arises from being a biased subject put in a position of having to make an unbiased judgement. And then objective, as in, not dependent on the mind for existence; actual. Which is also bullshit.. as was eluded to earlier, and continuing on henceforth. About the only accurate definition of the word objective is: a thing aimed at or sought; a goal. Like, my current objective of deconstructing objectivity.

So this is why until you have flipped the script on the old description of reality, you really don't have anything all that relevant to add to philosophical discourse concerning the nature of existence. If you can't even get the initial foundation of the truth right, nothing you postulate or propose will have any real truth or value. If we have too much of an intense focus on dream narrative, or on how the superficial appearances arrange themselves, it is conducive towards not recognizing the individual as part of the dream. This is how people can direct their awareness past their own awareness and come up with an ass backwards conclusion that their own awareness is a byproduct of what their awareness is aware of, which is so profoundly off course it's perplexingly absurd. Do I need to run through all the possible arguments built on the false premise and deconstruct them all one by one? No, I don't, even though I still may in future videos; because, despite the redundant process of deconstructing one extraneous inventory item after another, there's still always another, right? And it doesn't matter how many times it's gone over, again and again. There's always another superficial appearance. No, it's illusion.

“Yeah, but what about another superficial appearance? And what about another superficial appearance? And what about another superficial appearance?”

Sigh. Look, point blank. The second you point outwards towards projected perceptibles and open your mouth to speak about it with some externalized supposition, you're already wrong, and this is why religion and science get it wrong every time. This is why there are so many holes and missing pieces and information that doesn't add up, or contradictions that seems to defy this or that. They are both starting from a false default assumption about reality, which involve the suggestion that some externally existing agency manifested reality. There is no god out there that magically created a universe, nor was there was a tremendous explosion out there, aka, the big bang, that magically created a universe, as there is no out there. No more out there then images on a film strip having an actual existence out there on a projection screen. It's a completely ridiculous assertion at this point. Not because a meditating Buddhist monk said so, not because quantum mechanics says so, not because a dream spirit representing god came through the window at night and said so, but because I know so, firsthand, through non-being, detached from the illusory ego. And I wouldn't expect anyone else to believe so until their true one self has also come to recognize itself.

“Oh Sage, but that's just a subjective experience.”

No it isn't. But speaking of which: what else are you, may I ask, but a subjective experience? And if you can really answer this question genuinely correct, then you will know the truth about the inner connectivity of reality and the mind; because knowing the truth has nothing to do with anything a dream character can experience. Clarity of awareness can increase, but it has nothing to do with the character. The dream character is part of the dream. In other words, lucidity isn't increased by anything the ego can do. And as I've said to before, besides the fact that "you" are not this ego, and that the ego is part of the dream, the aim of what I am pointing towards isn't about getting rid of the ego or the world. It's about dropping the attachments to ego and the world.

So, you see, there isn't any contradiction nor exceptions. Lucidity reveals that anything the ego references in inventory is wholly illusion, and this outside awareness is facilitated because there's no attachment to illusion formed by a false identification. Whereas, the common man can't accept this, and fights it with every fiber in his being. But, as the old saying goes, the truth can set you free, but most people still reject the truth because they want a sugar coating on it. The truth can set you free? What does that even mean? Just as Pontius Pilate, the noble Roman governor, purportedly asked Jesus Christ, to which Jesus had no answer:

“What is truth?"

So... what is truth? And how can that set you free? The truth isn't anything found out there. You ARE that truth, which is uncovered when we finally sever binding attachments and false identifications with the perceptibles of illusion.

[headlesssamurai]

Have you seen Altered Carbon? If so, what do to think of it?

Alright, I finally bucked up enough courage to do another honest, non-sarcastic, write-up for a piece of media. Just been somewhat bitterly reluctant to voice my true opinions on fiction, or anything else really, since it seems like lots of folks are quite intensely engaged in violent uproars of one kind or another. No need to add more noise to the feedback loop, if you know what I mean.

But you’re, like, one of a dozen or so dudes who asked me about this series. So I reckoned I’d write it up for you, it being such a popular subject and all. I’d also like to thank you for your curiosity. It’s pretty damn humbling to know anybody cares enough about what I think to even ask after my thoughts. I’ll make sure to offer a notary warning before I spill any spoilers.

I became acquainted with Richard K. Morgan’s Kovacs-verse a few years back, but accidentally read one of the protagonist’s later adventures before backtracking to the original novel. I found it to be a respectably well-written futuristic detective story in the grand tradition of vintage writers like Robert B. Parker, even if including the predictably pornographic sex scenes in the grand tradition of modern urban sci-fi/fantasy writers like Laurell K. Hamilton (maybe the ‘K’ middle initial is a code for graphic sex content). In preparation for watching the new Netflix series, I re-read Morgan’s Altered Carbon to refresh my knowledge of the future he created.

Now, I’d like to say I’m a prolific reader of novelized fiction and other books, but I’m not one of those “hardcore” purists who always cries “the book was better” while pounding my fist on the podium. Thus in my effort to avoid any such farcical nonsense, I’m going to sort of examine both the book and the Netflix series of Altered Carbon at once, and write about what I enjoy and dislike about both versions, instead of directly comparing them.

I’ve grown so cynical with modern film and TV, I tend to unintentionally generate lists of what I think they’ll change about a book’s story once they adapt it, and what they’ll add and leave out. Usually, these lists are fairly accurate. Game of Thrones, for instance: how depressing it is to be absolutely correct some times. Not that the books were much better, but a pinecone up the ass doesn’t make a kick in the nuts feel any better.

A lot of people would describe Altered Carbon as having cyberpunk vibes, and this is true, but I believe it fits more comfortably into the realm of biopunk than anything else. If you’re not familiar with the concepts herein, Altered Carbon involves a distant future in which humanity has colonized the stars over many generations using sleeper ships, and with a little help from recovered alien star-maps, but has not achieved faster-than-light interstellar travel. The central technology in this universe is the cortical stack, a type of neural backup which allows a person’s consciousness to be digitally stored in a “disc” and uploaded into a new body if they die.

The new bodies are referred to as sleeves, and the filthy rich clone themselves so their sleeves are all identical and genetically enhanced, but most common folk have to accept whatever body is available or is covered by their insurance, or even a synthetic sleeve (which in the novel is a cheap and distasteful thing, but in the series synthetics seem to have superpowers). People can only travel quickly to other star systems in the settled worlds (known as the Protectorate) by transmitting their stored consciousness into another cortical stack on their planet of destination and uploading into a new sleeve there (a process called needlecasting), but physically transporting anything still takes a really long time for ships to travel across the vast distance of space.

Straight out of the gate, this concept does not appeal to me at all. If there’s anything that drains your story of tension and thrills, it’s got to be the idea that everyone lives forever. The way the universe is constructed however, it ends up making the story far more interesting than what I had anticipated. Not everyone can afford to live forever, first of all, since re-sleeving can be an extremely expensive undertaking, and even those who have the money rarely feel the desire to live more than two lifetimes. Additionally there are complications which can arise, such as personality fragging, a type of insanity which occurs when a person is sleeved in one too many different bodies throughout their life.

Certain religious groups also vehemently resist re-sleeving, and for law enforcement various lengthy sentences of storage without the possibility to re-sleeve are the primary means of punishment for most crimes. There are even interesting concepts like criminals who copy their consciousness into several cortical stacks at once, making them difficult to apprehend once and for all. Other criminals and intelligence operatives also utilize virtuality to torture people in a digital environment, allowing them to subject victims to days or even months of agony which equates to only a few hours in real-time. Real death can also still occur, if the individual’s cortical stack is badly damaged or destroyed.

The actual plot involves a former soldier named Takeshi Kovacs, who is paroled early from a criminal sentence and re-sleeved by a rich tycoon who offers to exonerate Kovacs of his crimes if he can solve a murder. While reluctant to work for some rich asshole, Kovacs is almost instantly attacked by mercenaries which makes him curious enough to take the case. Kovacs then works to investigate the purported crime while getting himself into a bit of trouble with the locals, and trying to deal with extreme trauma from his combat experiences.

It’s surprising that in the case of Altered Carbon I was entirely incorrect in everything I thought the producers might add/change/amputate from the original story. I also could not have predicted what they decided to add and how they decided to change certain elements from the story of Morgan’s novel. I believe the series they crafted from his story is competently scripted, very well cast, doesn’t waste too much time with any silly subplots, and is generally a well-paced, adult-themed sci-fi story. Altered Carbon really wants to take itself seriously, in the same vein as things like SyFy’s praiseworthy diamond The Expanse, but its unique setting gets a little too bogged down in conventional tropes for my liking. Gratuitous T&A (as well as other, less commonly exploited extremities) and generous helpings of the fuck-words do not an edgy and intense sci-fi experience make. Good but not great, would be my general assessment of the series.

Don’t get me wrong here, Altered Carbon is plenty intense, even thrilling at certain points, but a somewhat bland smattering of writers and directors, thrown into the recipe with a few others who are brilliant geniuses, create a mixed bag of stylistic choices which don’t always fit together very well. So you’re often left with an unusually faithful adaptation of a badass novel, wonderfully enhanced in certain aspects, but grotesquely mutated in others, and some of the conflicting storytelling elements feel hurriedly stitched together. A Patchwork Man of a story, rather than prime quality tank flesh. None of Altered Carbon’s flaws are crippling however, and all-told I’d say the series is eminently watchable and very worth your while if you enjoy futuristic sci-fi stories.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead.

First the good news. This series stars an extremely talented cast of performers who own their roles with wonderful conviction, and very convincing poise.

Joel Kinnaman has been on my good side since he appeared in The Killing, and even his unfortunate role in the Robocop reboot didn’t water down my appreciation for him. I feel like his role as the newly sleeved Takeshi Kovacs was perfectly cast. Martha Higareda is just a little too cute to be such a badass, but she winds up playing Detective Ortega to that strong female archetype in a far less sensational and much more casual way than what you might expect from the modern trends of scripting for such characters. Though quite the opposite of Higareda in terms of the role she plays, Renée Elise Goldsberry brims with charisma as Quellcrist Falconer, a sort of futuristic Che Guevara if he had also practiced Zen and gong fu, and was a woman. Chris Collins is also incredibly memorable as Kovacs’ A.I. hotel manager Poe.

Ato Essandoh as Vernon Elliott became one of my favorite characters as the series goes on, and though I wasn’t totally sold on the arc of her character Hayley Law as Elliott’s daughter Lizzie completed a very nice trifecta of beautiful lead women who just happen to be racially diverse. The third of these ladies, of course, is Dichen Lachman who I’ve got to say delivers probably the most convincing and most nuanced performance in the entire series, having to run a wild labyrinth of different emotional expressions which all feel very genuine. As was the case with Sylvia Hoeks as Luv in Blade Runner: 2049, Dichen Lachman as Rei hooked me instantly and woudn’t let go. Maybe I just got a thing for sociopathic women or something.

There are also a few minor roles worth mentioning, Marlene Forte does a great job as the overbearing mother of detective Ortega, which again felt very genuine and not forced, Tamara Taylor as ambitious sleazy attorney Oumou Prescott gave me chills with her smug smile (again perfect casting), Kristin Lehman and James Purefoy seem a perfectly matched pair of megalomaniacs, Byron Mann and Will Yun Lee kick ass portraying Kovacs at very different stages of his troubled life, and there is some terrifically believable acting on the parts of child actors Morgan Gao and Riley Lai Nelet.

All that being said, not everything the actors are given to do is particularly well-written, in my humble opinion.

Takeshi Kovacs is something called an Envoy, a type of specially trained soldier who is mentally conditioned to be hyper-aware at all times, integrate and adapt to new environments and circumstances, and even manipulate his own bodily chemistry, allowing him to eliminate the pain threshold, instantly recover from debilitating drugs, and avoid lingering trauma from torture. The Envoys were created to help the Protectorate put-down political dissidents and rebels, which were running rampant throughout the settled worlds at the time of the Envoy Program’s inception. Many of these rebels often followed the outlawed “Quellist” writings of an infamously respected revolutionary leader called Quellcrist Falconer who fought, and lost, against the Protectorate hundreds of years before the time of the novel (and long before Kovacs was born). When she was born, Quellcrist Falconer, like Kovacs, also happened to be from Harlan’s World. In the novel, this reputation causes Harlan’s World to be viewed as a backwater source of rogues and misfits by citizens of more civilized worlds (which is fair, since it’s described by Kovacs as being overrun by crime syndicates and swamp gangs). But even compared to Harlan’s World, Earth is considered a polluted over-populated shit hole.

In the novel he was trained by the somewhat fascist forces of the Protectorate, and the Envoy Corps was an elite black ops group who could be transmitted to any planet and topple the regime in less time than it would take a massive army to win a single battle. In the series, Kovacs is just a random soldier burn during the time of the Quellist revolution, but Envoys were created and trained by revolutionary leader Quellcrist Falconer to combat the very fascist forces of the Protectorate, whom were too used to conventional warfare to properly adapt to Quell’s asymmetrical tactics.

The problem for me, with this particular change in the writing, is that much of the details have been glossed over. I never got a sense of how Quell was able to so efficiently condition her soldiers into such a formidable force, nor did her portrayal emphasize her military acumen in this manner very convincingly. Quell’s character is certainly charismatic and sympathetic to the audience, but I find it much easier to accept that Envoys are the product of sociopathic, strict, and brutal military conditioning than to grasp the concept that a fairly undisciplined group of freedom fighters were able to develop such a sophisticated method of training. If Quell’s rebels were portrayed differently, it might be easier to accept, but in the series they seem more like hippies with guns than hardened elite warriors.

This is one of my only major gripes with the series as a whole, and it wouldn’t even be that big of a deal to me if it didn’t play such a large role in the plot and arc of Kovacs as a character. I didn’t like the way it changed his backstory either.

See, in the novel Kovacs is a former Envoy turned career criminal since Envoys are generally feared by everyone despite their having fought for the Protectorate, so they don’t have a lot of options and their skillset is only useful in a limited context. He’s haunted by his combat experiences, regrets his role in assisting the government in putting down various rebels, and has a cultural misunderstanding of Earth because he’s from Harlan’s World. His criminal ventures could be seen as his own personal revolution, and Kovacs has spent about a century in and out of storage since leaving the military, but has only been consciously alive for about forty years. He isn’t portrayed as a morally centered person, but he has his own system of honor, and he selfishly accepts Laurens Bancroft’s offer because it’s a way out of a lengthy sentence. This gives him a nice arc, because he slowly becomes more morally invested in what he’s doing as certain things come to light, and ultimately risks it all toward the end basically to avenge the death of a prostitute and save a single life, which is a nice shift in contrast from the Kovacs we see leave storage at the start of the book.

In the series Kovacs is a lovesick puppy dog, who misses his one true love. He’s a former Quell revolutionary who also became a career criminal, but the moment he got caught they put him in storage indefinitely, because he’s the last of the Envoys, the rest of which were mercilessly butchered by stormtroopers from the evil Protectorate which has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. When the series begins, he awakens 250 years after he was captured and he finds that the galaxy has become what he always feared, a one-percenter’s paradise ruled by the rich, where the poor are exploited and marginalized and everyone with even the slightest sense of prominence is an irredeemable asshole. Politics aside, this change makes his character arc far less interesting to me, because he doesn’t want to help Bancroft but his reluctance comes from a very different place than the book, and ultimately Kovacs accepts the offer not out of selfishness but because the ghost of his dead girlfriend tells him to.

This also deeply conflicts with the first time we’re introduced to Kovacs, in his usual East Asian sleeve on Harlan’s World where he speaks of caring only for “getting paid” and seems like a typical devil-may-care bad boy. Then when he’s talking to Bancroft, he tells the tycoon “Some things can’t be bought. Like me.” So which is it? Do you only care about getting paid, or can you not be bought? This makes for a somewhat confusing characterization of Kovacs, who one minute is murderously avenging himself upon psychotic bio-smugglers and claiming he cares for no one, only to turn around and behave like a typical romantic the next. It isn’t entirely jarring, but for me it hurt the dark tone and mature themes to discover the central core of the series is a centuries-old fairytale love story.

Sorry. I like fairytale love stories. But I also like darkly thematic dystopian science fiction, and in my opinion the two mix about as well as apple liqueur and olive oil.

This is all, however, as I said one off my only major gripes about the series. And even the sum of its parts aren’t badly executed. Like I said, Quell is charismatic, Kovacs is haunted, and all three actors (Kinnaman, Goldsberry, and Kim as Kovacs in his original sleeve) deliver convincing performances as well as share a great sense of chemistry, so the love story is believable at least. Visual effects and set design are also wonderful, and for such a high concept sci-fi setting it all feels very seamless. Dialogue is well-scripted as well, and most of Poe’s interactions with other characters are some of the best scenes. It’s also nice to see a series that exploits the naked female form to a fault, yet also makes a point to ensure you get just as much if not far more male nudity to surprisingly counterpoint its shamelessness. I haven’t seen this many swinging dicks since the last time I read YouTube comments. Just makes you feel better when the characters finally ride the stuffed unicorn, know what I mean?

Many of the minor roles from the novel are also modified to make certain characters more important, and some of their roles have been altered so that they are completely different people. Some of these changes work better than others. Rei, as Tak’s sister rather than just some asshole crime boss he once knew, was a change in the story that had the reverse effect of how I felt about the altered Kovacs/Envoy backstory. It makes Reileen a more interesting character than just the Big Bad you might expect in such a story, and causes her motivations, maniacal as they remain, to be far more empathic and invested in the events of the plot. In that light, they made the villain stand out as memorable among the bland villains we often get in movies and TV shows now, thanks to the K-Mart quality antagonists so popularized by the Marvel movies.

While certainly not perfect, Altered Carbon still manages to offer fans of science fiction a fascinating world populated by characters who are easy to give a damn about, and a galaxy spanning story of heartbreak, betrayal, and retribution. I personally wasn’t that big a fan of the romantic warrior monk stuff in this particular story, but that doesn’t mean it won’t appeal to others. There’s enough mystery here to keep you guessing, and enough solid dramatic force to keep us wanting more on its own merits, not by virtue of any stupid cliffhangers. Much of the visual style and action sequences are just icing on the cake, really. Though, I confess, I almost jizzed my pants when I got to see the Phillips Squeeze Gun in action. And there’s nothing quite like one of those sci-fi stories where someone picks up a samurai sword, let alone during the finale.

All told, I’d watch Altered Carbon again, and you should too. Regardless of whatever I say, or my own personal preferences, it deserves your attention. Because it may be adapted from a novel, but a least it’s trying to be something different than most of what’s out there right now, even if its poetic love story doesn’t want it to be. So, ignore cynical bastards like me, watch the damn show and decide for yourself.

                    侍    headless                   

[eyesaremosaics]

Feminist film recommendations?

Hmm interesting question anon. I will list some of my personal favorites (in no particular order) hopefully you enjoy them.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

I felt like there was fire in my veins walking out of the cinema. Not only is Charlize Theron’s Furiosa a total badass, but the best thing is that it’s not just her. To have such a range of women portrayed equally and beautifully was so uplifting. Women caring for each other, lifting each other and fighting hard for what is right. We need more of that, both in Hollywood and in life.

2. The color purple (1985)

Read this book in high school, about a sisterhood of women, all standing together against the racism and sexism that they face and somehow coming out on top. It’s an inspiring story of women coming together in the face of adversity.

3. Gone With the Wind (1939)

Scarlett was the most coveted female film role of all time. Despite the films obvious flaws as a result of the time period in which it was made, overall this is a feminist parable. Scarlett is above all else–a survivor. She never gives up, digs her heels in, rolls up her sleeves and does it. She faces adversity with admirable courage. Despite the fact that she is a terribly flawed human being, you can relate to her. She sets her mind to something and she does it, whether it’s dragging her family out of poverty or eating as much BBQ food as she damn well likes. Her flaws make her human, which adds richness to the overall story. Scarlett has inspired me to persevere at the darkest of times. When all hope seems lost, “tomorrow is another day.”

4. Erin Brockovich (2000)

I love Julia Roberts, and this movie stands out as one of her best in my opinion. A single mother, fallen on hard times, but somehow holding everything together. Making the best of a bad situation, an eternal realist. Portraying a woman as much more than she appears. She uncovers some dark secrets (chemicals leaked into the sewer systems) which led an entire community to develop terminal illness. She works tirelessly to expose those responsible and find justice for those who can’t help themselves. My favorite line is when this bitchy secretary says: “maybe we got off on the wrong foot here.”“Yeah lady because that’s all you got, two wrong feet and fucking ugly shoes.” Bahahaha

5. Suffragette (2015)

Tells the story of the women’s right movement at the turn of the last century. It taught me to stand up for myself, and for women everywhere. Very proud to have that as a part of our history. Incredibly grateful to all the women who fought tirelessly, endured persecution, humiliation, incarceration to ensure my right to vote.

6. Pocahontas (1995)

Pocahontas is VERY loosely based on the true story. Disney took a lot of liberties here which mask the horror of early American history and its impact on the native Americans. HOWEVER, what I like about her characterization in this film… Is that she was strong, rebellious, bold, adventurous, and wise. She went wherever the wind took her, a true free spirit. She was graceful, and kind in ways other Disney princesses were not. The purity of her heart and the message she had to bring, stopped a war. She is a warrior, but not one that fights with weapons, she fights with love. In the end she chose herself and her duty to her people over a man. I wanted to be just like her when I was a little girl watching this in the theater, and she still inspires me today, nearly 20 years later.

7. Fried green tomatoes (1992)

I watched this film when I was in high school, with low expectations and was very surprised to discover how moved I was. A story of two women, finding empowerment within oneself. The main character listens to a story from an elderly woman and learns how to love herself. I believe it’s important to encourage other women and learn from each other.

8. Obvious child (2014)

Jenny Slate’s character has an abortion after a one night stand with a guy she actually really likes. However, she knows she isn’t prepared for it and chooses to terminate the pregnancy. There’s great friendship and family in the film and it really helps to destigmatise abortion.

9. Wild (2014)

The book is arguably better, but the film is worth watching. A woman goes out and hikes one of the worlds longest trails, on a mission to find herself and to prove that she can finish what she starts. Finding herself on the elements, and getting clarity. Very freeing and inspiring.

10. Kill Bill 1 & 2 (2003)

Uma Thurman is a boss, and everyone knows it. She is so vice tally connected to her inner life as an actress, always enjoy watching her. These films are what she is most known for nowadays, and for good reason. It’s a story of revenge. A woman is almost murdered by the man she loved, pregnant with his child. Wakes up in a hospital, having been in a coma for years. Suffered all kinds of indignities, she willed herself to walk again. Dragged herself by her fingernails until she could rise up, strengthen her skills as a warrior, and set out to settle old scores. She takes each person down one by one, yet you still find the humanity behind each character and the reasons why they did what they did and became who they were. It’s about survival, perseverance, and ultimately in the end–forgiveness. Leaving the past behind, to start over again.

11. She’s beautiful when she’s angry (2014)

It’s a documentary about the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, with interviews with many of the women who were part of it. Sure, it makes you angry to see injustice, but it’s also highly uplifting to see what these women did, and how it paved the way for equality forty to fifty years later. These women were, and still are, amazing figures who haven’t stopped fighting.

12. How to make an American quilt

A group of older women reflecting on their lives around a quilting table. Each of their stories are so inspiring, and the way they all come together to heal from their traumas is very powerful. Winona Ryder’s character (Finn) is experiencing a late twenties crisis of identity, and is unsure about wether or not to get married to her long term fiancée. Listening to the lives of all these women helps bring perspective and clarity to her. Life is never black and white, life is like a quilt. You build as you go along.

13. Frida

This Selma Hayek-fronted, Academy Award-winning biopic of the feminist icon portrays the artist in a whole new light. It’s amazing to watch the story of any incredible historic figure succeed against the odds, but double if said figure is also a woman and shot so beautifully by Julie Taymor.

14. The hours (2002)

This film follows three women as their lives weave in and around the narrative of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The multi-generational movie shows how people are connected through time by similar angst, anxieties, and personal struggles.

15. The Stepford wives (1975)

What happens to women when things are too perfect? The answer might make their husbands happy, but the truth behind what is happening in this ideal-seeming suburb is nothing short of horrifying.

16. Miss Representation (2011)

A documentary on the way women are treated and portrayed in the media, this film broke open the truth behind the images women and young girls are force fed on a daily basis. Start your watching here, if you can, and then continue on to these other films to see how much has and hasn’t changed.

17. North Country (2005)

A fictionalized account of the first majorly successful sexual harassment case in the United States, this film follows the female miners who fought for their right to work without suffering the abuse their male coworkers heaped on them because of their gender.

18. The Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel

New Argentine Cinema figure Lucrecia Martel draws connections to the country’s dark political/class struggles, transposing its “disappeared” from the mid-to-late ‘70s into a sedate, challenging story about a woman’s fractured state following a fatal accident and its ensuing cover-up.

18. Princess Mononoke, Hayao Miyazaki

A thread of feminism weaves itself through the work of Hayao Miyazaki. Perhaps his most mature film, Princess Mononoke features a memorable and tenacious heroine, San, who subverts feminine stereotypes and is written without the fanciful quirks commonly found in animation. She is serious and single minded. Grounded to the earth, living in the moment. She is totally present, and pure. Even her rage comes from a pure unadulterated place. Wolf-goddess character Moro deserves attention as an unlikely mother figure that is fierce and, well, totally pissed off (you would be too if people were destroying your home), but also wise and nurturing. Fighting for what’s right, against impossible odds. Being humbled by nature, the ultimate female reclamation. So many layers in this film.

19. Dogfight, Nancy Savoca

A rare film set during the Vietnam War and told from the perspective of a woman, Nancy Savoca’s Dogfight reveals a different kind of cruelty people inflict upon one another, off the battlefield — in this case, a group of misogynistic Marines using women in a contest of looks. Lili Taylor’s peace-loving Rose, who becomes one of the targets in this game, soon realizes she’s being courted by River Phoenix’s Eddie for the wrong reasons — though his guilt and seemingly genuine interest in Rose is apparent. Rose confronts Eddie about the game, defending the honor of all women involved, which winds up bringing them closer together.

20. Alien, Ridley Scott

She’s not a sidekick, arm candy, or a damsel to be rescued. She isn’t a fantasy version of a woman. The character is strong enough to survive multiple screenwriters. She was lucky enough to be played by Sigourney Weaver,” said Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America President John Scalzi of Ellen Ripley from 1979’s Alien. Defying genre cinema’s gender clichés (she is gender neutral, really) as the clear-minded, intelligent, and capable officer of the ship Nostromo, Ripley is more resourceful than the men who employ her and steps in to take over when all hell breaks loose.

21. Orlando, Sally Potter

Our own Judy Berman recently highlighted Tilda Swinton’s performance in Potter’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s satirical text that explores gender and artistic subjectivity, a project that was ambitious in both form and content:

“Although it’s far more straightforward a narrative than most of her work, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando still presents one major challenge for the big screen: its protagonist is a nobleman in Elizabethan England who lives a life that spans centuries, and is suddenly transformed into a woman midway through it. Tilda Swinton may be the only (allegedly) human actor equipped to play the role of such a regal, mysterious androgyne, and her performance in this adaptation — also a breakthrough for director Sally Potter — became her signature.”

22. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy

Celebrated for its vivid milieu, Jacques Demy’s sensitively characterized film is a superior look at an independent woman (Catherine Deneuve) in a romantic narrative who makes difficult choices about marriage, children, and survival that sometimes leave her alone — but she is never lonely because of that.

23. Daisies, Vera Chytilová

The young women in Vera Chytilová’s Czech New Wave farce “construct fluid identities for themselves, keenly aware of their sexuality, toying with the men who pursue them. It’s an exhilarating, surreal, anarchic experiment, framed by the turbulent 1960s.

24. Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash

Julie Dash directed the first feature film by an African-American woman distributed theatrically in the United States in 1991 — a stunningly captured look at three generations of Gullah women off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia in 1902.

25. Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren

The bar for avant-garde female filmmaking, born from personal experiences and anxieties. Maya Deren’s 1943 experimental classic builds its interior female perspective and constructs of selfhood through dreamlike imagery.

26. The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer

Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum on Carl Theodor Dreyer’s crowning achievement, released in 1928, that still painfully echoes contemporary cases of female oppression — the film’s silent context taking on an unintentional resonance:

“Carl Dreyer’s last silent, the greatest of all Joan of Arc films… . Joan is played by stage actress Renee Falconetti, and though hers is one of the key performances in the history of movies, she never made another film. (Antonin Artaud also appears in a memorable cameo.) Dreyer’s radical approach to constructing space and the slow intensity of his mobile style make this ‘difficult’ in the sense that, like all the greatest films, it reinvents the world from the ground up. It’s also painful in a way that all Dreyer’s tragedies are, but it will continue to live long after most commercial movies have vanished from memory.”

[foursprout-blog]

9 Mindful Ways to Remain Calm When Others Are Angry

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/9-mindful-ways-to-remain-calm-when-others-are-angry/

9 Mindful Ways to Remain Calm When Others Are Angry

When someone upsets us, this is often because they aren’t behaving according to our fantasy of how they “should” behave.  The frustration, then, stems not from their behavior but from how their behavior differs from our fantasy.  Let’s not get carried away.  Calmness is a superpower.

Over the past decade, there’s a way of being I’ve gradually been cultivating in myself—I’ve been taming my tendency to get angry and argue with people when their behavior doesn’t match my expectations.

As human beings, we all have an idea in our heads about how things are supposed to be, and sadly this is what often messes our relationships up the most.  We all get frustrated when things don’t play out the way we expect them to, and people don’t behave like they’re “supposed” to.  We expect our spouses and children to act a certain way, our friends to be kind and agreeable, strangers to be less difficult, and so on and so forth.

And when reality hits us, and everyone seems to be doing the opposite of what we want them to do, we overreact—anger, frustration, stress, arguments, tears, etc.

So what can we do about this?

Breathe…

You can’t control how other people behave.  You can’t control everything that happens to you.  What you can control is how you respond to it all.  In your response is your power.

When you feel like your lid is about to blow, take a long deep breath.  Deep breathing releases tension, calms down our fight or flight reactions, and allows us to quiet our anxious nerves so we choose more considerate and constructive responses, no matter the situation.

So, for example, do your best to inhale and exhale next time another driver cuts you off in traffic.  In a recent poll we hosted with 1,200 new course students, overreacting while fighting traffic was the most commonly cited reason for overreacting on a daily basis.  Just imagine if all the drivers on the road took deep breaths before making nasty hand gestures, or screaming obscenities at others.

There’s no doubt that it can drive us crazy when we don’t get what we expect from people, especially when they are being rude and difficult.  But trying to change the unchangeable, wanting others to be exactly the way we want them to be, just doesn’t work.  The alternative, though, is unthinkable to most of us: to breathe, to let go, to lead by example, and to accept people even when they irritate us.

Here’s the way of being that I’ve been cultivating and advocating:

To breathe deeply, and often.

To remind myself that I can’t control other people.

To remind myself that other people can handle their lives however they choose.

To not take their behavior personally.

To see the good in them.

To let go of the ideals and expectations I have about others that causes unnecessary frustration, arguments, and bouts of anger.

To remember that when others are being difficult, they are often going through a difficult time I know nothing about. And to give them empathy, love, and space.

“Being” this way takes practice, but it’s worth it.  It makes me less frustrated, it helps me to be more mindful, it improves my relationships, it lowers my stress, and it allows me to make the world a slightly more peaceful place to be.  I hope you will join me.

Smart Ways to Remain Calm

If you’re ready to feel more peace and less inner angst, here are some ways I’ve learned to remain calm and centered, even when those around me can’t seem to contain themselves.  These principles reinforce the bullet points above, and when you consistently practice these principles, the world within you and around you becomes a lot easier to cope with.

Let’s practice, together…

1.  Get comfortable with pausing.

Don’t imagine the worst when you encounter a little drama.  When someone is acting irrationally, don’t join them by rushing to make a negative judgment call.  Instead, pause.  Take a deep breath…

Sometimes good people behave poorly under stress.  Don’t you?  When you pause, it gives you space to collect your thoughts and it also allows the other person the space to take a deep breath with you.  In most cases, that extra time and space is all we need.

2.  Respect people’s differences.

Learn to respect the opinions of others.  Just because someone does it differently doesn’t make it wrong.  There are many roads to what’s right in this world.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

So choose your battles wisely.  And just agree to disagree sometimes.

It is absolutely possible to connect with, and even appreciate the company of, someone you don’t completely agree with.  When you make a commitment to remain neutral on matters that don’t matter that much, or speak respectfully about your disagreements, both parties can remain calm and move forward, pleasantly.

3.  Be compassionate.

In the busyness of today’s world people tend to be worried, fearful, hurting and distracted about everything.  The word compassion means “to suffer with.”  When you can put yourself in the other person’s shoes, you give them the space to regroup, without putting any extra pressure on them.

Remember, we never know what’s really going on in someone’s life.  When you interact with others in stressful environments, set an intention to be supportive by leaving the expectations, judgments and demands at the door.

4.  Extend generosity and grace.

Everyone gets upset and loses their temper sometimes.  Remind yourself that we are all more alike than we are different.  When you catch yourself passing judgment, add “just like me sometimes” to the end of a sentence.  For example:

That person is grouchy, just like me sometimes.

He is so darn impatient, just like me sometimes.

She is being rude, just like me sometimes.

etc.

Choose to let things GO.  Let others off the hook.  Take the high road today.

5.  Don’t take people’s behavior personally.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you take everything personally, you will be offended for the rest of your life.  And there’s no reason for it.  Even when it seems personal, rarely do people do things because of you, they do things because of them.  You know this is true.  You may not be able control all the things people say and do to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.  Make that decision for yourself today.

Let it go!  Seriously, there is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you detach from other people’s beliefs and behaviors.  The way people treat you is their problem, how you react is yours.

Everyone behaves the way they behave based on how they feel inside.  Some people never learn how to effectively cope with their stressful emotions.  When someone is acting obnoxious, it’s vital that you remain calm, no matter what.  Don’t allow other people to knock you off your center.

Do what it takes to remain calm and address the situation from the inside out.  That’s where your greatest power lies.

6.  Talk less and learn to appreciate silence.

Don’t fall into an unnecessary argument just because you feel uncomfortable in silence.  Don’t say things you’ll regret five minutes later just to fill your eardrums with noise.  Anger and frustration begins internally.  You have the capacity to choose your response to momentary discomfort.

Inhale.  Exhale.  A moment of silence in a moment of anger, can save you from a hundred moments of regret.  Truth be told, you are often most powerful and influential in an argument when you are most silent.  Others never expect silence.  They expect yelling, drama, defensiveness, offensiveness, and lots of back and forth.  They expect to leap into the ring and fight.  They are ready to defend themselves with sly remarks cocked and loaded.  But your mindful silence?  That can really disarm them.

7.  Create a morning ritual that starts your day off right.

Don’t rush into your day by checking your phone or email.  Don’t put yourself it a stressful state of mind that’s incapable of dealing positively with other people’s negativity.  Create time and space for a morning ritual that’s focused and peaceful.

Here’s part of my morning ritual:  I take ten deep breaths before getting out of bed, I stand up and stretch, and then do ten minutes of meditation.

I challenge you to try this—it has been life-changing for me—but start small with just three deep breaths and three minutes of meditation a day.  Do this for 30 days.  After 30 days, if this daily ritual becomes easy, add another two breaths and another two minutes to your ritual.  When you begin a day mindfully, you lay the foundation for your day being calm and centered, regardless of what’s going on around you.  (Note: Marc and I build small, daily, life-changing rituals with our students in the “Goals and Growth” module of Getting Back to Happy.)

8.  Cope using healthy choices and alternatives.

When we face stressful situations, we often calm or soothe ourselves with unhealthy choices—drinking alcohol, eating sugary snacks, smoking, etc.  It’s easy to respond to anger with anger and unhealthy distractions.

Notice how you cope with stress.  Replace bad coping habits with healthy coping habits.  Take a walk in a green space.  Make a cup of tea and sit quietly with your thoughts.  Listen to some pleasant music.  Write in your journal.  Talk it out with a close friend.  Healthy coping habits make happy people.  (Note: This is covered in more detail in the “Self-Love” chapter of our book.)

9.  Remind yourself of what’s right, and create more of it in the world.

Keeping “the positive” in mind helps you move beyond the negativity around you.

At the end of the day, reflect on your small daily wins and all the little things that are going well.  Count three small events on your fingers that happened during the day that you’re undoubtedly grateful for.  For example:

My family and I made it home safely from work and school today.

My spouse and I shared a laugh.

Our meals filled our stomachs.

etc.

And pay it forward when you get a chance too.  Let your positivity empower you to think kindly of others, speak kindly to others, and do kind things for others.  Kindness always makes a difference.  Create the outcomes others might be grateful for at the end of their day.  Be a bigger part of what’s right in this world.

Your turn…

The most fundamental aggression to ourselves and others—the most fundamental harm we can do to human nature as a whole—is to remain ignorant by not having the awareness and the courage to look at ourselves and others honestly and gently.

With this in mind, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this article.  What resonated with you?  What didn’t?  Is there anything else you would add to the list?

Please leave me a comment below and share your thoughts.

Also, if you haven’t done so already, be sure to sign-up for our free newsletter to receive new articles like this in your inbox each week.

(And finally, a special “thank you” to our good friend Tess Marshall, who volunteered at our Think Better, Live Better conference last week and subsequently sparked the idea for this article—and also provided her beautiful insights as it was being written.)

[foursprouthappiness-blog]

9 Mindful Ways to Remain Calm When Others Are Angry

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/9-mindful-ways-to-remain-calm-when-others-are-angry/

9 Mindful Ways to Remain Calm When Others Are Angry

When someone upsets us, this is often because they aren’t behaving according to our fantasy of how they “should” behave.  The frustration, then, stems not from their behavior but from how their behavior differs from our fantasy.  Let’s not get carried away.  Calmness is a superpower.

Over the past decade, there’s a way of being I’ve gradually been cultivating in myself—I’ve been taming my tendency to get angry and argue with people when their behavior doesn’t match my expectations.

As human beings, we all have an idea in our heads about how things are supposed to be, and sadly this is what often messes our relationships up the most.  We all get frustrated when things don’t play out the way we expect them to, and people don’t behave like they’re “supposed” to.  We expect our spouses and children to act a certain way, our friends to be kind and agreeable, strangers to be less difficult, and so on and so forth.

And when reality hits us, and everyone seems to be doing the opposite of what we want them to do, we overreact—anger, frustration, stress, arguments, tears, etc.

So what can we do about this?

Breathe…

You can’t control how other people behave.  You can’t control everything that happens to you.  What you can control is how you respond to it all.  In your response is your power.

When you feel like your lid is about to blow, take a long deep breath.  Deep breathing releases tension, calms down our fight or flight reactions, and allows us to quiet our anxious nerves so we choose more considerate and constructive responses, no matter the situation.

So, for example, do your best to inhale and exhale next time another driver cuts you off in traffic.  In a recent poll we hosted with 1,200 new course students, overreacting while fighting traffic was the most commonly cited reason for overreacting on a daily basis.  Just imagine if all the drivers on the road took deep breaths before making nasty hand gestures, or screaming obscenities at others.

There’s no doubt that it can drive us crazy when we don’t get what we expect from people, especially when they are being rude and difficult.  But trying to change the unchangeable, wanting others to be exactly the way we want them to be, just doesn’t work.  The alternative, though, is unthinkable to most of us: to breathe, to let go, to lead by example, and to accept people even when they irritate us.

Here’s the way of being that I’ve been cultivating and advocating:

To breathe deeply, and often.

To remind myself that I can’t control other people.

To remind myself that other people can handle their lives however they choose.

To not take their behavior personally.

To see the good in them.

To let go of the ideals and expectations I have about others that causes unnecessary frustration, arguments, and bouts of anger.

To remember that when others are being difficult, they are often going through a difficult time I know nothing about. And to give them empathy, love, and space.

“Being” this way takes practice, but it’s worth it.  It makes me less frustrated, it helps me to be more mindful, it improves my relationships, it lowers my stress, and it allows me to make the world a slightly more peaceful place to be.  I hope you will join me.

Smart Ways to Remain Calm

If you’re ready to feel more peace and less inner angst, here are some ways I’ve learned to remain calm and centered, even when those around me can’t seem to contain themselves.  These principles reinforce the bullet points above, and when you consistently practice these principles, the world within you and around you becomes a lot easier to cope with.

Let’s practice, together…

1.  Get comfortable with pausing.

Don’t imagine the worst when you encounter a little drama.  When someone is acting irrationally, don’t join them by rushing to make a negative judgment call.  Instead, pause.  Take a deep breath…

Sometimes good people behave poorly under stress.  Don’t you?  When you pause, it gives you space to collect your thoughts and it also allows the other person the space to take a deep breath with you.  In most cases, that extra time and space is all we need.

2.  Respect people’s differences.

Learn to respect the opinions of others.  Just because someone does it differently doesn’t make it wrong.  There are many roads to what’s right in this world.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

So choose your battles wisely.  And just agree to disagree sometimes.

It is absolutely possible to connect with, and even appreciate the company of, someone you don’t completely agree with.  When you make a commitment to remain neutral on matters that don’t matter that much, or speak respectfully about your disagreements, both parties can remain calm and move forward, pleasantly.

3.  Be compassionate.

In the busyness of today’s world people tend to be worried, fearful, hurting and distracted about everything.  The word compassion means “to suffer with.”  When you can put yourself in the other person’s shoes, you give them the space to regroup, without putting any extra pressure on them.

Remember, we never know what’s really going on in someone’s life.  When you interact with others in stressful environments, set an intention to be supportive by leaving the expectations, judgments and demands at the door.

4.  Extend generosity and grace.

Everyone gets upset and loses their temper sometimes.  Remind yourself that we are all more alike than we are different.  When you catch yourself passing judgment, add “just like me sometimes” to the end of a sentence.  For example:

That person is grouchy, just like me sometimes.

He is so darn impatient, just like me sometimes.

She is being rude, just like me sometimes.

etc.

Choose to let things GO.  Let others off the hook.  Take the high road today.

5.  Don’t take people’s behavior personally.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you take everything personally, you will be offended for the rest of your life.  And there’s no reason for it.  Even when it seems personal, rarely do people do things because of you, they do things because of them.  You know this is true.  You may not be able control all the things people say and do to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.  Make that decision for yourself today.

Let it go!  Seriously, there is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you detach from other people’s beliefs and behaviors.  The way people treat you is their problem, how you react is yours.

Everyone behaves the way they behave based on how they feel inside.  Some people never learn how to effectively cope with their stressful emotions.  When someone is acting obnoxious, it’s vital that you remain calm, no matter what.  Don’t allow other people to knock you off your center.

Do what it takes to remain calm and address the situation from the inside out.  That’s where your greatest power lies.

6.  Talk less and learn to appreciate silence.

Don’t fall into an unnecessary argument just because you feel uncomfortable in silence.  Don’t say things you’ll regret five minutes later just to fill your eardrums with noise.  Anger and frustration begins internally.  You have the capacity to choose your response to momentary discomfort.

Inhale.  Exhale.  A moment of silence in a moment of anger, can save you from a hundred moments of regret.  Truth be told, you are often most powerful and influential in an argument when you are most silent.  Others never expect silence.  They expect yelling, drama, defensiveness, offensiveness, and lots of back and forth.  They expect to leap into the ring and fight.  They are ready to defend themselves with sly remarks cocked and loaded.  But your mindful silence?  That can really disarm them.

7.  Create a morning ritual that starts your day off right.

Don’t rush into your day by checking your phone or email.  Don’t put yourself it a stressful state of mind that’s incapable of dealing positively with other people’s negativity.  Create time and space for a morning ritual that’s focused and peaceful.

Here’s part of my morning ritual:  I take ten deep breaths before getting out of bed, I stand up and stretch, and then do ten minutes of meditation.

I challenge you to try this—it has been life-changing for me—but start small with just three deep breaths and three minutes of meditation a day.  Do this for 30 days.  After 30 days, if this daily ritual becomes easy, add another two breaths and another two minutes to your ritual.  When you begin a day mindfully, you lay the foundation for your day being calm and centered, regardless of what’s going on around you.  (Note: Marc and I build small, daily, life-changing rituals with our students in the “Goals and Growth” module of Getting Back to Happy.)

8.  Cope using healthy choices and alternatives.

When we face stressful situations, we often calm or soothe ourselves with unhealthy choices—drinking alcohol, eating sugary snacks, smoking, etc.  It’s easy to respond to anger with anger and unhealthy distractions.

Notice how you cope with stress.  Replace bad coping habits with healthy coping habits.  Take a walk in a green space.  Make a cup of tea and sit quietly with your thoughts.  Listen to some pleasant music.  Write in your journal.  Talk it out with a close friend.  Healthy coping habits make happy people.  (Note: This is covered in more detail in the “Self-Love” chapter of our book.)

9.  Remind yourself of what’s right, and create more of it in the world.

Keeping “the positive” in mind helps you move beyond the negativity around you.

At the end of the day, reflect on your small daily wins and all the little things that are going well.  Count three small events on your fingers that happened during the day that you’re undoubtedly grateful for.  For example:

My family and I made it home safely from work and school today.

My spouse and I shared a laugh.

Our meals filled our stomachs.

etc.

And pay it forward when you get a chance too.  Let your positivity empower you to think kindly of others, speak kindly to others, and do kind things for others.  Kindness always makes a difference.  Create the outcomes others might be grateful for at the end of their day.  Be a bigger part of what’s right in this world.

Your turn…

The most fundamental aggression to ourselves and others—the most fundamental harm we can do to human nature as a whole—is to remain ignorant by not having the awareness and the courage to look at ourselves and others honestly and gently.

With this in mind, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this article.  What resonated with you?  What didn’t?  Is there anything else you would add to the list?

Please leave me a comment below and share your thoughts.

Also, if you haven’t done so already, be sure to sign-up for our free newsletter to receive new articles like this in your inbox each week.

(And finally, a special “thank you” to our good friend Tess Marshall, who volunteered at our Think Better, Live Better conference last week and subsequently sparked the idea for this article—and also provided her beautiful insights as it was being written.)