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Re-imagining your form

All Acting Regiment

01:37 / 11.09.05

Can forcing yourself to beleive in a new physical shape for yourself have a positive outcome?

I'll expand. Suppose you find yourself in a challenging situation. We'll use a clichè example: you're in a pub and somebody squares up to you. There's no escape: it's going to get ugly.

Could you, by focusing on beleiving/"beleiving" that you are in fact seven feet tall and with large, well oiled muscles, release subconcious impulses that might steer you through the situation to a more positive outcome? A kind of shapeshifting/transformation that only you are aware of, thus making it more effective?

How much, and what, preparation would be neccesary?

What form would you adopt in that situation, or in any other? How about if you adopt the form of a pre-existing cultural entity: a fairground strongman, Godzilla, something from Battletech?

Madman in the ruins.

09:12 / 11.09.05

I've done someting similar- Got to set the scene.
Big Bikers party a few years ago. It was the early hours of the morning and the party was winding down, there were probaly only about 20 of us left. I'd dropped a acid tab earlier in the evening and was on a totally Baccahnailan trip. Now it had go to the time where people start to hoard their drinks cos they were in short supply. So I'm sitting at the table with a empty wine bottle, and complety at random I ask this bloke who I don't know "Have you got anything to drink?"
"I've only got 2 beers"
"Well one will do me then." As I said this put my Devil face on (And maybe it was the acid, but I felt horns growing out of the side of my head)
He looked at me for a couple of sceonds. Then "OK" and handed me a can from the inside of his coat.

So I drank it.

Hmmm In retorspect maybe more of a drug story than a magic story. But whatever it was it worked.

10:51 / 11.09.05

Absolutely. Perhaps it's a device to let latent potential flow. The way we conceive of ourselves does effect how we act.

02:28 / 12.09.05

I don't think a tweety bird can suddenly appear to rear up and snarl like a grizzly bear, but... I've found that maintaining a dark "don't even fuck with me" aura has some effect. Picturing a dark halo or black wings seems to do it. Nobody actually seems intimidated, but I find that people tend to leave me alone, give me a wide berth when they walk by, and generally don't give any lip. It almost functions more like a sort of limited invisibility.

08:47 / 12.09.05

My transparent "spirit armour" with the blood-drinking hypodermic spikes and the whirling buzzsaws for hands has much the same effect.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

10:21 / 12.09.05

Hmmm. I've come across this concept many times before. No doubt that imagining yourself to be more impressive than you actually are could affect the way others percieve you. To what degree would depend on your skills of visualisation, and how free your body is to express the assumed form. Various factors will affect this, such as how physically fit you are, if you have any problems affecting your mobility, how much "character armour" you're lugging around, ect. It's a nice idea, but it would take some work to be really effective. (Mind you, daily visualisation drills and some form of physical excercise, preferably a martial art, are good practices for any magician to adopt anyway.)

It's also worth noting than if you adopt an aggressive demenour, the kind of person that likes to fight might take it as an invitation to hir kind of dance...

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:40 / 12.09.05

I think it's one of those things which becomes very difficult to quantify, because you can't get inside the head of the person reacting to you. Take John Odin's story - for John, it's the tale of him using magical coercion to frighten somebody into giving him s beer. However, the other party might just as well have been feeling generous, or full of love chemicals, or whatever. It's pretty much impossible to tell, surely?

10:54 / 12.09.05

Could you, by focusing on beleiving/"beleiving" that you are in fact seven feet tall and with large, well oiled muscles, release subconcious impulses that might steer you through the situation to a more positive outcome? A kind of shapeshifting/transformation that only you are aware of, thus making it more effective?

It would work if you truly believed then you will feel much more conifent and this will be reflected in your body language. So yes I would say it may help.
Usually in my experience someone who is squaring you up for a fight expects you to try and get out of it, by being super-confident you will throw them off balance.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:04 / 12.09.05

It may, of course, also lead to a thorough-going kicking when running away might have been a far more sensible option. Which is sort of the problem.

Is Illmatic, our resident expert on reality-based self-defence, about?

All Acting Regiment

11:22 / 12.09.05

Bear in mind that the "fight" situation I provided as an example is only one of the many ways in which this idea could be used: in a job interview, or a driving test- or any other challenge- so it's not neccesarily about making yourself look "hard"- just better suited to the challenge.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:27 / 12.09.05

Well, I was sort of speaking from personal experience. My default response to hostility is to flee the scene, of course. I was more thinking about deterring lesser nuisances like tube-train frotteurs and such. When I can visualise myself as being tall, fast and well-defended, I get less grief from random arseholes. When I'm feeling less than my usual superconfident self, more grief. Over the years I've been able to pick up on the way different mindsets affect me physically and harness that to an extent. (I mentioned martial arts in my post only because learning a martial art is one way to a more responsive body, not so as to be able to cash the cheques one's Crymson Draconique Manifestatione may unwittingly have written.)

11:51 / 12.09.05

I am indeed, though "expert" in this sense, means geeking out over a few books and websites, and is based on no real world experience whatsoever.

I've read some stuff about the projection of aggression, trying to reverse the other persons mindset - you try and reverse the "predator" mentality and make them feel like "prey" instead, and rattle their confidence. Part of the thinking behind this is that - in crime situations anyway - the perpetrator want an easy life, if if someone is going to conform passively to the victim role, perhaps - and it is always only "perhaps" - they won't bother. I'd add most of the discussion I've read on this sort of thing has been coming from people who do have the physical skills to handle it if it does all go pear shaped. If you don't have those skills, perhaps it's best not to risk it.

In short, I think it could well work, but I'd see it acting not so much as a consequence of just visulaisig yourself as Godzilla as that of just being able to acknowledge and accept your fear, and channel/transform it into anger and spit it back in someone's face. I could see how this would work but it's a bit "high-risk" and it'd be best to have a variety of other skills to avoid and defuse these situations.

11:56 / 12.09.05

The above in response to Haus, obviously.

The whole "carrying yourself confidently" thing that Mordant mentions is part of what might be called "target hardening", and is something that all the RBSD people recommend anyway. Visualisation could play a part here, as could simply assertiveness, awareness of posture and surroundings and so on.