Worth 50,000: Day Twenty Two - Seen and Unseen

[momebie]

We rely heavily on the eyes of others. We believe they can tell us if the other person is alert, interested, cagey, lying, and a hundred other gut reactions we form about people before even opening our mouths or giving them a chance to speak for themselves. When we can't see a person's eyes we react to them differently. Sometimes it's a person we trust, like a priest or a superhero and it's a relief to us that we can't see them calculating our sins and misgivings. Other times it's a person we don't trust, like a bank robber or a dementor, and it's all the more frightening for us. In those instances we take other cues and form a decision about whether or not we can be okay with the fact that we can't see the eyes that see us. But even in entirely mundane instances, we take the lack of eyes as a vague threat. It makes us uneasy.

How would your character react to an entity whose eyes they can't see? Is that entity likely to be another person, or something else entirely?



Write. Comment. Repeat.

Comments

[theemdash]

This picture is SO unusual.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

It's those wacky Victorians. Apparently it was A Thing to do in mourning photographs. I'm personally struggling with the idea of wanting a photograph of myself in mourning. Especially considering that that was a time in which a photograph took concerted effort from all involved, and was not simply the case of someone happening to catch me in mourning.



But you know what's even creepier of the Victorians? Hidden Mother (http://www.ideafixa.com/as-maes-invisiveis).

[theemdash]

VICTORIANS. HOW ARE YOU SO WEIRD AND INTERESTING.

What did they do with mourning photographs? Did they display them somewhere or just sort of keep a book of mourning? And WHY ARE THE MOTHERS UNDER BLANKETS? (in one of those pictures the kid is frowning and making the same face I was)

[momebie.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't know. I assume they kept them in some sort of photo book. I'll have to do some more research. They also, as yachiru pointed out below, took pictures WITH the dead people, sometimes dressing them and sitting them for the portrait as if they weren't dead at all. I have one saved away in the Collect Your Courage tumblr of a man laying in bed next to his dead wife. It's morbid and fascinating and I can't look away EVEN THOUGH I HATE DEAD PEOPLE.

And from what I know, the mothers are not actually supposed to be in the photos, they wanted photos of just the children but it was hard to get children to sit still long enough to be able to get a good photograph, so they would hide the mothers and let them sit and hold the children still. That one's not nearly as creepy after the explanation. It makes perfect sense. It just makes for weird fucking photographs.

[yachiru]

What's creepier than that are the death photos. They'd take pictures with their dead relatives. Kids and stuff.
http://cogitz.com/2009/08/28/memento-mori-victorian-death-photos/

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I KNOW. I saved one some time back of a man laying in bed with his dead wife and I just, I CANNOT STAND DEAD PEOPLE. They creep me out, dude. But I can also NOT LOOK AWAY when confronted with these things. It's a curse.

[glass-houses.livejournal.com]

omg so many children :'(((

Are we sure all of them have dead people? A lot of them don't look dead.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

They had a real fetishization of death imagery.

The Hidden Mother thing is a bit more explicable if you've ever tried to get a picture of a kid under six. And then realize if you wanted a picture of that kid they would've had to stay still back then for, like, eight minutes.

And then you want to kill yourself.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

That's what I was talking about at lunch with Em. In general we view the Victorians in a certain way. Buttoned up. Proud. Industrious. But they also did all of these things that seemed antithetical to the way we read the period. Which I'm sure happens any time people who've lived after try and encapsulize the essence of those who've lived before. Just as it happens every time you try and peg someone you don't really know. It's just easier to forget to imagine people complexly when you're looking at a whole era of them.

William Gibson has a great quote about that sort of thing, that I posted to the writing tumblr a while back:

If you read the Victorians writing about themselves, they’re describing something that never existed. The Victorians didn’t think of themselves as sexually repressed, and they didn’t think of themselves as racist. They didn’t think of themselves as colonialists. They thought of themselves as the crown of creation. Of course, we might be Victorians, too.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Goddamn I love William Gibson (and he's of course completely right). Do you follow his Twitter?

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I do! I haven't read very many of his works, only really Neuromancer and The Difference Engine, which he didn't write on his own. I definitely SHOULD, though He's one of my absolute favorite people to chinhands at over the internet. I could listen to him talk for DAYS. Bruce Sterling, his Difference Engine cohort, is another person I get like that about.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

He's one of the scifi authors who writes female characters I actually buy. (It's a short list.) I don't think I've read any Sterling!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's different from the other mourning photos I've seen--like the one linked below--because they seem to be just caught doing something (the woman on the left has her embroidery!).

[pocky_slash.livejournal.com]

I really need to stop writing 1000 words in the middle of various horror AUs. I blame you entirely.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

I will accept any and all blame. Gladly!

[surferartchick.livejournal.com]

Of course the first thing I thought was, we are the 99%.

[momebie.livejournal.com]

Considering how the dead people on the planet outnumber the living people, I would think that it's more like we're the 15%. ;)

[glass-houses.livejournal.com]

I was going to try to post something in the previous entry :/

[momebie.livejournal.com]

Your still allowed! I'm going to leave them unlocked forever, I think, so feel free to fill it in whenever.

[glass-houses.livejournal.com]

You're. Sorry, had to do it for you. :'(

[momebie.livejournal.com]

Meh. Typos happen.

[glass-houses.livejournal.com]

I love you D:

[seratonation.livejournal.com]

http://themadwritings.livejournal.com/40068.html

This started out as something for your prompt and then became something else. I think I want to go back to it and change it even more, but for tonight I'm out of time. Damn responsibilities.