Illyria seen from an sf angle
Aug. 13th, 2004 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lakrids404Illyria story on Angel was one of the more interesting sub plots on Angel in this season. I saw her story as a more or less as a first contact story, and for Illyria are we cavemen. And with some reason, if we accept Arthur C. Clark rule: that sufficient advanced technology will be indescribable from magic. And Illyria had at start some strong magic abilities, to say at least.
We know very little about Illyria, and most of what we know comes from herself. She have said that she was feared and loved, when she ruled ( Machiavelli would probably have approved ). This tells us, that she values these emotions, and that she has at least intellectual concept about these feelings. Coupled with the fact that she is a strong empath, that must at least give her strong empiric knowledge about feelings, from a wide range of creatures. I don’t think we conclude that she herself do or do not have the emotion love, or how high she personally values it. An empath feels the emotion from creatures around her, and therefore would I not consider the possibility that an empath would knowingly harm another feeling creature, because that in some way would be like hurting oneself. But in season one were there an empath demon, that took pleasure in hurting other creatures. One must then conclude that in the Ats-universe, empathy can in some cases be turned off, or that some creature with empathy like abilities, are not true empathy, but only reads the state of emotions in a creature, or the empath is one twisted masochist. Illyria seems to be a true empath, because she could not detach herself from Freds parents feelings, when they came to visit Fred (somebody did suggest to me, that Illyria is not an empath, but only have a supernatrual good smelling, but I think that my interpreration is more sexy, and it is mine, therefore am I sticking with it). This gives us the problem on how we can explain, that Illyria seems to enjoy physical battle? And frankly I can not come with better explanation, than that in battle she don’t really register pain, her own and others, as a proff boxer turns off the pain in a match. I think that we can conclude that she knows and understand the feeling love. But we cannot conclude, that she does give the same importance and social value, as a human would. And even humans from different cultures can have different values and social behaviour coupled to an emotional concept like love. Illyria alien biology and society nearly dictates, that her concept of love is very different from us own. C. J. Cherryh has written the SF novel “Foreigner”, where humans more or less, coexist with a race of aliens, that don’t have an emotional concept about the feeling love. Betrayal is for them, as for Illyria a neutral word, and they do have seven different words for it, and one of them can be roughly translated to doing-the-necessary-action. Out from these facts could it sound like, that they were a race amoral alien monsters. But one of the points in the book is that the aliens are alien, and one should try to build a conceptual framework, that can bridge the divide between the alien otherness and humanity, and not fit them into bo. It should be mentioned that the aliens, had central emotion in their life called Manchi, which could be very roughly be translated as loyalty /comradeship, but then again only very roughly. Another SF novel that could be linked to Illyria, would be Frank Herbert Dune saga, where Leto II, sacrifices his humanity and becomes an immortal worm, to save humanity from itself. Where as Illyria goes from something truly alien to something of an hybridisation between man and an old one, does Leto II go from neo humanity to an alien mindset as a sentient giant worm. When Leto ruled his empire in the form of a giant worm, was he called God Emperor. When Illyria ruled as a pure old one, was she called God King, same difference.
Another interesting thing with Illyria, is that the she can create a completely believable sub persona that have all of the impersonated entity mannerism and speech pattern. An entity that can mimic an other creature feelings and behaviour, and at the same time is an empathy, must have some very solid or perhaps very fluid ideas about it self. Perhaps is it her memory, that must be extremely long, that gives her that background, that anker her selfs, when she feel other creatures emotions and when she mimics another creature. Her long memory must give her a nearly reflexive action, over for an long range of complex (for a human) problems. Because she will see patterns of old problems, that she have dealt with countless of times in the past. She is probably aware of the problem that this could possible give her, if she did not recognise, that the world change and the patterns in it change with it. Because she makes the decision from the start to get a guide/high priest who can tell her about the world
Other things we know we know about her, is that she is a God to a God. But what does see mean with the concept god? Is a god only an entity with unlimited destructive powers? Or does a god for cover a wider concept that also covers over life and creation? Most likely do I think that, that she thought it sounded really cool, and Illyria really do indeed like, her own monologues. I thought that they had a rather Shakespearean sound, not good Shakespearen, but better than Buffyeren speech speech.
I have used the feminine gender when I have described Illyria, and that is at best a very incomplete projection, only based on the form of her shell. When we first heard described from Knox (evil-geek-dark-shadow-of-Wesley), does he calls it , and I would think that Knox at that point had the most comprehensive knowledge of Illyria. So it, she is.
If we move from the world of books into the movies. Can one also find parallels in the movie Alien 4. Where Ripley is going from fighting the aliens and dying to defeat them, to in the end transformed to a hybridisation of the aliens and the old Ripley. I think Joss, did some work on the script, to the Alien 4 movie. And I have heard that Joss were not satisfied with the end result of the Alien 4 movie,. Personally am I one of 17 people worldwide, which found Alien 4, to be the most interesting movie, in the array of Alien movies.
We know very little about Illyria, and most of what we know comes from herself. She have said that she was feared and loved, when she ruled ( Machiavelli would probably have approved ). This tells us, that she values these emotions, and that she has at least intellectual concept about these feelings. Coupled with the fact that she is a strong empath, that must at least give her strong empiric knowledge about feelings, from a wide range of creatures. I don’t think we conclude that she herself do or do not have the emotion love, or how high she personally values it. An empath feels the emotion from creatures around her, and therefore would I not consider the possibility that an empath would knowingly harm another feeling creature, because that in some way would be like hurting oneself. But in season one were there an empath demon, that took pleasure in hurting other creatures. One must then conclude that in the Ats-universe, empathy can in some cases be turned off, or that some creature with empathy like abilities, are not true empathy, but only reads the state of emotions in a creature, or the empath is one twisted masochist. Illyria seems to be a true empath, because she could not detach herself from Freds parents feelings, when they came to visit Fred (somebody did suggest to me, that Illyria is not an empath, but only have a supernatrual good smelling, but I think that my interpreration is more sexy, and it is mine, therefore am I sticking with it). This gives us the problem on how we can explain, that Illyria seems to enjoy physical battle? And frankly I can not come with better explanation, than that in battle she don’t really register pain, her own and others, as a proff boxer turns off the pain in a match. I think that we can conclude that she knows and understand the feeling love. But we cannot conclude, that she does give the same importance and social value, as a human would. And even humans from different cultures can have different values and social behaviour coupled to an emotional concept like love. Illyria alien biology and society nearly dictates, that her concept of love is very different from us own. C. J. Cherryh has written the SF novel “Foreigner”, where humans more or less, coexist with a race of aliens, that don’t have an emotional concept about the feeling love. Betrayal is for them, as for Illyria a neutral word, and they do have seven different words for it, and one of them can be roughly translated to doing-the-necessary-action. Out from these facts could it sound like, that they were a race amoral alien monsters. But one of the points in the book is that the aliens are alien, and one should try to build a conceptual framework, that can bridge the divide between the alien otherness and humanity, and not fit them into bo. It should be mentioned that the aliens, had central emotion in their life called Manchi, which could be very roughly be translated as loyalty /comradeship, but then again only very roughly. Another SF novel that could be linked to Illyria, would be Frank Herbert Dune saga, where Leto II, sacrifices his humanity and becomes an immortal worm, to save humanity from itself. Where as Illyria goes from something truly alien to something of an hybridisation between man and an old one, does Leto II go from neo humanity to an alien mindset as a sentient giant worm. When Leto ruled his empire in the form of a giant worm, was he called God Emperor. When Illyria ruled as a pure old one, was she called God King, same difference.
Another interesting thing with Illyria, is that the she can create a completely believable sub persona that have all of the impersonated entity mannerism and speech pattern. An entity that can mimic an other creature feelings and behaviour, and at the same time is an empathy, must have some very solid or perhaps very fluid ideas about it self. Perhaps is it her memory, that must be extremely long, that gives her that background, that anker her selfs, when she feel other creatures emotions and when she mimics another creature. Her long memory must give her a nearly reflexive action, over for an long range of complex (for a human) problems. Because she will see patterns of old problems, that she have dealt with countless of times in the past. She is probably aware of the problem that this could possible give her, if she did not recognise, that the world change and the patterns in it change with it. Because she makes the decision from the start to get a guide/high priest who can tell her about the world
Other things we know we know about her, is that she is a God to a God. But what does see mean with the concept god? Is a god only an entity with unlimited destructive powers? Or does a god for cover a wider concept that also covers over life and creation? Most likely do I think that, that she thought it sounded really cool, and Illyria really do indeed like, her own monologues. I thought that they had a rather Shakespearean sound, not good Shakespearen, but better than Buffyeren speech speech.
I have used the feminine gender when I have described Illyria, and that is at best a very incomplete projection, only based on the form of her shell. When we first heard described from Knox (evil-geek-dark-shadow-of-Wesley), does he calls it , and I would think that Knox at that point had the most comprehensive knowledge of Illyria. So it, she is.
If we move from the world of books into the movies. Can one also find parallels in the movie Alien 4. Where Ripley is going from fighting the aliens and dying to defeat them, to in the end transformed to a hybridisation of the aliens and the old Ripley. I think Joss, did some work on the script, to the Alien 4 movie. And I have heard that Joss were not satisfied with the end result of the Alien 4 movie,. Personally am I one of 17 people worldwide, which found Alien 4, to be the most interesting movie, in the array of Alien movies.
