Most of this is just copied from something I posted over at TKR yesterday but I wanted to have it here too. I’ve been experimenting with a couple new things. New to me at least. One of them is called “Aspect RV.” It was invented by Palyne Gaenir back in the day, based on some interesting experiences she had in session which she describes briefly here.

Kind of difficult to define, the short, inadequate and possibly inaccurate version of it is something like this:

“We become what we need to become in order to best meet the challenge of the situation.” Each of us has different aspects that make up our person. Aspect RV works on the idea of purposely bringing a certain aspect of yourself to the front to deal with different kinds of data or get different aspect’s ’slant’ or perspective on a target or a point of interest within a target. The aspect can be any kind of human- abstract or a specific personality (fireman, mailman, mother, painter, Thomas Jefferson, Humphrey Bogart, etc etc etc)

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I’ve been mixing it with a couple different techniques and switching between them, getting data through a few different means in the same session. Here’s what I’ve been toying with:

I start with something that has nothing to do with Aspect RV. I’ll come up with a spontaneous cue and implement it immediately. Meaning the first thing I think of to do (something new every time) I do it as fast as possible. I don’t sit there and think about it. Usually something aggressive. Like “Throw a bucket of water on the target!” or “Bite the target!” or “Run in a circle around the target as fast as you can!”

The idea is to do it fast and kind of catch myself off-guard so I’m not expecting whatever happens in response- I don’t have a chance to imagine how the target might interface with my action. I feel like it has the direct contact quality of an ideogram but with more physical data information transfer (for me, at least).

Like when I threw water on the target, I watched the way it ’splashed off’ the target and dripped down and got the basic shape of part of the target. In this example below, I actually saw the same curving, pointed bow shape of the ship as the ‘water’ splashed off it.

Data logged in session: pointed tip

It seems to be working well for me so far and it’s just fun. I feel like I ‘get’ the target better initially than I do with a cold ideogram on paper or something like that. It’s initial contact that I can really feel and sometimes see.

In another example I just flailed my hands all over the target all of the sudden and it felt like touching a person. Turns out it was. Earlier this evening I bit a target. It felt like biting metal and rubber. The primary target was all metal and there was a rubber tire in the foreground in front of it. Neato.

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Anyway, I’ll open with something like that and then do some Aspect work

For my aspect work on last weeks TKR Mission session (the contortionist). First I asked for my Policeman aspect. That is, the aspect of myself that is a cop. I asked him what he could tell me about the target. He didn’t say anything but he kind of just looked around. I got the distinct feeling that he was fairly uninterested, but watching the sidelines. It struck me very much as somebody working security for an entertainment event. Kind of glancing at the main event, but eying the whole room not really expecting anything exciting to happen.

From there I started getting a really strong sense that the target was entertainment oriented, or like a show. So I asked for another aspect that might be more suited to something like that. My art critic aspect.

I asked him what he could tell me about the target. He seemed unimpressed at it. He said, “Well, it’s not completely amateurish but it’s certainly not professional.” He was totally dripping with that smug, snobbish art critic attitude too lol.

Sometimes I’ll just see myself in front of a big crowd and ask if there’s any volunteers. If someone (an aspect) raises their hand or comes forward I’ll listen. Sometimes they don’t.

At times it’s like I’m standing next to the aspect in person, other times it’s like I’m looking through their eyes and I am them. Sometimes I talk to them and they talk to me in words, other times I can just ‘feel’ how they feel.

In between interaction with aspects I might just focus on the target, feel it out ‘on my own’ (lol) for a minute, and get some impressions like that.

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One of the many interesting things I’ve found so far with this, is the different perspective and different data you get from different aspects on the same target.

For instance, I had a target of an old windmill. I started with a Spontaneous Aggressive Movement Cue (a new acronym! Yuck!), “Run at super speed around the target!” and got the sense of a large monolithic thing in an open area. I had an AOL of a big tree so I asked for my gardener aspect. He told me the target was “low maintenance, didn’t need water, and was ______” (that last bit was more of a feeling, the closest I could come to putting a word to it was “stoic.”) Then he showed me something like a root system. A large central piece with several smaller pieces branching outward into the ground at the bottom.

Then I asked for my aspect of Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect. He told me that it was “beautiful” and that he “would definitely build around it.” He showed me a vertical line with many lines slanting down from each side (like the pattern on the front of the mill) and also told me there were circles on the ground.