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Midjourney Gallery: Top 5 Sources of Inspiration [Aug 2023]

Andrew Wilson

If you’re looking for creative inspiration, a Midjourney gallery is the most efficient way to explore popular AI image generations.

Midjourney has unlocked the ability to create high-quality images for millions of users.

The only limit when it comes to Midjourney is your own imagination.

But scrolling through some of the options below can certainly help you get started.

In this post, I will share the top 5 destinations to get inspired by today’s most popular Midjourney creations.

Table of Contents

1. Midjourney Gallery Official Showcase

The official Midjourney gallery is called Community Showcase .

It’s available to the general public and features the top trending and all-time most popular images generated by Midjourney users.

If you hover over each image, you will see the model it was generated on (i.e., /v5_upscale).

You will also see the text prompt used to generate the image.

Related: Midjourney Top Prompts Guide

Midjourney Seed for Text Prompts

Keep in mind, even if you use the exact same prompt from an image you find in the community showcase, your Midjourney-generated image will likely look much different than what’s featured in the gallery.

There is a massive range of potential outcomes for even the most detailed Midjourney prompts.

One way to minimize the variance between the inspiration image and your own is to use what’s called a seed parameter .

A Midjourney seed parameter is a defined initial starting point used by the model to generate images. Using the same seed and prompt will produce nearly identical images, with slight variations.

Note: Midjourney Showcase does not provide the seed number for images, but sometimes users share these values on platforms like Reddit and Twitter .

Another limitation of the public Midjourney gallery is that you cannot easily copy the text prompt from images.

This is a feature only available to paid users in the community feed.

Also: Midjourney Cost: Price, Membership, & Value

2. Midjourney Community Feed

The Midjourney community feed is only available to paid subscribers .

This gallery features a wider range of filters and search options, including filters for ‘rising’ and ‘hot’ images.

You can also copy the entire text prompt for any image you find.

When you click any of the images in the community feed, you can see more info about the generated image.

You can see the parent generation, which is the initial four-image grid generated by the Midjourney bot.

This view also shows additional Midjourney commands used in the prompt, such as –ar (aspect ratio) and –5 (model version).

Also: Midjourney Tips for Beginners

Lastly, the text prompt of the image is broken into individual sections.

So you can click any of the comma-separated phrases to view other Midjourney generations that used the same terms.

3. Midjourney Reddit Gallery

This one’s my personal favorite .

The official Midjourney subreddit is filled with user submissions. These AI images range from hilarious to awe-inspiring.

If you are on a Reddit mobile app, I recommend viewing the Midjourney subreddit in ‘gallery’ or ‘grid’ mode, depending on which app you use.

I’m usually on a desktop, which unfortunately does not have a gallery view option.

However, I found a site that lets you view any subreddit in gallery format .

Here’s the link for the Midjourney gallery version .

4. Deviant Art

Deviant Art is a social network for artists with over 60 million registered users.

The platform includes a growing number of AI-generated art, including content created by Midjourney.

I recommend viewing this gallery by the most popular for the month .

The only downside with Deviant Art for Midjourney is that most of the posts do not include the original prompt used to generate the image.

So it’s great for art lovers and inspiration, but not so much if you’re on the hunt for a good Midjourney prompt idea.

5. ArtStation

ArtStation is a platform for artists to showcase their portfolios and sell digital goods.

It’s funny because you may have seen the term “trending on ArtStation” appear in some Midjourney prompts.

Since the platform caters to artists, the quality of the Midjourney images here is quite high.

If you want to view only images that used Midjourney , click on add filter , software , and include Midjourney .

Like Deviant Art, ArtStation posts often do not include the original Midjourney prompt or seed.

Additionally, most of the AI-generated images on ArtStation are enhanced using an AI image editor or tool like Photoshop or Blender.

How do I see my Midjourney gallery?

To view your Midjourney gallery, simply log into the Midjourney website .

By default, you will see every image that you have upscaled.

There is also an option to view every image you have generated in the past by selecting grid view.

Is my Midjourney Gallery public?

Yes, if someone knows your username, they can find your gallery unless you use stealth mode .

Additionally, all your Midjourney images can appear in search results by other Midjourney users.

The Pro plan ($60 per month) offers stealth mode , which is a toggled feature that prevents others from finding your images on Midjourney.com .

Where can I see all my Midjourney creations?

To view your Midjourney creations, log in to your Midjourney account .

Alternatively, you can keep track of your images in Discord more easily if you submit prompts via direct message rather than through one of the public channels.

Are Midjourney images copyrighted?

No, all paid Midjourney subscriptions come with General Commercial Terms.

This means you can use your Midjourney images for any purpose, including business.

The Midjourney license prevents you from claiming ownership of any images, and the US Copyright Office stated that AI-generated images cannot be copyrighted by anyone.

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App comparisons

Midjourney vs. DALL·E 3: Which image generator is better? [2024]

I've been testing both of these image generators, both professionally and personally, since they were released, and there's a lot to unpack. So let's dive in. 

How do DALL·E 3 and Midjourney work?

Of course, just because both models use the same technique to generate images, doesn't mean you're going to get similar results from both DALL·E and Midjourney. How each model interprets your prompt, the weight it puts on the various parameters, the data they were trained on, and the philosophies of the companies responsible for developing them all massively affect what the output will look like. 

Here's DALL·E 3's take on "an impressionist oil painting of a Canadian man riding a moose through a forest of maple trees."

And here's Midjourney's.

As you can see, DALL·E 3 has done a much better job of having my Canadian man riding a moose, though for my money, Midjourney's output looks way more like a real impressionist painting. 

I'll dive much deeper into these kinds of differences as we go, but don't call these results a win for either AI model just yet.

DALL·E 3 vs. Midjourney at a glance

DALL·E 3 and Midjourney both do similar things, but there are some big differences. Here's a short summary of the major distinctions, but read on for a more detailed breakdown. 

DALL·E 3 is easier to use

So really, if you're looking to just try out an image generator, DALL·E 3 is much simpler to get started with.

Midjourney is a lot more powerful

You can even use another image as a character reference (it will try to recreate the characters in it) or a style reference (it will try to match the style of the image). Both make it possible to create consistent images, which is something that AI image generators generally struggle to do.

And then there are the tools that allow you to upscale, vary, and edit your images. Once you've run a prompt, you're presented with two sets of four buttons: U1 , U2 , U3 , and U4 , which upscale the corresponding image to 1024px wide, and V1 , V2 , V3, and V4 , which rerun your prompt to create more variations based on the corresponding image. 

Once you upscale an image, you can upscale it again to 2048px wide—or even to 4096px wide using the Upscale (2x) or Upscale (4x) buttons. You can create more variations that either closely match the starting image with Vary (Subtle) or are more distinct with Vary (Strong) . You can even change specific parts of the image using Vary (Region) .

DALL·E 3 doesn't come close to matching this feature set, though its editing options have improved significantly since it first launched. Your first option is to ask ChatGPT to rerun a slightly different prompt with the changes you want made—which can be hit or miss.

Alternatively, you can use a select tool to edit specific areas of an image with a new prompt.

Neither option really gives you the level of control that Midjourney gives you, though they're nice to have and easy to use—especially if you don't have a super specific end result in mind.

Even the Bing tools that use DALL·E 3 don't give you many more options. The only ones of note are that Image Creator allows you to import your image directly into Microsoft Designer, and Paint allows you to generate images in the app, so you can edit them (or at least paint over the top).

Both make great AI-generated images

For all that, both DALL·E 3 and Midjourney are capable of creating incredible images. DALL·E 3 is quicker and easier to use, but you have less control over the results. Midjourney is a bit obtuse at times, but you have a lot more control over what things look like. 

Still, there are a handful of differences worth noting. DALL·E 3, since it integrates with ChatGPT, does a really great job at interpreting prompts. It feels better able to handle both shorter prompts and longer, more complicated prompts.

It's not that Midjourney messes up very often, but it takes a lot more steering. I found that instead of writing long descriptions, it was more effective to give it a series of key words.

Also, because it has decent editing tools, I was much more willing to accept a less-than-ideal first image and then use remixing, variations, and the other tools to create a final image I was happy with. 

Pricing depends on your needs

DALL·E 3's pricing is super simple: it costs $20/month as part of ChatGPT Plus, or it's available for free as part of different Microsoft tools, though some of them will watermark your images. As of now, it seems that you're limited to the same 40 requests every three hours with DALL·E 3 as you get with GPT-4, but that should be sufficient for almost everyone.

Midjourney has no free option, but the Basic Plan starts at $10/month and entitles you to 200 minutes of GPU time. Which, of course, is where things get complicated. Midjourney says that's good for roughly 200 generations a month, but it totally depends on what you're getting it to do. If you create lots of variations and upscale them all to the maximum amount, you'll burn through those GPU hours faster than if you create lots of low-res images. 

And to make things more complicated, starting with the $30/month Standard plan, you get more fast GPU hours, but you can generate unlimited images in Relax mode—which only runs when there's free GPU power.

Given all the extra features both apps bring, I'm incredibly reluctant to make any judgments between DALL·E 3 and Midjourney based on price. If it meets your needs, the $10/month Midjourney plan is probably the best balance of features and price, but you can use DALL·E 3 for free through the Bing Image Creator, or for $20/month as part of ChatGPT Plus—which also has all of ChatGPT's language generation features. 

Commercial use is complicated

Midjourney is weird.

Because I've been trying to compare DALL·E 3 and Midjourney as closely and sensibly as possible, there are other weird and awkward bits with Midjourney that I haven't been able to touch on. Three of the bigger things to note are:

Unless you're on the $60/month Pro plan and activate Stealth Mode, all your images are automatically published to Midjourney's member gallery, where anyone can see them, download them, and copy your prompts.

Every setting and feature is handled through commands to the Discord bot. It will never not be strange. 

You can automate DALL·E

Create images with dall.e based on slack messages and send as a channel message.

Generate images based on Google Form responses and save them in Google Sheets

Generate OpenAI (DALL.E) images from new Airtable records and send as an email

DALL·E vs. Midjourney: Which should you use?

The choice between DALL·E 3 and Midjourney should be relatively straightforward for most people:

If you want the best AI image generator currently available, want to be able to tweak and edit your images, and are happy to work through its many quirks, Midjourney is a great choice. 

If you want the easy option that reliably produces great results, DALL·E 3 is what you need. 

Related reading:

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Harry Guinness

Harry Guinness is a writer and photographer from Dublin, Ireland. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Lifehacker, the Irish Examiner, and How-To Geek. His photos have been published on hundreds of sites—mostly without his permission.

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December 19, 2016

One Skeptical Scientist's Mindfulness Journey

What this daydreaming researcher learned from eight weeks of mindfulness meditation

By Scott Barry Kaufman

Austin Neill  Unsplash

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

Me: I constantly feel anxious. It's usually about nothing in particular. Just a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach about human existence. My doctor: I think you may be ready for an SSRI. Me: Give me 8 weeks. Just 8 weeks. My doctor: Good luck.

For years, I've been told to try mindfulness, by everyone and their mother.

You need to learn how to harness the power of deep concentration , I am told.

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But I *do* harness the power of deep concentration , I tell them-- when it's something that truly captivates my imagination .

That's your monkey mind talking, I am told. Settle in. Open your mind. Stop judging.

Fine. Once and for all, I will do it. I will pull back the judgment.

It's not easy.

You see, I've been studying the science of daydreaming for over the past decade. One of my mentors in graduate school was Jerome L. Singer , father of daydreaming research. He found in the 60s that daydreaming is a normal, widespread part of human cognition that can serve many adaptive benefits, from creativity to perspective taking to just plain old entertainment. Modern science has backed up many of Singer's claims on the benefits of " positive-constructive daydreaming" (see here for a review). To my ears, this mindfulness craze is just one big dig at daydreaming. Whenever I hear a guided meditation, all I hear is: Return to the breath and stop daydreaming. To which I think: But what if I don't want to ? Followed by sticking out my tongue to no one in particular. In one Big Think video (in which I quite possibly have the worst haircut ever known to man) I even went so far as to refer to mindfulness zealots as " zombies" .

So it's with all of these preconceptions that I entered day 1 of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course at Penn's Program for Mindfulness . My instructor was Michael Baim e , who is head of the program. As much as I committed myself to this 8 week journey, and decided I would slavishly do all the mindfulness "homework", I must admit I still entered that first day with a rebellious spirit. I told my friend to take a picture of me meditating at the end of that first day. I don't know if you can tell, but I am meditating rather tongue and cheek:

Credit: Scott Barry Kaufman

Nevertheless, I did take it seriously. I meditated about 40 minutes a day, every single day for 8 weeks. I engaged in a combination of meditation practices, from breathing meditation to body scan awareness to open-monitoring awareness to walking meditation. I took a Facebook hiatus so I could really focus on this journey. I read every bit of the readings assigned to us from Jon Kabat-Kinn's book Full Catastophe Living . I also read a few more books on mindfulness, and made an earnest attempt to really understand the rationale behind mindfulness meditation and Buddhist philosophy. I really gave it my all.

So what happened? Here are some of the lessons I learned. Just a heads up: this post isn't a ringing endorsement for mindfulness meditation. If you want to read that, you can go to your local bookstore and pick up virtually any book on the topic (they are all so glowing). Instead, this is just one scientist's honest recounting of his personal experience, and his attempt at reconciling his experience with the science. OK, here goes.

My (mini) Mindfulness Journey

Little by little, the nature of my generalized anxiety did start to change. I use the word " change" very carefully here. I can't say my anxiety completely went away, but my relationship to it changed. Instead of feeling the emotion and acting on it (e.g., wanting to run home and curl up under my covers and hide), I started to just notice it. Yes, non-judgmentally. But I'd also dare to say, compassionately .

Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as " paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. " Taking this attitude toward my thoughts and emotions made me realize just how much suffering I cause myself on a daily basis. I just had no idea how much I was in it , bound/attached to the drama of my emotions. I also had no idea just how free I was to step out of it , at least momentarily. I can honestly say this is one of the most important insights I gleaned from my meditation practice.

I also realized just how wrong I had been to pit mindfulness against mind-wandering. They really, truly, are not opposites. I feel like this was a really important insight for me, so please allow me to repeat it: mindfulness is not the opposite of mind-wandering.

Many of you may be aware of the study conducted at Harvard a few years back called " A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind " . It certainly got a lot of press . When that study came out, and received all the publicity it did, it felt like a kick to the gut of this daydreaming researcher. Which is why I was excited to discover this study conducted by David Stawarczyk and his colleagues at the University of Liege. They found quite clearly that it is not mind-wandering, per se, that causes psychological distress, but the tendency to be less aware of the present-moment that leads to reductions in well-being.

So yes, kudos to the Harvard researchers for getting it part-right: difficulty attending to the present mind is associated with reduced levels of well-being. However-- and this is a BIG however-- " the strength of the association between [mind-wandering] and psychological distress became almost null once the influences of mindful awareness [was] taken into account." The results of this study most certainly didn't get as much publicity because the researchers weren't Ivy-League, but I'd say the findings are just as important.

Heck, Jerome Singer could have told you that back in the 60s (I try to stand up for my mentor every chance I get)! Singer and his colleagues distinguished between three " daydreaming styles":

Positive-Constructive Daydreaming (representing playful, wishful and constructive imagery),

Guilty-Dysphoric Daydreaming (representing obsessive, anguished fantasies),

Poor Attentional Control (representing the inability to concentrate on ongoing thought or external tasks).

While the inability to control your attention was associated with lower levels of conscientiousness and self-control, and guilty-dysphoric daydreaming was associated with higher levels of neuroticism, anxiety, and worry, positive constructive daydreaming was associated with increased levels of openness to experience, a key contributor of creativity .

The Mindfulness-Creativity Paradox

Which brings us to the mindfulness-creativity connection. Before I took the 8-week course, there was a particular paradox in the field that just didn't make any sense to me. On the one hand, the neuroscience of creativity literature shows that the " default mode network" -- which is involved in mind-wandering and the construction of our sense of self-- is absolutely essential for creative thinking. On the other hand, some mindfulness studies were showing that mindfulness practice reduces default mode network activity but simultaneously increases creative thinking. How can this be??! How can the brain network most associated with daydreaming both contribute and not contribute to creative thinking?

I found some ways out of this paradox. I warn you that this is all going to get really technical really quickly, but heck, I assume the readers of this blog find that just as fun as I do. :)

OK, first way out : Creativity is not a single thing. It's a whole process that involves various different stages-- some messier than others . For instance, during the process of bringing something original and meaningful into this world there are times when you want to think divergently and generate lots of possibilities. But there are times when you want to focus more intensely on a single idea and help it grow and develop. Different forms of meditation are conducive to different stages of the creative process. Recent research supports this idea. Consider the work of Lorenza Colzato , who found that focused-attention meditation supported the ability to arrive at a single solution, whereas open-monitoring meditation facilitated the ability to generate many new ideas. Consistent with this, a recent meta-analysis looked at the combined effects of multiple studies on the mindfulness-creativity link and found that while yes, overall, there was a relatively weak connection between mindfulness and divergent thinking, the open-monitoring aspect of mindfulness was much more strongly linked to divergent thinking than the sheer awareness aspect of mindfulness.

This really dovetails with my own experience meditating. Right after focused breath meditation, I really do feel much calmer, settled, and at peace with myself. But I can also really truly say that I also feel less creative (at least as measured by creativity researchers), and even feel less motivated to be creative. If you asked me right after a good focused breathing meditation to come up with as many uses for a brick as possible within a minute, I think I'd be too calm and focused to come up with a lot of novel uses. But after open-monitoring meditation, I think I'm in a better position cognitively to consider many different possibilities.

Now, let's consider the second way out of the mindfulness-creativity paradox. This way out returns to Singer's seminal insight that there are different forms of mind-wandering . A new dynamic framework for mind-wandering by Kalina Christoff  and colleagues fleshes this out in greater detail from a neuroscience perspective. Take a look at this graph from their paper and then we'll try to make sense of it:

Credit: Ch ristoff et al.

First up is " rumination and obsessive thought" , which is akin to Singer's " guilty-dysphoric" daydreaming style. When we ruminate or become obsessed with one really negative aspect of our existence, this tends not to be when we are at our creative best . In fact, under this dynamic framework, rumination isn't even worthy of being called " mind-wandering" because when we ruminate our minds are actually doing the opposite of wandering-- they are becoming locked in to a particular idea over and over again.

Within the realm of truly "spontaneous thought", our thoughts can be deliberate or automatic. Overall, the sweet spot for creativity seems to be a mindful state of consciousness in which you are aware of your spontaneous thoughts, but not *too* goal-directed so that you miss out on unexpected connections.

So from a neuroscience perspective, we can say that generally speaking, creativity is best when the " executive attention network" has strong communication with the " default mode network". When these two brain networks talk to each other, they allow for a unique state of mindful daydreaming, which seems to be an optimal state for creativity .

Of course, it does depend on the stage of the creative process you're in. Here's a neat graph that shows relative activity of the executive attention network and default mode network during different states of consciousness, from REM sleep to waking rest to idea generation to idea evaluation:

Note that during REM sleep, there is very little executive attention and a lot of imagery and episodic memory retrieval going on. Dreaming involves extremely unconstrained thought . During waking idea generation, you get overlapping activations with REM sleep, indicating that the thinking is still unconstrained, but less so , because you get some executive attention activity and other parts of the default mode network associated with self-monitoring come online. Idea evaluation is the most constrained part of the creative process, as you see greater activation of the executive attention network than during idea generation and during REM sleep.

Nevertheless, I think it's fair to say that regardless of the stage of creativity, it's never good to be so completely mindless that you are completely oblivious to any insights generated by your spontaneous thoughts. I believe that if we are to ever satisfactorily solve the mindfulness-creativity paradox, this is the level of nuance we will have to take: looking both at the dynamic interactions among various large-scale brain networks as well as the interactions among the subcomponents of each brain network!

Along these lines, I really like the recent work of David Creswell and colleagues. In the Kabat-Zinn book we were reading for the course, Kabat-Zinn discusses studies showing that mindfulness meditation reduces default mode network activity, and he interprets this as meaning that mindfulness meditators have gained greater distance from their " narrative mind" (as he describes the default mode network). While I think this is partially correct, I think we can add some more nuance. After all, the default mode network has many different subcomponents.

As David Creswell's research is showing, mindfulness training decreases communication between the executive attention network and certain subcomponents of the default mode network but increases communication between the executive attention network and other subcomponents of the default mode network. In particular, mindfulness meditation reduces focus on our self-critical thoughts and self-relevant cognitions, but makes us more mindful of the aspects of the default mode network associated with a broader range of personal emotions and experiences. Indeed, research shows that self-compassion facilitates originality , particularly in those who are already very self-critical individuals. So it seems that meditation may alter the connectivity of the default mode network in such a way that it isn't as self-focused and self-critical, which can really facilitate the creative process.

Benefits of Long-Term Meditation?

Which makes me think of a possible benefit of long-term mindfulness meditation. Recently, an expert meditator came to the Positive Psychology Center. I asked him about this mindfulness-creativity paradox and he responded, " Yes, well, Van Gogh was creative but then again, he did cut his ear off." Ouch! (literally) Then he went on to say that maybe what he personally has lost in creativity from his long-term mindfulness practice, he gained in wisdom.

Well, by this point I had already been through weeks of the mindfulness course so I took what he said with open monitoring awareness (if it were months ago, I probably would have responded to this comment with instant disdain). Could it be that most of these studies that look at the mindfulness-creativity link are too crude? They have people meditate a few minutes, and then ask them to quick! think of many uses for a brick! Maybe this isn't the path to a deeper, more wiser form of creativity. You know, the form that allows you to see reality more clearly than anyone has ever seen it before.

There are hints that there might be something to this idea. Colzato-- the Italian cognitive scientist who studied the impact of focused-attention and open-monitoring meditation on creativity-- conducted a follow-up study in which she compared a group of novice meditators to a group of expert meditators. Regardless of meditation experience, open-monitoring meditation facilitated divergent thinking. However, expert practitioners applied an insight strategy to solve problems that require a single correct solution, whereas novices tended to apply an analytical approach to solving such problems. Similarly, a hot-off-the-press article in Mindfulness reports on data showing that divergent thinking is enhanced by long-term mindfulness training (> 1000 hours), but doesn't show any improvement among short-term mindfulness practitioners.*

So while yes, mindfulness meditation can help us to put more distance between our emotions and the self-critical and self-conscious aspects of our narrative mind, mindfulness can also make us more aware and mindful of our ongoing stream of consciousness. Put another way, while it's true that long-term meditation practice helps us regulate our emotions , regulation is not the same thing as control . Regulation gives us more freedom to pay attention to what we want to pay attention to. And often I really do want to pay attention to my daydreams. So I would say that long-term meditation gives us a more nonjudgmental awareness of our mind-wandering . It's both the mindfulness and the mind-wandering that are essential to insight and creativity.

Well, this is the insight I came to after 8 weeks of intense mindfulness meditation. On the last day of the course, which happened to correspondent with the election results-- yes, we all really needed mindfulness that day-- we all went around in a circle and talked about what we learned from the course. I mentioned that I was still processing what I went through, but that I felt as though I no longer so urgently felt I needed to take an SSRI. That I had a tool I could use to relax the mind when I needed it. I also mentioned that I found the full day silent mindfulness retreat that was part of the course quite profound. Sitting nonjudmentally with my thoughts for an entire day made me truly realize the thought patterns that keep coming up over and over again in my spontaneous cognition. This made me better realize which patterns I'd like to not attach to anymore, and which ones I'm fine attaching to.

After the class was over, I asked someone to take another picture of me. Here it is:

I don't know if you can tell by looking at the before and after picture, but I am much more authentically at peace in the second one. Indeed, I got independent verification: one of my fellow students came up to me after the class and said she noticed a big change in me from the first day, that I seemed much calmer, and much less judgmental.

This is all great, but hopefully you can also see just a glimmer of skepticism is still there. While I greatly increased my appreciation of the benefits of mindfulness meditation, I hope I will never be so nonjudgmental that I just take what meditation gurus say at face value. Thankfully, we can use the tools of science to test the nature of reality. But I must also admit that it wasn't science alone that most beneficial to me. It was this combination-- science and experience-- that led to my biggest insights.

© 2016 Scott Barry Kaufman , All Rights Reserved

Acknowledgment: Much gratitude to Michael Baime for the course and for his patience with all of my burning questions.

* However, the researchers also found that long-term mindfulness training was negatively correlated with default-mode-related low-gamma inter-hemispheric connectivity. I'm not sure what to make of this, but I suspect that not all subcomponents of the default mode network showed the same reductions in connectivity.

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7 June 2024

Science fiction’s visions of multiple universes differ from the real theory

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Imagine passing through a mysterious portal and encountering a version of yourself as you would have wished to be. Instead of taking up that tedious job at the accountancy firm, you followed your dreams…

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Opinion | The Many Coalition Compulsions As NDA 3.0 Begins Its Journey

With his election as the leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Prime Minister Narendra Modi now starts to walk on the Agneepath, or ,  a path of fire. He is a decisive leader who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat for three consecutive terms and later the Prime Minister for two terms. And he did so with an absolute majority for his party in the bag. As the leader of the Cabinet, he did what he wanted to do, never constrained by the support of allies. But now, for the first time, he will lead a government in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) does not have a majority of its own and is dependent on the support of its allies.  The BJP has only 240 seats, 32 short of the majority mark of 272. The party had 282 seats in 2014 and 303 in 2019. On both occasions, the BJP was supported by allies, and together, the NDA had 353 MPs in the 17th Parliament.  An absolute majority for any party in the Lok Sabha ensures that the party and the government will have smooth functioning without any fetters; it's not dependent on others for policy formulation and its implementation. But a coalition government, by its nature, is full of contradictions and is always constrained by the support of its allies. 

Consultation, And PM Modi

Coalition government, by its own logic, is always uncertain and unstable; wide-ranging consultation is the lifeblood of such governments. Prime Minister Modi is not known to believe in wide-ranging consultations; he believes in implementing what he thinks is right, without being handicapped by the wishes and interests of supporting parties. In the last 10 years, the Prime Minister has been accused of undermining the Cabinet system, not relying on the collective wisdom of the Cabinet. Like Indira Gandhi, he, too, was the leader and the Cabinet; ministers had little autonomy to make decisions even in their own departments.  Now, the situation has changed. The BJP does not have a majority on its own. For its survival, it depends on leaders like Nitish Kumar, Chandrababu Naidu, Chirag Paswan, Eknath Shinde, Ajit Pawar, H.D. Kumaraswamy, and others. The opposition, which was given scant regard by the treasury benches in the last 10 years, is now much stronger. The BJP, which once talked about a 'Congress- mukt  Bharat', or a Congress-free India, now has to face a resurgent and aggressive Congress led by Rahul Gandhi. And he will not be alone in attacking the government; he will be supported by Akhilesh Yadav, Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar, Stalin and Mamata Banerjee, who have given crushing blows to the BJP in their respective states. 

Back To Equilibrium

The opposition today is far more cohesive than it ever has been in the last 10 years. They are of the opinion that only unitedly they can fight and defeat the BJP led by Modi. Rahul's attack on the stock market issue even before the government could take oath is an indication of the days to come. The functioning of Parliament and politics will definitely not be the same. The equilibrium of Indian politics, which had decisively tilted towards the right, is back on its original keel. To run the government, the Prime Minister has to take the middle path. In this changed atmosphere, the Prime Minister and his government have to operate, function and deliver. Will it be easy? It won't be a cakewalk. Modi is not known to change his style, and that is the biggest challenge. There will be occasions when he may struggle to accommodate the demands of his allies and will not have an option but to honour their wishes if the government has to survive. Atal Bihari Vajpayee had the tenacity and acumen to lead the government supported by more than a dozen parties. There were occasions when he had to swallow the bitter pill. He had the large-heartedness to listen to the accusations not only of the opposition but also unjust demands and dissenting voices from his own party and allies and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Whether Modi will learn a few lessons from Vajpayee is the question.  The next few months will be very crucial as they will pave the way for new politics - the politics of accommodation and adjustment. Cooperation will take precedence over confrontation.

Not A Smooth Sail Ahead

The Prime Minister will have to watch out for his two main allies. Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar are too wily and are known for changing stripes in pursuit of their political interests. Mutual distrust will define the relationship of the BJP and the Janata Dal (United)-Telugu Desam Party [JD(U)-TDP] combine. I won't be surprised if the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) model of splitting a political party is not repeated in the near future. What is the guarantee that two-thirds of members of these two parties won't decide to move towards and merge with the BJP to circumvent the anti-defection law? That will help the BJP inch towards the magic figure of 272. It is in the realm of possibility that smaller parties within the NDA and also of the INDIA bloc may either merge themselves with the BJP, willingly or unwillingly, or their MPs would leave their mother organisation and be part of the ruling party.  The election is over, but politics will continue. I am sure that the coming days will be interesting. It is to be seen whether this government completes its term or the country will see another election sooner than later. Agnipath and Agnipariksha - these are the words that we will keep hearing during the course of the 18th Lok Sabha.

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(Ashutosh is the author of 'Hindu Rashtra' and co-founder of SatyaHindi.com)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

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HBO's ‘Fantasmas' Is an Immersive Journey Into the Singular Mind of Creator Julio Torres: TV Review

As a writer for "Saturday Night Live" from 2016 to 2019, Julio Torres was able to create immersive worlds - the existential melancholy of a sink; the font obsession of an "Avatar" super fan - in just a few minutes' worth of sketch. Over time, the comedian has only acquired more space and resources to realize his singular vision. Since 2019, Torres has co-created and co-starred in the surreal sitcom "Los Espookys"; recorded the hourlong special "My Favorite Shapes"; and directed his feature debut, "Problemista," acting opposite Tilda Swinton. With every added level of authority, Torres has assumed even greater control of the ultra-specific sensibility evident in his earliest "SNL" breakouts. Torres' imagination yields glamorous, distinctly queer realities with the logic of a fairy tale, grounded by the bemused frustration of an author who had to traverse the American immigration system to bring his dreamy art to life.

With his new series "Fantasmas," Torres answers the hypothetical of what his former workplace might look like were he in Lorne Michaels' chair. (Like "Los Espookys" and "My Favorite Shapes," the six-episode season airs on HBO.) "Fantasmas" is not technically a sketch show; there's a loose, over-arching narrative about Torres' protagonist, also named Julio, getting evicted from his lair inside a water tower. But it's also filled with digressive vignettes packed with high-profile guest stars, who gamely blend into the Torres cinematic universe. Anthropomorphizing is a favorite mode of his, hence Steve Buscemi playing an aging, punk personification of the letter "Q." So is aesthetic excess with no practical purpose, giving us Aidy Bryant in a faux commercial for toilet dresses. Then again, if you need to be sold on the concept of sequined skirts for your commode, this is not the show for you.

Torres may revel in fantasy, but there are also elements of autobiography in his character. "I wake up and I just sort of … Julio " is how he describes his job. "I can feel the inner lives of shapes and colors." It's a joke, of course; in a gig as a consultant for Crayola, he urges the company to develop a clear-colored crayon. But the line is also a reasonable description of Torres' oeuvre, which ascribes magical portent to objects like the oyster-shaped, diamond-encrusted earring Julio loses and tries to find in this alternate New York City. The setting is both alien and recognizable, a place where the "first and only queer hamster nightclub" is now a hamster CVS.

There's also a personal element to Julio's search for a home. Everywhere he turns, Torres' character is asked for "proof of existence," an officially sanctioned form of ID he professes not to believe in. Before getting his green card, the real Torres had a visa reserved for "aliens of extraordinary ability"; in "Fantasmas," his alter ego learns famous people don't need to prove their existence. But getting famous requires either selling out (his agent offers him a commercial for a "woke" credit card called Cha Ching) or leaning into cynical, identity-based stories. It physically pains Julio to pitch an executive (Natasha Lyonne) on the kind of show she wants. He calls it "How I Came Out to My Abuela."

For those already versed in Torres' CV, "Fantasmas" has some repetition. His passion for the color "clear" comes up in "My Favorite Shapes"; a bit about dramatic hand acting has had several lives, moving from Instagram to "The Tonight Show" to this newest iteration. But this Hollywood critique is both new and biting, even as it's softened by the silly context. With backers like HBO, A24 and Emma Stone - an executive producer on "Fantasmas" who also appears in the show's "Real Housewives" parody "True Women of New York" - Torres has successfully forged a platform for his uncompromised, unfiltered voice. But between the lines, "Fantasmas" hints at how hard he's had to fight to stay himself, even if his work suggests Torres couldn't be anyone else if he tried.

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• 'Problemista' Review: A Terrorizing Tilda Swinton Overshadows All Else in Julio Torres' Messy Debut