INFRARED (IR)

Spectrum Component and Manifestation — Canon Source Record

Overview

Infrared, or IR, is a component of the emotional Spectrum occupying the place between Red/Rage and Orange/Avarice.
If UV is hidden desire, IR is surface desire: desire that is visible, immediate, embodied, and beginning to act upon the world.
The central distinction is:
UV is the want. IR is the action to claim.
IR is therefore not simply “lust,” although Lust is its place on the emotional Spectrum. It is the point at which wanting becomes movement toward the thing wanted: seeing, approaching, pursuing, reaching, attempting to claim.
Its position between Red and Orange is important. IR has the same potential for overpowering and taking that exists elsewhere around these portions of the Spectrum. Toward Red, it carries heat, urgency, physicality, impulse, and the possibility of being overwhelmed by what one feels. Toward Orange lies taking, claiming, and ultimately the possibility of possession.
Like Red, IR can claim a person far more easily than a person may be able to control it, although IR is not as directly “claiming” as Red. A Red ring can effectively claim a sufficiently enraged person. IR is not that far along this quality. Rather, its desire and pursuit can become overpowering.
A person remains the one acting under IR. The danger is that their own pursuit may begin dragging them.
IR is not inherently bad, corrupting, cruel, or dangerous. It is another necessary part of the Spectrum, and it can lead onward into other parts of that Spectrum.
It is important.
It is hot.
It is empowering.
It can burn if there is too much.
It can hurt.
It can also heal.
It can gently soothe when that is what is needed.
The nature of the energy has not morally changed between those states. Its intensity, use, and where it leads are what change.

The Manifestation of IR

The manifestation of IR currently present in the story has not yet been named.
Visually, he is a living, modern version of a Tom of Finland image.
He is overtly, unmistakably desirable. His body and presentation contain the sorts of visual characteristics that a gay man might immediately identify as desirable. His butt is pronounced without becoming comical. His endowment is never seen or spoken about, but it is clearly substantial in the sense that he wears jeans extremely well and there is no real ambiguity about what is there without the presentation becoming obscene.
He is of Lust.
But, like much of the Spectrum, what that means is not as obvious as it initially appears.
He is also a “full-on Monet,” in the Clueless sense.
At the surface level, he appears to be all of the things someone would want. Looking closer reveals that the fantasy and the actual man do not perfectly align.
He is 6’0”, where somebody’s “dream” version might be taller.
He wears approximately a size 9.5–10 shoe, where that same fantasy might imagine something like a size 15+.
He looks like the Alpha.
He can even play the part of the Alpha.
But he is not necessarily the Alpha that person needs.
He can fill the role and play the part while still being someone with whom, long-term, it simply is not going to work.
None of these details make him unattractive. They demonstrate the distinction between surface desire and what someone actually needs.
The manifestation can be exactly what he appears to be while still not being what someone imagined possessing him would mean.
He is the thing to be desired, and he possesses most or all of the reasons someone might desire him, but the pursuit never quite closes in the way the pursuer imagines it will.
If someone wants him to be a top because they want to bottom, he is not the top they want.
If someone wants him to bottom because they want to top, he is not the bottom they want.
The specific mismatch is less important than the principle:
He is desirable without necessarily being the fulfillment of the desire projected onto him.
He does not have to lie about himself for this to happen.
He does not have to deceive anyone.
Sometimes the desire itself performs the trick.

Surface Desire and the Act of Claiming

IR does not know what someone ultimately needs.
IR knows what makes them move toward something.
This is one of the defining differences between IR and UV. UV contains the hidden want. IR brings that desire to the surface and translates it into action.
Someone sees.
Someone wants.
Someone approaches.
Someone reaches.
Someone attempts to claim.
What happens after that is not guaranteed by IR.
Somewhere along the way, IR may bleed into something else.
A person may walk away angry.
A person may take what is not theirs.
A person may go in another direction and find Love around the corner.
These possibilities do not mean that IR secretly contains Rage, Avarice, or Love. IR is part of a Spectrum, and the action it initiates can lead onward into other parts of that Spectrum.
The danger of IR therefore is not that desire itself is wrong.
The danger is that wanting something enough to reach for it does not establish that it is yours to claim.
Looking too long is not necessarily advised—not because the view is unpleasant. It is a very nice view.
The problem is that looking may lead somewhere.
Seeing can become wanting.
Wanting can become pursuing.
Pursuing can become reaching.
Reaching can become claiming.
And claiming can become something else.
One may arrive somewhere one did not intend to go.
Worse, one may arrive somewhere one is not welcome.
That possibility sits directly beside Avarice. The movement from wanting something, to pursuing it, to believing it should therefore belong to you is precisely the sort of progression through which IR can bleed toward Orange.

IR as Something Positive

IR’s manifestation is not cruel, mean, or degrading.
He is simply what he is.
He can recognize the effect he has on someone without exploiting or condemning them for having that response.
He can choose to help.
His attitude can be:
“I know. I got ya going. That’s good… let’s point that in a direction.”
This is an important part of IR.
Desire does not have to be satisfied by its apparent object in order for the desire itself to be real or useful.
The manifestation can get someone moving and then help redirect that movement.
IR can burn, but warmth is not synonymous with burning.
It can hurt, but it can also heal.
It can gently soothe when needed.
The same Spectrum component capable of pushing someone dangerously toward claiming can also provide the heat necessary to move someone who otherwise would not move at all.

IR as Trickster

The manifestation of IR is also a Trickster.
This places him at the intersection of more than one Spectrum.
On the emotional Spectrum, he is IR/Lust.
On the Trickster spectrum, he exists alongside other expressions of Trickster, including Whimsy, Raven, Coyote, and Anansi, with the Tricksters as presented in Disney’s Gargoyles providing part of the model for understanding this spectrum.
The Tricksters are not all the same kind of Trickster.
There are Tricksters associated with different functions, including change and transformation, and Whimsy represents his own positive form of Trickster.
IR occupies another point on that spectrum.
His trickery does not require deliberate deception.
Sometimes he can be completely straightforward and the person looking at him supplies the illusion themselves.
They see the object of their desire.
They believe they understand what possessing that object will mean.
They pursue it.
And the pursuit reveals that what they wanted, what they thought they wanted, and what they actually needed were not necessarily the same thing.
The Trickster does not necessarily give someone the wrong thing.
Sometimes the Trickster gives someone exactly what they asked for, and that is how they discover they were asking the wrong question.
For IR, the person may believe he is the destination.
He may instead be the thing that got them moving.

Whimsy Buchman and the Trickster Spectrum

Whimsy Buchman is a silly, positive Trickster.
Whimsy treats his power a little like an off-duty clown treats a room: everything is an opportunity for a giggle, even when the joke does not land.
His chaos is controlled and focused on helping people—not by forcing happiness upon them, but through silliness, disruption, tricks, and changes that create the opportunity for that giggle.
Even the worst moment can “bounce.” It may go splat first, and possibly bounce back onto your head, but it can bounce.
Whimsy’s power is “Switching It Up.”
It is a form of local substitution through which he can take something that is and temporarily make it behave as though it were some nearby alternative.
Taste can become another taste.
Color can become another color.
A puppy can become a cat.
One texture can become another.
A sound can become an unexpected sound.
An object’s superficial form can become another plausible form.
Falling can become bouncing.
Something unpleasant can become something harmlessly absurd.
Whimsy’s power naturally prefers lateral changes rather than escalations, and he needs something upon which to riff. The farther the switch moves from what was already there, the harder and less stable it becomes.
Whimsy believes the rule governing his power is:
“I can only switch little things.”
The actual rule may ultimately be:
“I can switch things into something else.”
His power manifests visually as colorful plastic confetti: the thin, terrible-for-the-environment kind once found in the stationery aisle with “Lisa Frank” written on it, cut into unicorns, dolphins, stars, hearts, and similar shapes.
Whimsy can create this confetti deliberately, but it also has a functional relationship with changes in mass. When something large becomes smaller, the excess mass instantly appears as confetti. When something small becomes larger, confetti appears when it snaps back, with the size of the resulting “poof” depending upon the scale of the change.
The confetti is, of course, self-cleaning, safe for all—and pets love it.
At the larger end of this same ability is “Change the Channel.”
Rather than switching an object or one of its properties, Whimsy can eventually switch what reality he is currently tuned to.
He does not create or rewrite those realities.
He accesses and switches between things that already exist.
Whimsy is somehow related to Mr. Mxyzptlk’s kind of magical/reality-altering power, but he is not intended to be as powerful as Mxyzptlk. He is more Trickster than all-powerful.
He exists as a positive force on the Trickster spectrum, and one day he will become either a Lord of Order or a Lord of Chaos.
Order and Chaos are currently fighting over him.
Whimsy has absolutely no idea.

IR and Whimsy

IR and Whimsy therefore share Trickster as a spectrum without sharing the same function.
Whimsy’s trickster behavior operates through switching things up: silliness, disruption, substitution, and changes that create opportunities for something different to happen.
IR’s Trickster quality operates through desire, pursuit, expectation, and the discovery that what someone believed they were pursuing may not actually be where the pursuit leads them.
Both can create movement without dictating the ultimate destination.
Both can also be positive forces.
Neither requires cruelty.
Neither requires that a Trickster’s intervention end badly.
But their methods and their places on the Trickster spectrum are different.
IR is therefore not “another Whimsy.” Their relationship is that they are representatives of different expressions within a broader Trickster spectrum, alongside the other established Trickster figures.

IR and Desire of the Endless

IR must also be distinguished from Desire of the Endless.
Desire, as present in this story, is the version portrayed in Netflix’s The Sandman.
Desire of the Endless and IR have substantial overlap because IR operates in territory that is naturally associated with Desire.
They would have tea parties together.
Desire regards IR as something of a frenemy.
This is not an openly hostile relationship. They are not mean to one another. They are good friends. But there is tension inherent in the difference between their functions.
Desire has a specific function.
IR can help that function enormously.
IR can also lead somewhere that is no longer particularly “Desire of the Endless.”
The useful distinction is again between wanting and acting upon wanting.
Desire is associated with the want.
IR is associated with the movement produced by that want: pursuit, reaching, and claiming.
This makes IR extremely useful to Desire. When attraction becomes pursuit, IR is operating in a way that naturally serves Desire.
But IR is not obligated to preserve Desire as the destination.
IR may get someone moving and that movement may ultimately lead elsewhere.
It may lead toward Rage.
It may lead toward Avarice.
It may lead away from the original object entirely.
It may lead around a corner to Love.
IR’s function was still fulfilled.
The desire produced movement.
Where that movement ultimately took the person may no longer be IR’s concern, and it may no longer serve Desire’s particular function.
This is the basis of the friendly tension between them.
IR is therefore not the Spectrum’s version of Desire of the Endless.
Their domains intersect.
Their functions cooperate.
They may enjoy one another.
They may frustrate one another.
But they are not duplicates.
Desire can participate in what IR does, and IR can be extraordinarily useful to Desire, while IR remains capable of sending a person somewhere that Desire did not particularly intend them to go.

Current Canon Summary

IR is the emotional Spectrum component between Red/Rage and Orange/Avarice.
It is associated with Lust, understood not merely as sexual desire but as surface desire becoming movement toward its object.
UV is the want. IR is the action to claim.
IR can overpower without operating exactly like the more direct “claiming” associated with Red.
It can lead toward Rage, Avarice, Love, or elsewhere on the Spectrum depending upon what occurs through the pursuit it initiates.
It is hot and empowering.
It can burn.
It can hurt.
It can heal.
It can gently soothe.
Its currently established manifestation is an unnamed man visually conceived as a living, modern Tom of Finland image: intensely desirable at the surface level while deliberately failing to correspond perfectly to the idealized fantasy projected upon him.
He is a “full-on Monet.”
He can look like the Alpha and play the Alpha without necessarily being the Alpha someone actually needs.
He is desirable without guaranteeing fulfillment.
His role does not require cruelty, degradation, manipulation, or deliberate deception.
He can recognize the desire he creates and choose to redirect it constructively.
He is also a Trickster, placing him at an intersection between the emotional Spectrum and a broader Trickster spectrum containing Whimsy, Raven, Coyote, Anansi, and other Trickster expressions.
His Trickster nature does not require him to lie. Sometimes the person desiring him creates the trick through their own expectations and projections.
IR and Whimsy occupy different positions/functions within that Trickster spectrum.
IR and Desire of the Endless overlap substantially but are not equivalent. They are friends with a frenemy quality because IR can serve Desire exceptionally well while also producing movement that ultimately carries someone beyond Desire’s particular function.
The manifestation of IR may appear to be the destination.
Sometimes he is instead simply the thing that got you moving.

Overall Impression

He is 6’0” and in his 30s, built around the visual language of a living, modern version of a Tom of Finland image, but filtered through classic Hollywood rather than exaggerated masculine fantasy. He has the features, presentation, and easy physical confidence that make the eye immediately assemble him into something a little more idealized than the man who is actually standing there.
He is a full-on Monet: absolutely all the things that visually one would want at the surface level, but the closer one gets, the more the projected fantasy gives way to a very attractive but considerably more ordinary human body.
That discrepancy is not because anything about him is unattractive. It is because the first impression encourages expectations that his actual physical details do not always fulfill. He is 6’0” where the “dream” might be taller. He wears a size 9.5–10 shoe where the “dream” might absurdly expect 15+. He looks like the Alpha, and can play the part, but his body itself is not the exaggerated Alpha physique the presentation might suggest.

Build

His build is slim, but soft rather than lean or cut. He has a relatively narrow frame, long-looking limbs, an easy slenderness through the torso, and nothing bulky or heavily developed about him.
The underlying history of the body is that of an amateur runner who ran regularly in his teens and twenties, but is now in his 30s and simply does not have the same time to commit to it. The old proportions remain. His clothes still fit much as they always have. What has changed is what exists underneath them.
He does not have the buff body someone might expect from his overall presentation, nor the tightly lean swimmer’s build that his frame can suggest while clothed. There is less definition than expected. His torso and limbs are softer. He is not fat, but neither is he particularly hard, cut, or muscular. His body has settled naturally with age and a less demanding exercise routine.
Clothed, much of that disappears. Jeans and a shirt hang extremely well on his frame, preserving the silhouette of the younger runner. Undressed, the illusion changes: the body underneath is softer and more ordinary than the clothes suggested.
And then the pants come down, and one particular expectation turns out not to have been exaggerated.

Face

His facial features have a classic Hollywood quality rather than being unusual, severe, or fashion-model strange. The individual features work together easily; the face reads as conventionally handsome almost before any particular feature demands attention.
There is also something slightly late-’70s Hollywood about the total presentation. He should look plausible as a man standing in the present while carrying an effortless visual echo of the handsome men photographed in that period—not costume or retro styling, but the same sort of face, grooming, hair, and masculine prettiness.

Skin

His skin is pale, but not the sort of pale complexion that seems incapable of taking color. He looks as though he would tan easily and well, provided he does not get burnt first.
The paleness therefore reads more as his current coloration than as a defining porcelain quality. There is warmth available underneath it.

Hair

His natural hair color lives deliberately in the difficult space between blond and brown: blond/golden/honey-ish, comparable to Jensen Ackles when his hair leans lighter. It is not straightforward blond, but calling it brown loses the warmth and gold that are visibly present.
Depending upon light, styling, and surroundings, it can reasonably appear darker or more golden. The important characteristic is that naturally warm in-between color.
His usual hairstyle carries the strongest late-’70s Hollywood influence. There is a light bounce to it and just a tiny bit of body on top. It is styled enough to flatter him without looking rigidly styled.
The front forms a soft bang with movement—the sort of bang that looks as though it could be swept away by Barbra. It should retain that little bit of theatrical Hollywood softness rather than becoming a modern sculpted quiff or an aggressively masculine short cut.

Facial Hair

He wears a nicely done, close beard. It is groomed and intentional without becoming elaborate or heavily shaped.
The beard is slightly darker than the hair on his head, creating a natural contrast while remaining compatible with the same overall coloring. It adds definition to the face without hiding his features.

Glasses

He wears glasses, but somehow they do not become part of the immediate visual inventory people make of him.
They are there. They are visible. Nothing supernatural is concealing them. Yet they are the sort of feature one realizes one has failed to register until getting closer: Oh. He wears glasses.
That quality fits the broader visual construction of him particularly well. From farther away, the eye is busy reading the whole package. Up close, smaller realities begin resolving.

Lower Body

His butt is pronounced, particularly given the otherwise slim frame, but it is not exaggerated or comical. It contributes significantly to the way he wears jeans and to the Tom of Finland visual vocabulary without turning his proportions into caricature.
His feet are comparatively ordinary: approximately a men’s size 9.5–10. This is deliberately one of those close-up details that refuses the fantasy. Someone projecting an exaggerated masculine ideal onto him might somehow expect enormous size-15 feet. That simply is not what he has.

Endowment

His endowment is substantial. It is never something that needs to be seen or spoken of directly in the story for the fact to be apparent.
He dresses right. He wears jeans very well. The effect can be noticeable without becoming obscene or requiring the character or narrative to call attention to it.
It also serves as the great joke within the “full-on Monet” construction of his body. Height: less extraordinary than imagined. Feet: thoroughly normal. Physique underneath the clothes: considerably softer and less impressive than the clothed silhouette promised.
Then the pants come down.
That part was not false advertising.

The Complete Visual Effect

The important thing is that none of these supposed imperfections actually makes him undesirable. He remains extremely attractive. What fails under closer inspection is not his attractiveness; it is the exaggerated fantasy someone else constructed from the initial view.
From across the room, he supplies enough information for desire to finish drawing the picture itself: classic Hollywood face, honey-golden hair, glasses one barely registers, close darker beard, slim frame, pronounced ass, jeans that fit exceptionally well, and the physical confidence of someone who looks perfectly capable of being the Alpha the viewer has decided he must be.
Move closer and reality begins filling in the missing information. He is six feet, not towering. His feet are normal. The former runner underneath those clothes has softened in his 30s. The body isn’t buff. It isn’t a swimmer’s body. The clothes have been preserving expectations that the naked body was never obligated to meet.
He has not deceived anyone. He looked exactly like himself the entire time.
The viewer supplied the rest.

A day at the movies... a first meeting...