Today’s writing is all notes, so I really don’t know how to snippet it. But I have figured out how to map siblings to cousins and everything else. And I only had to change one person’s death date, extrapolate the existance of another person, and outright create a third to make it all work.
*lets head thump onto the desk*
I am just really, really glad that Muzio Sforza had so damned many known offspring. It made it so much easier to figure the whole mess out.
Ok, that’s just to make the Sforzas work as they do in the show. Then there was working out how to make things work for the OC, and for one of the relationships to make sense. And I have thirty years worth of plot figured out, so I have plenty of stuff to play with once I actually get to this particular story. If I get to it as more than notes.
So. No snippet today, but there’s the spoiler-free ramble about the newest addition to the spreadsheet of doom.
*cackles* I just blew things up and what didn’t blow up got set on fire!
(And then my Sim went and put out all the flames before anything burnt to uselessness or the little heaps of scrap could be set on fire too.)
There is something very satisfying about getting a Sim up to level 6 of the inventing skill and setting up a circle of things to detonate. Even when it goes a little badly, and lights shit on fire. Just. BOOM!
I went to reread one of my own fics, because I’d forgotten which fic went with the title that popped up in my kudos email. Apparently, I’d also failed to notice a comment. Easy enough when there wasn’t a notification email (I checked. I don’t delete them until I’ve replied to them, and this one wasn’t replied to, so there should have been one).
I read it, and started laughing. Because, dude, if you failed to pay attention to the canon, it’s not my job to convince you that a part of canon I didn’t change actually exists.
Besides, how the hell do you come to the conclusion that someone whose mother’s family has a legend they have elven heritage somewhere in their past, and someone who fights orcs on a regular basis would refuse to believe in other species? Seriously? Did we read the same book? Watch the same movies? Because somehow, I really doubt it.
*goes back to giggling, because the other options are crying and screaming, and neither is appealing right now*
2. Well-written gen fic with my favorite minor/obscure characters. Or books with characters that are aro/ace/agender (any combination of those) and not broken or evil because of that, and don’t get “cured” at the end by the Power of Love.
3. Jessamine, my cat
4. Swimming
5. Bears! Polar bears and grizzly bears and panda bears and all the fuzzy four footed lazy darlings what could eat me. Also, the plushie kind, because they are soft and squishy and always there to listen and be cried on.
(Anyone who wants to play, feel free. I do not have the spoons for figuring out who are the last ten in my activity right now.)
I would like to destroy something because I still can’t go out of my apartment without a lot of effort to hide from the sun, I can’t open the curtain of the window next to me for the same reason, I can’t get my laundry done until Monday, there was a lot of ow today because it’s a red day, and it’s hard to do dishes when sun comes in the window over the kitchen sink.
(And despite all efforts to hide from the sun while going to deal with the produce delivery today, I still got mild sunburn on my face. Fuckdamnit.)
Two more days. Two more days of this stuff, and then I am done. And I can go back to taking closer to fifteen minutes than five or less to begin to burn.
In happier things – I have spent two days marathoning CSI Miami and taking notes so I can play in one of my AUs. And also compiling little bits and pieces to support a headcanon or two of mine about one of my favored characters. (Also adding a new headcanon to my list because of bits about the actor, combined with stuff about the character.) I love being able to find things that make me think a character is ace-spectrum (demi or gray ace, in this case), and also neurodivergent (this one I’m not as settled on, but there are bits and pieces that make me think ADD). Also, he is easy on the eyes, which does not hurt at all.
Hmm… rewatching Damar’s death scene (ouch ouch ouch all my feelings hurt) and it seems like he actually gets hit three times and it’s possibly the third one that burns through his armor and kills him? It’s a fast-paced scene and I was trying to figure this out by pausing a lot. I am still not sure… but I do think he is certainly hit more than once. Does anyone happen to know?
I don’t know without rewatching, and right now, I’m not in a good headspace for those feels, but whether it is or not, that is going to be my new headcanon. (Also, now I have thinky thoughts about parallels between Damar and Boromir (movie canon version), because three shots to bring them down? Aauugghh!)
Talented people doing art: lol just trying out some new techniques with this advanced program I downloaded, I think it’ll really help with my use of colors and composition! 🙂
Me doing art:
since I just heard Mrs Hess’s voice echo thunderingly around me like the greybeards, she would like to amend this with ’practiced’ in place of ‘talented’.
her Talent Rant was a thing of beauty and I wish i had a recording of it. i get the feeling expressed here, i do! and i do agree that people are differently good at different things, if that’s how we’re defining talent.
but i was surrounded by some incredibly talented artists growing up, and i looked at their art, looked at mine, and went ‘welp i have no talent for drawing.’ but what my friends hadn’t had was an abusive first grade teacher who flat-out told me that i had no talent for art, i had no business wasting my time writing and drawing, and i was a terrible child for wasting my parents’ hardwon money on such fantasy. and i stopped. the only time i drew was when it was demanded of me in an art class, i wrote stories only in my head.
my sixth grade art teacher tried really hard to pull me out of that, but it wasn’t until i had her again in eighth grade that i started to listen to her.
even then, i would say ‘i’m not good at drawing, but that’s ok, nobody’s gonna see it anyway’ and i would never accept any compliment on it. ‘oh man you should see (insert friend here) they’re so much better than mine’ etc. their art came from talent, in my eyes; i couldn’t make art like theirs, so i didn’t have any talent.
enter Mrs Hess.
Mrs Hess, slightly terrifying, very intimidating, kind of the McGonagall of the art department at my high school, somehow got that whole sob story out of me on like week one of the art fundamentals class. i remember sitting at my desk crying because i’d cried on my paper and wrecked a piece of nice paper and upset my teacher. She took me to the nurse’s office, told me she’d sign me off if i wanted to go home, or i could rest for the remainder of the block.
She took attendance a few days later like normal and then sat on her desk (which she Did Not Do) and gave us the Talent Rant.
it started with holding up Will’s self-portrait. Will was well on his way to photorealism. his looked like a black and white photo. She asked us how we thought he’d drawn it. talent, we decided. Will was just better than us. she then said “Will is becoming a very skilled artist, but his talent is not what is making that possible.” and asked him when he first started drawing. Will shrugged and said he didn’t remember, but he’d gotten in trouble for drawing in class since ever. she nodded. “and you’re sixteen?”
he agreed. “so you’ve been practicing drawing with pencils for more than ten years, then.”
we were all kind of taken aback. she looked at us and said “you’re five or six when you start school, right? and he’s sixteen now. sixteen minus six- i know I’m your art teacher, but i still know that’s ten.”
then she asked Stephen if she could show his. it was obviously a beginner’s effort. she then asked for one of his caricatures (he drew comics, caricatures of teachers and events for the school paper & stuff.)
she held them up side-by-side and asked us if we would say this was a talented artist, if we didn’t know they were both from the same person. before we responded, she asked Stephen how long he’d been making comics- his answer, similar to Will’s. “and how long have you been making drawings like this (showing self-portrait)?” Stephen: “uh, when did you assign it? like a day after that.”
she held forward the caricature. “ten years of practice.”
then she held forward the self-portrait. “three days of practice.”
she gave his stuff back and sat back on her desk, just kind of watched us in silence for a moment.
“Talent is bullshit. What you think of as Talent is practice. Don’t ever write yourself off as being bad at something because you can’t do it well the second you pick it up. If you don’t want to put in the time to train yourself in something, don’t. that is entirely okay and entirely your choice. but giving up solely because you don’t think you’re talented enough to pursue something is a great disservice to yourself. if you take one thing from this class, i want it to be that.”
she had a longer, more nuanced version of it, of course. the only part i remember verbatim is the start of ‘talent is bullshit’ because it’s always shocking when your teachers swear for the first time.
but i had never considered the idea that i was so many years of practice behind those friends whose art i admire so much.
We don’t teach kids how to read and then expect them to read War and Peace- that doesn’t mean that there aren’t seven year olds who can read War and Peace, but we don’t tell the rest of them that they have no talent for reading because they can’t yet do so. when a kid says ‘i’m no good at reading’ we say ‘you just need practice’ but when a kid says ‘i’m no good at drawing’ we say things like ‘everybody’s good at different things, and that’s ok.’ which, yes; that’s a good sentiment to teach. but we have this view of art and music like it’s a binary- either you’re good at them or you’re not, and we don’t challenge it the way we do with other things.
I feel like I need to tag @euclase in case she somehow hasn’t seen this yet.
Talent is indeed bullshit.
I mean listen. All of that reply above is right on the money.
But not even portraits—if you can sign your name, you can draw. Because what is signing your name? It’s a practiced movement, done hundreds of times. It’s putting pen to paper confidently and with personal style in order to communicate and express yourself. When you sign your name, you don’t worry, you don’t hesitate, and you don’t compare it to what other people are doing.
“But signing my name isn’t drawing,” you argue. “It’s just my signature.”
It’s literally the same thing.
And you can do it because you practiced.
I have never seen this with art before – but this is very encouraging to me.
However, this is also true of music and math.
Math is not really a “talented or not” thing. Most people are scared out of math by bad teachers – when really if they’d just been encouraged to practice (yes that does mean homework) they would have been able to do math.
Case in point there – my dad got Cs and Ds in math in high school (that’s like – nearly failing- for non-US people). He then went on to college, decided he wanted to be an engineer, and worked at practicing math.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 