So years ago when the world was still green and flowers smelled like something, the wife and I decided we would start recording the games we did so we could write them out later. This is basically like recording a play happening, with tapes that aren't film so you don't get the motions, you just have to guess what exactly is happening. And it probably sounds cornier than it really is.
Anyway, it's been years since we did this. Over ten in fact, and eventually we stopped taping, but now we have containers and containers of tapes that are recordings of stories never written with characters neither one of us really remember. Which is probably a good thing because now I can laugh at myself.
It's come to our attention, as we're about to move again, across country, again, that maybe we don't want to take all these tapes with us. I mean, are we ever going to listen to them and get the stories off of them? So I made a proposal. Since I type faster than she does, and since I actually seem to have bat-ears *waves at Tanzy who created the nickname* I would take a week and try transcribing. See if I can't listen to these tapes and type out the details so all we have to do in the future is edit the works. Sounds like a plan, and I took a box home.
Which leads me to the next part, it's really quite sad that we didn't manage to keep everything organized, there's at least four stories in this one plastic box and I'm sure none of them are finished. Oh well. So I picked a story that had several of the first tapes and began on it.
Now, I know I had a great (have a great) imagination, but the character I created was... well, she doesn't exist. Which is fine, in general, because people like me make all sorts of strange things up. However, if I ever go to actually edit this story, this character needs serious reworking. For one, she can't be a punk/metal/depressed but happy about it/renaissance mixed with now a days clothing wearing/not drug addicted/tarot card reading/incredibly accurately detailed drawing/outspoken/used to be popular but isn't anymore/intelligent woman. It's not really possible. She hangs out with the druggies, but she doesn't do drugs, but she goes to parties that have loud heavy metal music that makes people call the cops on them and when they do raids there's drugs and alcohol involved, which she doesn't do. Plus her tarot reading is so accurate, people come back to her again and again for followups, and occasionally she tells people not to use certain decks, because of they do, then the predictions will be scary or frightening. She melds ren clothing with current, mixing and matching to her desires and her best friend is a Lineage Witch. Her family used to be rich, but her dad had some sort of work issue and now they aren't, so she isn't popular anymore because of it. Oh, did I mention her friends were starting a band, and she plays electric guitar? She doesn't have one of her own, probably because her family is broke, but she has enough money to begin buying tarot decks, so many that she carries them around with her and no one really knows how many she has. Just came out she wants an even fifty, and she has forty-eight. Even if some of those decks were a gift, she wouldn't be able to buy all those, and why the hell would she carry them ALL around with her. During our current conversation I find out she draws, and not just well, but so fantastically detailed that you can almost see things moving in the background. Proportions are exact, she's meticulous, and very much a perfectionist. Her current project is making her tarot deck.
Two weeks have gone by in this story and so far all she's done is a few readings and talked to the main guy character, who has a drug problem and she wants to help him out. She hasn't practiced her guitar, she hasn't met with any friends except the Lineage Witch, and she hasn't done homework or drawn. I have to assume that her irritating personality is what made this other main character give in to talk to her, either that or the halo over her head made him curious.
I had one hell of an imagination if I thought it was even possible for someone to be able to do all of that by the time she was 16. Well, junior in HS anyway. I was probably a junior when we did this, so I have to have known how impossible it was for someone to be that way, right? Well, apparently not.
So she needs a lobotomy, and possibly a decisive mommy who makes her less an impossibility and more an improbability. I like her, over all, except that she's really quite hyper and she seems to think she knows everything. As I am an Aries, and I often seem to think I know everything (except how to do plumbing. I pass the wrench to anyone who's good at that.), I assume that was what was going on. I really hope her guitar usage never comes into light in the story.
And as for the art, if she was going to be an artist, then she needs to have spent a lot more time on it than I'm sure she's spent. Not that she couldn't be an artist, just that she couldn't be as good as she is, if she hadn't spent hours, days, months and years perfecting her skill. I officially know an artist, and I am QUITE aware of the kind of work that goes into the pages drawn. *Smiles at Tanzy* It's work she hasn't done, or she wouldn't be as good at the tarot as she is. It's not that I don't think a person can be good at more than one thing, but I know for a fact that they can't be fantastic at everything. Things take time, learning takes time, study and hard work take time. If she is always doing tarot, then that is her focus, and she can be an artist, but she can't also be a genius on the guitar. And if she goes to heavy metal parties where there is drugs, and those are her friends, then probably she's tried them. It's kind of hard to relate to people who aren't your kind of people. I know. I've been there.
And if she knows all about the renaissance time, then she's studied it, and that means she's spent time on that, she can't be a genius of all of that as well. It's not that I don't think there's potential in her, because she is a fighter, and she does have a personality that is useful, but I know I have to do work. And it's irritating and frustrating that I am listening to myself act so.... well, so irritating and frustrating. I can hear myself fumble, and hear myself grasping for knowledge that I didn't have, trying to wing it when I didn't know jack crap about my words.
So I'm enjoying getting this stuff off of tape and into the cyber world of my computer (3 tapes done now!) but I am frustrated and embarrassed by myself. I think that eventually I'll slightly deaden to it and that will make me better at transcribing.
Oh, and the guinea pig and cat in the background? They need to go. I can hear them better than myself sometimes. Purring, meowing, rubbing against the microphone... it's distracting, and sometimes ear bleedingly loud.
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