Construction Post: TOMU 2-46
Nov. 16th, 2011 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerin11/16/2011
5:30-6:00- 800 words
6:00-6:45- 1450 words (+650)
[Half hour in. Getting a bit of a late start on this one, but it comes after enough planning/reflection/composition that the writing is going quickly.]
Waking up and going back to bed multiple times in the course of the same morning had the effect of making the weekend feel like it had already been going on a long time when Amaranth and I finally got up for good early Saturday afternoon, but at the same time it felt like it should have been a lot earlier than it was... like, we just woke up, so it should have been breakfast time.
We'd never really come to an official conclusion about what we were going to do about going to the dance, which meant that Ian's idea of not worrying about who was officially going with whom sort of unofficially won by default.
On a certain level, this made the whole thing a lot easier. Not sweating over who I was going with somehow meant that I was sweating a lot less over things like what I was going to wear and worrying less about who else would be there or what they might think or say...
[]
With half the day gone and the dance ahead, I was basically setting Sunday aside for homework... I'd had a tendency to do that during the slower parts of my freshman year anyway, because I could usually take it to the library and so still keep that part of my social routine.
There was one part of my design assignment that couldn't wait, though... asking for Steff's help in bringing my vision, such as it was, to life. If she wasn't willing or able to help me, I'd have to get cracking on my own sketches all the earlier to make sure that I was able to adequately convey my intentions with them. I wasn't exactly a terrible artist, but I had managed to improve my grade in a junior high art class by keeping my mouth shut while the teacher explained what she thought I'd been painting.
[]
“I've spoken to the teacher about it, and it's not cheating if I supplement my sketches with your art.”
“It's very flattering, but I don't want your little art-crush on me to affect your grade,” she said. “'Art' is not exactly the word for what I do.”
“Okay, then I'll be supplementing my sketches with your slightly better sketches.”
“How much difference can that actually make?”
“More than you might think,” I said. “The project is to redesign a modern utilitarian product in a way that's more... elegant, I guess. I want to take a TV and make it look like a fish tank.”
“And you can't draw rectangles?”
“Well, it's the decorations inside the fish tank... illusionary, obviously... that are the subject of the design,” I said.“And I have something kind of specific in mind. I want a castle and a treasure chest that sort of match the old TV from the fifth floor girls' side of Harlowe.”
“You mean the one you broke?”
“The one Sooni broke, yes,” I said. “My teacher was evidently a fan of it.”
“Does he know you broke it?”
“I don't know who he thinks broke it,” I said.
“I don't know, Mack... I like to doodle, but that's just thinking out loud with my hands,” she said. “I'm really not great at the detail work.”
“That's okay... I don't need finished drawings, just rough concept sketches to get the general idea across,” I said.
“Then why do you need me at all?”
“My sketches are going to be a lot sketchier than yours,” I said. “Yours would at least be able to convey the resemblance. Besides, I have a feeling that your specific style might be better for this particular project.”
It was really a matter of quality over style, but I figured that Steff would be less likely to argue if I said I was looking for her style than if I told pushed the quality issue.
“I don't know,” Steff said. “You know, I've got homework of my own... when you get up into the three hundred level classes the profs aren't shy about bringing the rocks down during the first week.”
“If you don't have time, I understand, but what I'm looking for is really basic,” I said. “If it takes you more than half an hour, you're probably going into too much detail.”
“When do you need it?”
“Tuesday,” I said. “But... they have to be based on my sketches, and I'm not going to have them until tomorrow.”
“Well... I can probably find half an hour to sketch a castle between Sunday night and Tuesday morning,” Steff said. “But no promises about quality.”
“The treasure chest is the more important part,” I said. “And I'm not asking for any promises. Whatever you can manage will be better than what I can do on my own.”
“That much is definitely true,” Steff said.
[1.25 hours in]
Waking up and going back to bed multiple times in the course of the same morning had the effect of making the weekend feel like it had already been going on a long time when Amaranth and I finally got up for good early Saturday afternoon, but at the same time it felt like it should have been a lot earlier than it was... like, we just woke up, so it should have been breakfast time.
We'd never really come to an official conclusion about what we were going to do about going to the dance, which meant that Ian's idea of not worrying about who was officially going with whom sort of unofficially won by default. Amaranth and I talked about it briefly and decided that we would each go over on our own, to give her some time to spend circulating around one of the dorms since she'd spent the night getting intimate acquainted with a book instead of performing her nymphly duties. She'd still be there to step in if I needed support or if things got weird or uncomfortable with Nicki.
On a certain level, this made the whole thing a lot easier. Not sweating over who I was going with somehow meant that I was sweating a lot less over things like what I was going to wear and worrying less about who else would be there or what they might think or say... of course, noticing how little I was worrying made me start to worry, but I was able to cut that line of thought off fairly quickly.
I did have to give some thought to what I would wear, but I decided to just go with one of my nicer dark blue pairs of jeans and a black fitted tee with a bit of an actual neckline... not exactly the stuff I would have pulled on after rolling out of bed if I still got dressed by rolling out of bed and pulling on what I found underneath it, but not exactly the sort of big production I'd gone with for my first dances.
I had a few skirts, mostly gifts from Amaranth and Steff, and even one that had been a Khersentide gift from Two, but I didn't feel fully comfortable in them. The shorter ones left me feeling exposed and the longer ones just felt ridiculous. I could navigate either of those feelings in the context of submission, but I wasn't going out in sub mode.
I did let Two put my hair up in barrettes, after I asked her how I looked and she asked me what I was doing with my hair in a way that suggested that ”nothing” was not an available option. I had a feeling that Amaranth would approve of the effort, and Two certainly enjoyed it.
It was a little weird to think of a golem who'd spent the majority of her life living in what basically sounded like a display case playing dress-up doll with me, but that was how I felt any time Two took an interest in my appearance.
“Thank you,” I said when she was finished and had pronounced the effect to be suitably cute.
“You're welcome, Mack,” she said. “You can pay me back for the barrettes later.”
“Um, I wasn't planning on keeping them,” I said.
“I do not expect you to, either,” she said, and I understood her meaning.
“You will get them back, Two,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “I will be very pleasantly surprised when that does happen.”
She was being very matter-of-fact about it, not snotty at all or anything, but it was definitely irritating the way she just assumed I would lose or ruin anything I borrowed from her. Okay, yes, that had happened before, but it was one thing to extrapolate a future pattern from past events and it was another thing to... the point is there was a good chance that I could get through the night without losing a barrette.
With half the day gone and the dance ahead, I was basically setting Sunday aside for homework... I'd had a tendency to do that during the slower parts of my freshman year anyway, because I could usually take it to the library and so still keep that part of my social routine.
There was one part of my design assignment that couldn't wait, though... asking for Steff's help in bringing my vision, such as it was, to life. If she wasn't willing or able to help me, I'd have to get cracking on my own sketches all the earlier to make sure that I was able to adequately convey my intentions with them. I wasn't exactly a terrible artist, but I had managed to improve my grade in a junior high art class by keeping my mouth shut while the teacher explained what she thought I'd been painting.
Steff had said she might drop in at the dance, which made me think that she probably would... but I thought it would probably be a mistake to assume that I'd see her there, so I wandered over in the direction of Harlowe to see if I could find her.
It was weird how this could feel both completely normal and extremely strange at the same time. Harlowe had been my home for the better part of a year... not even my home-away-from-home, but my only home. I hadn't had anywhere to go back to over the holidays or at the end of the year.
[]
“I've spoken to the teacher about it, and it's not cheating if I supplement my sketches with your art.”
“It's very flattering, but I don't want your little art-crush on me to affect your grade,” she said. “'Art' is not exactly the word for what I do.”
“Okay, then I'll be supplementing my sketches with your slightly better sketches.”
“How much difference can that actually make?”
“More than you might think,” I said. “The project is to redesign a modern utilitarian product in a way that's more... elegant, I guess. I want to take a TV and make it look like a fish tank.”
“And you can't draw rectangles?”
“Well, it's the decorations inside the fish tank... illusionary, obviously... that are the subject of the design,” I said.“And I have something kind of specific in mind. I want a castle and a treasure chest that sort of match the old TV from the fifth floor girls' side of Harlowe.”
“You mean the one you broke?”
“The one Sooni broke, yes,” I said. “My teacher was evidently a fan of it.”
“Does he know you broke it?”
“I don't know who he thinks broke it,” I said.
“I don't know, Mack... I like to doodle, but that's just thinking out loud with my hands,” she said. “I'm really not great at the detail work.”
“That's okay... I don't need finished drawings, just rough concept sketches to get the general idea across,” I said.
“Then why do you need me at all?”
“My sketches are going to be a lot sketchier than yours,” I said. “Yours would at least be able to convey the resemblance. Besides, I have a feeling that your specific style might be better for this particular project.”
It was really a matter of quality over style, but I figured that Steff would be less likely to argue if I said I was looking for her style than if I told pushed the quality issue.
“I don't know,” Steff said. “You know, I've got homework of my own... when you get up into the three hundred level classes the profs aren't shy about bringing the rocks down during the first week.”
“If you don't have time, I understand, but what I'm looking for is really basic,” I said. “If it takes you more than half an hour, you're probably going into too much detail.”
“When do you need it?”
“Tuesday,” I said. “But... they have to be based on my sketches, and I'm not going to have them until tomorrow.”
“Well... I can probably find half an hour to sketch a castle between Sunday night and Tuesday morning,” Steff said. “But no promises about quality.”
“The treasure chest is the more important part,” I said. “And I'm not asking for any promises. Whatever you can manage will be better than what I can do on my own.”
“That much is definitely true,” Steff said.
5:30-6:00- 800 words
6:00-6:45- 1450 words (+650)
[Half hour in. Getting a bit of a late start on this one, but it comes after enough planning/reflection/composition that the writing is going quickly.]
Waking up and going back to bed multiple times in the course of the same morning had the effect of making the weekend feel like it had already been going on a long time when Amaranth and I finally got up for good early Saturday afternoon, but at the same time it felt like it should have been a lot earlier than it was... like, we just woke up, so it should have been breakfast time.
We'd never really come to an official conclusion about what we were going to do about going to the dance, which meant that Ian's idea of not worrying about who was officially going with whom sort of unofficially won by default.
On a certain level, this made the whole thing a lot easier. Not sweating over who I was going with somehow meant that I was sweating a lot less over things like what I was going to wear and worrying less about who else would be there or what they might think or say...
[]
With half the day gone and the dance ahead, I was basically setting Sunday aside for homework... I'd had a tendency to do that during the slower parts of my freshman year anyway, because I could usually take it to the library and so still keep that part of my social routine.
There was one part of my design assignment that couldn't wait, though... asking for Steff's help in bringing my vision, such as it was, to life. If she wasn't willing or able to help me, I'd have to get cracking on my own sketches all the earlier to make sure that I was able to adequately convey my intentions with them. I wasn't exactly a terrible artist, but I had managed to improve my grade in a junior high art class by keeping my mouth shut while the teacher explained what she thought I'd been painting.
[]
“I've spoken to the teacher about it, and it's not cheating if I supplement my sketches with your art.”
“It's very flattering, but I don't want your little art-crush on me to affect your grade,” she said. “'Art' is not exactly the word for what I do.”
“Okay, then I'll be supplementing my sketches with your slightly better sketches.”
“How much difference can that actually make?”
“More than you might think,” I said. “The project is to redesign a modern utilitarian product in a way that's more... elegant, I guess. I want to take a TV and make it look like a fish tank.”
“And you can't draw rectangles?”
“Well, it's the decorations inside the fish tank... illusionary, obviously... that are the subject of the design,” I said.“And I have something kind of specific in mind. I want a castle and a treasure chest that sort of match the old TV from the fifth floor girls' side of Harlowe.”
“You mean the one you broke?”
“The one Sooni broke, yes,” I said. “My teacher was evidently a fan of it.”
“Does he know you broke it?”
“I don't know who he thinks broke it,” I said.
“I don't know, Mack... I like to doodle, but that's just thinking out loud with my hands,” she said. “I'm really not great at the detail work.”
“That's okay... I don't need finished drawings, just rough concept sketches to get the general idea across,” I said.
“Then why do you need me at all?”
“My sketches are going to be a lot sketchier than yours,” I said. “Yours would at least be able to convey the resemblance. Besides, I have a feeling that your specific style might be better for this particular project.”
It was really a matter of quality over style, but I figured that Steff would be less likely to argue if I said I was looking for her style than if I told pushed the quality issue.
“I don't know,” Steff said. “You know, I've got homework of my own... when you get up into the three hundred level classes the profs aren't shy about bringing the rocks down during the first week.”
“If you don't have time, I understand, but what I'm looking for is really basic,” I said. “If it takes you more than half an hour, you're probably going into too much detail.”
“When do you need it?”
“Tuesday,” I said. “But... they have to be based on my sketches, and I'm not going to have them until tomorrow.”
“Well... I can probably find half an hour to sketch a castle between Sunday night and Tuesday morning,” Steff said. “But no promises about quality.”
“The treasure chest is the more important part,” I said. “And I'm not asking for any promises. Whatever you can manage will be better than what I can do on my own.”
“That much is definitely true,” Steff said.
[1.25 hours in]
Waking up and going back to bed multiple times in the course of the same morning had the effect of making the weekend feel like it had already been going on a long time when Amaranth and I finally got up for good early Saturday afternoon, but at the same time it felt like it should have been a lot earlier than it was... like, we just woke up, so it should have been breakfast time.
We'd never really come to an official conclusion about what we were going to do about going to the dance, which meant that Ian's idea of not worrying about who was officially going with whom sort of unofficially won by default. Amaranth and I talked about it briefly and decided that we would each go over on our own, to give her some time to spend circulating around one of the dorms since she'd spent the night getting intimate acquainted with a book instead of performing her nymphly duties. She'd still be there to step in if I needed support or if things got weird or uncomfortable with Nicki.
On a certain level, this made the whole thing a lot easier. Not sweating over who I was going with somehow meant that I was sweating a lot less over things like what I was going to wear and worrying less about who else would be there or what they might think or say... of course, noticing how little I was worrying made me start to worry, but I was able to cut that line of thought off fairly quickly.
I did have to give some thought to what I would wear, but I decided to just go with one of my nicer dark blue pairs of jeans and a black fitted tee with a bit of an actual neckline... not exactly the stuff I would have pulled on after rolling out of bed if I still got dressed by rolling out of bed and pulling on what I found underneath it, but not exactly the sort of big production I'd gone with for my first dances.
I had a few skirts, mostly gifts from Amaranth and Steff, and even one that had been a Khersentide gift from Two, but I didn't feel fully comfortable in them. The shorter ones left me feeling exposed and the longer ones just felt ridiculous. I could navigate either of those feelings in the context of submission, but I wasn't going out in sub mode.
I did let Two put my hair up in barrettes, after I asked her how I looked and she asked me what I was doing with my hair in a way that suggested that ”nothing” was not an available option. I had a feeling that Amaranth would approve of the effort, and Two certainly enjoyed it.
It was a little weird to think of a golem who'd spent the majority of her life living in what basically sounded like a display case playing dress-up doll with me, but that was how I felt any time Two took an interest in my appearance.
“Thank you,” I said when she was finished and had pronounced the effect to be suitably cute.
“You're welcome, Mack,” she said. “You can pay me back for the barrettes later.”
“Um, I wasn't planning on keeping them,” I said.
“I do not expect you to, either,” she said, and I understood her meaning.
“You will get them back, Two,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “I will be very pleasantly surprised when that does happen.”
She was being very matter-of-fact about it, not snotty at all or anything, but it was definitely irritating the way she just assumed I would lose or ruin anything I borrowed from her. Okay, yes, that had happened before, but it was one thing to extrapolate a future pattern from past events and it was another thing to... the point is there was a good chance that I could get through the night without losing a barrette.
With half the day gone and the dance ahead, I was basically setting Sunday aside for homework... I'd had a tendency to do that during the slower parts of my freshman year anyway, because I could usually take it to the library and so still keep that part of my social routine.
There was one part of my design assignment that couldn't wait, though... asking for Steff's help in bringing my vision, such as it was, to life. If she wasn't willing or able to help me, I'd have to get cracking on my own sketches all the earlier to make sure that I was able to adequately convey my intentions with them. I wasn't exactly a terrible artist, but I had managed to improve my grade in a junior high art class by keeping my mouth shut while the teacher explained what she thought I'd been painting.
Steff had said she might drop in at the dance, which made me think that she probably would... but I thought it would probably be a mistake to assume that I'd see her there, so I wandered over in the direction of Harlowe to see if I could find her.
It was weird how this could feel both completely normal and extremely strange at the same time. Harlowe had been my home for the better part of a year... not even my home-away-from-home, but my only home. I hadn't had anywhere to go back to over the holidays or at the end of the year.
[]
“I've spoken to the teacher about it, and it's not cheating if I supplement my sketches with your art.”
“It's very flattering, but I don't want your little art-crush on me to affect your grade,” she said. “'Art' is not exactly the word for what I do.”
“Okay, then I'll be supplementing my sketches with your slightly better sketches.”
“How much difference can that actually make?”
“More than you might think,” I said. “The project is to redesign a modern utilitarian product in a way that's more... elegant, I guess. I want to take a TV and make it look like a fish tank.”
“And you can't draw rectangles?”
“Well, it's the decorations inside the fish tank... illusionary, obviously... that are the subject of the design,” I said.“And I have something kind of specific in mind. I want a castle and a treasure chest that sort of match the old TV from the fifth floor girls' side of Harlowe.”
“You mean the one you broke?”
“The one Sooni broke, yes,” I said. “My teacher was evidently a fan of it.”
“Does he know you broke it?”
“I don't know who he thinks broke it,” I said.
“I don't know, Mack... I like to doodle, but that's just thinking out loud with my hands,” she said. “I'm really not great at the detail work.”
“That's okay... I don't need finished drawings, just rough concept sketches to get the general idea across,” I said.
“Then why do you need me at all?”
“My sketches are going to be a lot sketchier than yours,” I said. “Yours would at least be able to convey the resemblance. Besides, I have a feeling that your specific style might be better for this particular project.”
It was really a matter of quality over style, but I figured that Steff would be less likely to argue if I said I was looking for her style than if I told pushed the quality issue.
“I don't know,” Steff said. “You know, I've got homework of my own... when you get up into the three hundred level classes the profs aren't shy about bringing the rocks down during the first week.”
“If you don't have time, I understand, but what I'm looking for is really basic,” I said. “If it takes you more than half an hour, you're probably going into too much detail.”
“When do you need it?”
“Tuesday,” I said. “But... they have to be based on my sketches, and I'm not going to have them until tomorrow.”
“Well... I can probably find half an hour to sketch a castle between Sunday night and Tuesday morning,” Steff said. “But no promises about quality.”
“The treasure chest is the more important part,” I said. “And I'm not asking for any promises. Whatever you can manage will be better than what I can do on my own.”
“That much is definitely true,” Steff said.