Plot Lines and Crossed Lines

For the past two weeks, my AP lit class has been working with Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. One of the things my lit teacher said before we started was that Arcadia had six different plot lines but he only wanted us to pay attention to two. He also told us that Arcadia takes place in two different time periods, but everything happens in the same room. So as we are reading the two things we are supposed to keep track of gets pointed out to us and so goes the keeping track of things and such. Now, I love plot lines. Plot lines are the reason to watch or read anything (duh), but multiple plot lines, oh it's Christmas!

In Brave New World, chapter 3 had three different scenes going on at once and the way it was written was that it would have a clump from one thing and then jump to another and then jump to another and continue that way in no particular order. The clumps got progressively smaller until it was just a sentence or two from one thing before jumping. Reading chapter 3 of Brave New World was the most fun I've had with a book in a long time. Until Arcadia that is.

With Arcadia, I had fun figuring things out and keeping track of the events happening in the past and present. For whatever reason, keeping track of multiple plot lines comes somewhat easy to me. Do I get things mixed up, turned around, and crossed? Yes, I do sometimes more on that later. But the fact that my mind is able to keep up with things and switch to something else at the drop of a hat amazes me (Probably how I'm able to adjust the settings on my camera without much thought). Normally, my mental things like this stay in realm of lit and my entertainment, but recently a concept in econ put my plot line thing to use.

In econ, we recently (I say recently but it was two weeks ago) did game theory and worked with the matrix table thingy. The thing about game theory and such is that you have to pay attention to the details given and which things go with which player and what happens if one player does one thing. Multiple factors, multiple outcomes. Plot lines, that's all it is.

Now, the lines crossed thing. Sometimes I do get things mixed up or smush things together. I call it getting my lines crossed. When I'm actively working multiple things and I'm dealing with various casts of characters and their own plots, I sometimes have to stop and remember what I'm working on and what has already happened. Sometimes I have to reread something and refresh what I had happen. There have been moments when I've stopped and gone, "Wait, this happened? I thought it was this that and the other." Sometimes I'll smash two characters together and think they are one. I get lines crossed. It's inevitable. But sometimes my line crossing flows into other things. Today, I smushed two different types of graphs together into one in econ. Right type of market, but with the product and factor market graphs smushed together. *Shrugs* Meh, stranger things have happened.

So yeah, plot lines. Plot lines, plot lines, plot lines. Not sure if anything I just said made any sense, but if it did yay, winning at life. I might do a brain dump or another "Broadway and lit" thing (the last one I did like that was in October with The Tempest). For now, Sanders out.

Really Brain, We're Going To Do THIS Now

It's been a while since I've done a total brain dump so I'm going to do one now. What's a brain dump? A term I just came up with to describe the random stream of consciousness inner musing thing I do every now and then because I think my brain is so strange and my life so random. Anyway, brain dump... [cue theme music and title sequence].

Random Sticky Note
I have a random sticky note on my desktop. On it, it says, "Flash drive is a representation of my life." I wrote that about a week ago or something, I really don't know. Anyway, now I'm trying to remember why the flash drive represents my life. It was probably because things get added to it, taken out, and, when I don't keep track of how often I've used it, probably has a lot of random stuff on it that I forgot existed. Yeah that sums everything up. It gets used and guarded and for a while, the only goal is to not lose it. I live and try to not die (I'll get to that at some point) and for a moment, everything is more or less in order and I try not to loose my marbles or something. I lose it, or leave it somewhere and look at it everyday but still forget that it exists. My life falls apart (happens semi-often), or I loose my hold on reality and the plane of existence and only go through the motions of life. It's small and easy to forget about (old memory from my past that I don't like to dredge up). It's contents change but the outside stays the same. Okay, so I don't look the same but the basic concept is there, I grow, I change, I have character traits that are very different from the ones I had when I was younger. The flash drive is a representation of my life... I like it.

Seriously Brain, Why?!?!
In my Lit class, we are reading Arcadia. So after day one of reading about carnal embrace and the running gag that followed, I walked into class with my inner self really wanting to make a "That's what she said" joke. Skip to the end of the day, I'm in 7th period and my teacher has a couple of the guys go get some butcher paper.

Guy 1: What color paper do you want?
Teacher: I would prefer white, but really something I can write on.
My Brain: That's what she said.
Me: Why brain, why?

Stop It Brain, You KNOW This
Another thing my brain has been doing is registering things strangely. Like I know, my teacher was wearing a navy shirt, but my brain was registering it as purple. Like legit, I say to myself, "That shirt is navy" and in my mind would say "That shirt is purple." And then a friend of mind takes Spanish and I know she takes Spanish. That's all she's taken since freshman year. And my brain was like, "She just came from Chinese class." My brain is strange and I'm pretty sure I'm going mad. It's irritating to look at something and have to process for a moment what the heck it is. I just looked at my camera, my partner in crime, my one true love (too far? Too bad *sticks out tounge*) and was like, "You are red... You're a Nikon... I gave you a name... Ooo pineapple juice, wait that can is empty... Oh! You're name is RoA... Wait, that's right but wrong... Ages, Rock of Ages." And then I turned to my beautiful film camera and was like, "I think you're Ted. No Ted is my favorite chart. You're Colonel. Not that's not right. General? No... Major, like Major General Sir. Right..." I'm loosing myself right? Maybe not... Who knows. I don't, and my brain sure doesn't. I would say stranger things have happened, but I can't think of any examples.

Lines Of Dialogue, But No Plot
I'm a creator. I create things. Whether or not those things come to physical form in the real world is another mater. I see a blank room and I think about the different ways I could paint and design it. I visualize photo shoots that I would run if I had the money or contacts. I come up with creatures and beings that I would love to be able to draw and give life to. I write to share what's in my head. The characters I create and take time to give a past to mean so much to me. In my head, there is a section dedicated to them, like a large room really (like the room of requirement in Harry Potter) where I can mentally check on them and see what they are doing at the moment and can listen to them and converse with them sometime (I usually keep my original characters separated from the characters I'm attached too from various fandoms- Bryan Caplan and Tony Stark must never meet... Same with Conrad Heist and Anthony DiNozzo... Don't get me started on the disaster that would be Loki and Ryan Colbert [daddy issues to the max and Ryan is impressionable right now]). Anyway, lately I've had only a few ideas on how to move my plot lines forward. What I have in surplus are various dialogues that don't really fit with anything, and it's not dialogues that are feel good fluff pieces either. I'm getting snippets of pure sarcasm and internal monologues that aren't mine. I'm getting words that mean nothing to me (it's my brain's way of trying to speak Latin, that much I know). I'm getting supernatural beings that I'm slowly creating. I'm getting images of groups in cloaks paired with gothic instrumentals. It's strange. My brain gets like this every so often when I get stressed with the world and such. It's been a while. The last time it happened I created my own "universe" (our world, my terms) and two casts of characters with a connection between two, one from each cast (Neil Heist and Conrad Heist, brothers). I really don't want to end up with another acronym obsessed character Bryan Caplan is hard enough to deal with (once I've taken the time to give them a personality I don't have control over what they do). So for now, I'll probably just jot down ideas, write lines of random dialogue, and maybe even do some character creation. I'll probably also take a few back to the drawing board and either rework them (if they go willingly that's a sign I'm doing the right thing) or add to their pasts and personality (that can be fun, but sometimes painful because reasons).

So that's my brain dump. I'm probably slowly loosing myself or something but that's okay I always find myself again in the end. So for now, Sanders out.

Di Immortales!

I've just finished rereading Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief. I couldn't remember why I liked the series in first place and after finding out about Riordan's new book that's due to come out later this March, I decided that now was a good time to take on the task of rereading all the Percy Jackson books, Kane Chronicles, finish reading Heroes of Olympus, and read Riordan's other new book, Magnus Chase. In addition to that, I splurged on ebooks, because that's the medium I'm using lately, and I got the three short stories Riordan has written that is a crossover between Percy Jackson and the Kane Chronicles. I'm excited to be doing this and I'll probably post periodically about where I'm at and my own reactions to the books I've read before and to the books I'm reading fresh. Now... The Lightning Thief... where do I start... Sarcasm is usually something that doesn't get conveyed that well and gets lost when reading the work. One of the things that I love, and I'm remembering that I loved, about the Percy Jackson series was the dialogue that added to the character's personalities. Here are some of my favorite things said by characters in The Lightning Thief.

"I'm thinking of turning you into a dolphin instead, and sending you back to your father." - Dionysus

"I hate it when people say that! I hate Australia! Naming that ridiculous animal after me." - Echidna after Percy mentions the creature.

"I felt like drowning myself. The only problem: I was immune to drowning. Your father believes in you, she had said. She'd also called me brave... unless she was talking to the catfish." - Percy

"A hundred yards away, at the entrance pool, the Cupids were still filming. The statues had swiveled so that their cameras were trained straight on us, the spotlights in our faces. "Show's over" I yelled. "Thank you! Good night!" The Cupids turned back to their original positions. The lights shut off. The park went quiet and dark again, except for the gentle trickle of water into the Thrill Ride of Love's exit pool. I wondered if Olympus had gone to a commercial break, or if our ratings had been any good." - Percy

Moments of light when the dark is upon, that's what I like. Anyway, that's all, Sanders out.