#I’m trying to use tags more for organizational purposes but I’m so bad at keeping up with it

[sophisticatedswifts]

In the wake of ttpd, I keep thinking back to the original cardigan lyrics, particularly “I knew to love would be to lose my mind” because I feel like that, more than anything else, sums up this album

[merigreenleaf]

About the secondary characters:

1.) Talan: equal parts cheerful and peculiar, Talan has almost a lethal case of curiosity. He’s something of a magpie who collects various bits of everything in a personal quest to discover its purpose. He has a tenuous grasp on the concept of possessions and tends to think of anything that isn’t currently being worn or carried or nailed down as fair game. How can it be thievery when the person clearly doesn’t want it any more? He’s Firedrake’s boyfriend, at least for a little while, and Dray’s malfunctioning moral compass hasn’t exactly been the best influence in Talan’s life. Relatively new to Concordia in particular and civilization in general, Talan struggles with things like laws, idioms, and telling other people apart. He’s determined to learn these things, though, and wants more than anything to fit in. (Moodboard  / Pinterest board)

2.) Camille: a priestess whose magic allows her to summon and control elementals. She was sent away from her home temple, the Sanctuary of Light in Montglace, with an order not to return until a specific task was completed. Almost a decade later she has not lost the determination to see this through, just as she retained the frustration with the partner she was assigned. Camille never forgave Rosalie for being the one selected to work with her; as a shadow priestess, Rosalie technically outranks Camille, but Rosalie’s weak magic makes this entirely insulting to someone who values power and status over all else. Camille is highly judgmental, arrogant, and career-focused to the point where one goal is all that drives her life. She sees the task she was assigned as one simple yet long-delayed step towards proving herself and gaining recognition, and blames Rosalie for the time they’ve wasted in leaving it unfulfilled. She’s determined to become the high priestess of her Sanctuary and will do whatever it takes to obtain this goal– including belittling, threatening, and using the woman who is her only ally in a place far from their home. (Moodboard  / Pinterest board)

3.) Sapphire: Etri’s former mentor and thieving partner, as well as one of his closest friends. She’s currently the leader of the carnival troupe in Silveridge, the capital city of Concordia, and coordinates the city's performers. This is about as effective as herding cats. When Sapphire isn't sorting out who's performing at which venue and breaking up arguments about costumes, she can be found in her other organizational role with the troupe. Many of the performers are also thieves who return stolen art back to the artists who created it and it's up to Sapphire to keep track of what each reverse-thief is doing so that they don't cross paths or get caught. Sapphire excels at this administrative role, being calm, competent, and experienced, while at the same time her strong desire to take care of the people she considers family makes them intensely loyal. Keeping her carnies safe always comes before anything else and there's nothing her troupe wouldn't do for her in return. (Moodboard / Pinterest board)

4.) Feren: loves styling himself into a tragic victim. As one of the few unmagical Artisans, he has always felt like he deserved more than life gave him despite having everything handed to him and roads of opportunity available at every turn. He was once Adair and Nina’s sentinel-intended, but he felt he wasn’t good enough at it and dropped out of this role. He’s currently studying as a scholar with no real career goal in mind while working at his girlfriend’s restaurant as a waiter and delivery boy – when he can be bothered to show up. If an easy road to recognition and leisure presents itself, he’s going to jump on it with no questions asked. He’s always seeking to improve his lot in life with the minimum amount of effort on his part. (Moodboard / Pinterest board)

5.) Wysta: the lead healer of Blythe, Etri, and Sol's carnival troupe. She was Blythe's main instructor and mentor and taught Blythe most of what she knows about healing magic and medicine. Wysta is a former Protectorate and her shaved head is a sign of giving up the life of a guard. Specific braids designate status as a Protectorate and it’s a ritual to cut off the braid when you pick a different path in life. Usually a former Protectorate will let their hair grow back, but Wysta keeps her head shaved as a personal-- and practical, considering her profession-- style choice. While Wysta is efficient and sensible, contrasting with the flightier personalities of the carnies she calls family, she possesses both a great sense of humor and a friendly bedside manner. There are very few people Blythe admires and respects, so it says a lot that she holds Wysta in the highest regard and trusts her with information she doesn't give anyone else.

6.) Ametrine: a quiet and timid runaway who finds himself fostered with the carnival troupe in Concordia's capital city. There he meets Firedrake who had also been a runaway from Galanvoth. Firedrake takes Ametrine under their wing and when they introduce him to their friends, Ametrine soon discovers that these new people care more about him than his family ever did. When Adair asks him if he wants to be adopted, he doesn't really understand why they want him, but agrees without hesitation. The way Ametrine sees it, five people who love him is far more like a family than two traditional parents who didn't. (Moodboard / Pinterest board)

7.) Nina: a chef with culinary magic who owns her own restaurant. As much of an honor as it was to have it passed to her when the old owner retired, she was really given this opportunity too early. This isn't to say that she's not a capable chef and businesswoman, more that Feren keeps messing things up for her and it would have been better if she'd had the chance to break up with him first. Every time she tries to do this, some disaster happens, and this gets pushed to her backburner. Feren has already scared off half of the employees with his perpetual bad attitude while simultaneously refusing to do the work he should be doing as her muse-intended. Between dealing with Feren’s drama, still being in the “experimenting with magic" stage of her career, and trying to run a busy restaurant, she hasn't had a moment's peace in months, let alone been able to travel to try new cuisine. Someone give this poor, overworked girl a vacation.

(I’m going to be (eventually? possibly?) talking about the secondary characters in the Unexpected Inspiration series, so I figured I should make a post so I can link to info about who the heck I’m talking about when I do ramble. I have a character page on my blog with bios, but you can’t see pages in the tumblr app, so I’m using this as a kind of master post so people using the app can see it, too. I’ll update this as I write more detailed bios about each character.)

(Mobile-friendly) Unexpected Inspiration Series Tags & Links:

About the Series: Series & WIP Info / Moodboard Posts / Short Stories / World Building Posts / Writing Tag Games /  All Blog Posts About the Series

About the Characters: Main Character Info / Secondary Character Info / All Character-Related Blog Posts

Character Specific Posts: Adair / Blythe / Etri / Firedrake / Sol / Rosalie / Sapphire / Ametrine / All / Other / Trio

[placetobenation]

*** I was born in 1990 and became a wrestling fan in 1996. Shawn Michaels was my first favorite wrestler, and I watched every minute of the Attitude Era religiously. Needless to say, 90s WWF is my wrestling foundation. I have heard about the mythic era of the NWA and the territories, (and of course I’ve seen bits and pieces) but never truly steeped myself in all its glory. Follow my fresh/ignorant breakdown of classic wrestling! ***

A prize far more prestigious than a gold belt.

The beautiful luxury vehicle you see above will play heavily into this episode, but we’ll get to that soon enough.

To start the show, we get the first glimpse (at least for my purposes of this writing) of the on-screen figurehead of the promotion, Sandy Scott, who looks like Davy Crockett and Bob Caudle fused into one body. As you’d expect, they play this very straight as if this were a true professional sports organization. Scott’s a droll character, which makes a lot of sense because athletic organizational figures are usually pretty boring and droll, and he explains that athletes want big money, so he’s doing his best to get the very best athletes.

Ricky Harris vs Jay Youngblood Youngblood’s strategy in this match centered solely on slapping on headlocks, presumably to keep the big man down. Every time Harris gained some momentum, he was cut off with headlock, until Youngblood decided to put him out of misery with some chops and, finally, a flying chop.

I have enjoyed Youngblood throughout these shows, but man, this match was a chore. He had Harris in a headlock – and this is not an exaggeration – for at least 80% of the match. And not even interesting, captivating headlocks. These were lay-on-the-mat-to-a-silent-crowd headlocks. I guess it’s just a product of the way these shows are put together in this era that you will get some junk from time to time, even from solid wrestlers. Also, if his promos are any indication, Jay may have been in altered state. 

Winner: Jay Youngblood via pin Rating: DUD

Sgt. Slaughter, accompanied by Pvt. Nelson, comes out for a promo. Slaughter mentions “the big fat Indian,” who is known more commonly and less racist-ly as Wahoo Mcdaniel. After a clip of Wahoo, Slaughter whips out a contract for he and Wahoo to fight anytime and any place. For as intense and energetic as his promos are, Sarge never stumbles on his words. As long as there’s no spelling involved, he’s gravy. 

United States Heavyweight Champion Sgt. Slaughter vs Ken Hall Not a whole lot to recap in this one. Sarge kneed Hall in the gut a few times, then slapped on the clutch. Hall got one punch in that was not sold one bit.

In a nice touch, Slaughter screams for Wahoo the entire time he is toying with Hall. That said, I usually enjoy this Slaughter squashes, but this one felt particularly dull. His offense didn’t look as devastating, unless I’m just becoming immune.

Winner: Sgt. Slaughter via submission Rating: ½*

Announcing Aside I’ve started to realize that Davy Crockett works much better during matches than in interviews and studio segments. Bob’s stoic demeanor needs to be supplemented with some more pronounced emotion, and David and his yelping do that job. Maybe I’ve been too hard on poor Davy. His cheesiness kind of grows on you, like Vince on commentary. 

Next we get a promo for a local show in Roanoke, Virginia, a wonderful small mountain city that I’ve actually visited. The highlight here is a long rambling promo from the Russian Bear/Cookie Monster Ivan Koloff, who will be putting up his (TV?) title against Jimmy Valiant, who will be putting up his Cadillac. Hopefully Koloff wins so we can have some vignettes of him cruising around in Jimmy’s Cadillac car.

Bob has Sandy Scott again for the next segment. After some prompting from Bob, Sandy leads us into his own question about attracting great athletes to Mid-Atlantic, but he completely botches the wording of his question.  See Sandy has been thinking of something, and he’s come up with something–an incentive if you will. So he asks: “What would anybody would like today?” And Bob gives a genius response.

And Bob’s right because Sandy reveals his plans to stage a tournament for a brand new 1982 Cadillac, worth $20,000! Nothing brings me more joy than the melding of territorial wrestling and The Price is RIght. They should call the tournament the “Showcase Showdown”. To top it off, I assume Valiant won the Cadillac that Koloff was grumbling about earlier. The timeline of these shows can be confusing to say the least. As we see, the whole show keeps building up the tournament, yet we already know the winner. 

Next, to illustrate the top talent Sandy has for Mid-Atlantic, we cut to some taped footage of Tommy Rich in a match against a portly man with a mustache named Tony Russo, who may have been the inspiration for Wario. Rich certainly has the look – tall and blonde in the mold of Flair, Barry Windham, etc. that seemed to be prevalent in 80s wrestling – despite the match not being the greatest.

Announcing Aside During the Tommy Rich footage, Bob and Sandy provide voiceover commentary in studio, and let’s hope that Sandy keeps his day job in management because he struggled mightily here. Despite Rich being the showcase, they spend the majority of the match putting over how excited the talent will be to wrestle for a Cadillac. At one point, he refers to Rich as a “fan lover.” Too bad I don’t have a gross wrestling story about Tommy Rich.

And the Cadillac craziness continues! The heel trio of Piper, Slaughter, and Ole come out to further put over the presumed Caddy tournament/battle royale/whatever. Piper highlights the entire segment with his always wonderful ranting, including that he would “sell his grandma to the Huns” for 17 grand. Sandy says they better watch out for “King Kong” Anthony Mosca. And to one-up his performance earlier, Sandy calls Piper, “Rodney” Piper. Maybe this was common at the time, but I’m not giving Sandy the benefit of the doubt. Plus, Bob laughs at him for it.

The list of guys who want this car will be a mile long! Or so I’m told.

In a quick promo segment, Jay Youngblood has be reminded of what comes after Sargent in Slaughter’s name, Steamboat mentions that petitions are coming in for him to fight Piper, and Jake seconds Steamboat while wearing a plastic snake on his hat, the first reference to he and snakes I’ve seen here. I love the use of social activism as an effective means of setting up a match.

Next up, The Boy from New York City, Jimmy Valiant, squashes Deke Rivers to some jangly piano. I don’t this as a match, as it felt more like a weird bumper segment than an actual match. 

Piper comes out to refute Steamboat’s request for a title shot, and rambles away as we see some footage of Steamboat fighting a man in a blue mask. See, Steamboat was suppose to beat him to earn a shot, but the ref got bumped, Piper interfered, and then, in a wonderful piece of heeling, got his masked buddy to count him the winner in a match he was never in.

**Catch some Mid-Atlantic action at the Roanoke Civic Center, featuring THE WINNER OF THE CADILLAC Jimmy Valiant against Ivan Koloff and a super young Barry Windham against Ric Flair. Again, all this hype for the Cadillac and the winner is basically spoiled.**

Jake Roberts and Ricky Steamboat vs Super Destroyer and The Grappler Jake and Steamboat come out quick trying to hobble Super Destroyer. Neither team can really gain an advantage due to the quick tags, until Grappler and Destroyer start working Jake over. Piper and Ole come down looking for trouble, but Jake hits a DDT which allows him time for a hot tag. Before the Steamboat can grab a pin, Piper yanks him for the disqualification.

This was on its way to being an excellent tag match before Piper cut the third act short with his interference. Jake and Steamboat are such an effective face team because they can both sell for sympathy and also come out on fire for a comeback. I love Jake’s knee lifts. In other news, Bob and Davy continued to gush over the Cadillac during the match.

Winner: Jake Roberts and Ricky Steamboat via disqualification Rating:  ***

To end the show, Steamboat shows his own version of the tape which shows that he actually did beat the masked man for the title shot. He calls Piper “Casper the White Ghost.” Again,Steamboat spitting fire with the insults, continuing the conflict with he and champ, Rodney Piper. And that’ll do it for this week!

End of Show Notes MVP: Sandy Scott An unorthodox pick, but this was an unorthodox episode with not much real wrestling. He brought the Cadilliac to the show, and his goofy segments are easily the most memorable parts of this show.

If You Only Watch One Match: Jake Roberts and Ricky Steamboat vs Super Destroyer and The Grappler

Best Non-wrestling Segment: Piper, Ole, and Slaughter Cadillac promo

Overall Impression: Again, this was an odd episode with not many true matches in favor of odd studio segments and pseudo-matches. I still rate this one above average just for the novelty (at least for me) of a wrestling show being so fixated on giving away a car as a motivator. Certainly not something I’ve seen much, so it gets a small bump for originality. Rating: 6/10

So long for now!

[akashamichelleblog]

Where Do You Find Creative Ideas?

Ideas are seeds that need to grow. What you need is a process for collecting ideas and nurturing them until they’re ready.

Where do you find your ideas? It’s a common question that gets asked at some point by every creative person struggling with ideas. The thing is you don’t find ideas. Instead, you set up an environment for ideas to find you.

The more you do anything, the better you get at it. Creativity is no different. You have to exercise your creative muscles and train them. It won’t happen overnight, but if you keep at it, you will come up with more and better ideas.

Ideas are seeds that need to grow. They need time and care to become more than an idea. What you ultimately need is a process for collecting ideas and nurturing them until they’re ready.

Step 1: Set Up Your Collection Process

Finding ideas isn’t the problem. Ideas are everywhere. You have to train yourself to recognize which ideas are the ones you can turn into something worthwhile and that starts by setting up a collection process for any idea you have.

Ideas really are plentiful and you probably have more of them every day than you realize. One reason we think ideas are hard to find is because we let most of the ones we have drift away before we record them. The best ideas might come back to you, but do you want to take that chance? If you don’t record the idea the moment it comes to you, it may be lost to you forever.

Better is to set up a collection process. Have a single place where you keep any idea that comes to you; a swipe file of sorts. Where is up to you.

I like to store my ideas digitally and I’ve used a number of apps over the years. I tend to use note taking apps, though a database app (or something like Evernote would work well, too).

Any method that works for you is fine. You can collect your ideas in a notebook or even collect them all on scraps of paper that end up in a shoebox. The main thing is for all of your ideas to be collected in a single location.

Equally important is to have something with you at all times to record new ideas or add new thoughts to older ones. Odds are you have a smartphone with you wherever you go. If so, you can write your ideas. speak them, draw them, take pictures and video of them, or use any other form of input your phone allows.

Again, it doesn’t have to be digital. You might prefer to carry around a small notebook or sketchbook and write or draw your ideas with pen or pencil. You might have to try several forms of collection to find which one you like best.

You can have multiple places where you initially collect ideas when they come to you. You never know when you’ll have an idea and you should have a way to record any idea as quickly as possible. When you have more time you should move all your ideas into your central storage location, the sooner the better.

Ultimately there are two reasons to collect ideas. One is to store them for later use. The other is as a way to exercise and build your creative idea muscles.

Step 2: Generate Ideas to Exercise Your Creative Muscles

Recording every idea that comes to you is a good way to exercise your creative muscles. You practice being creative every time you come up with new ideas. The exercise part of idea collection is less concerned with any of the specific ideas and more concerned with helping you become better at recognizing ideas.

If you make it a habit to collect all you ideas, you’ll find yourself having more ideas more often and you’ll start noticing better and better ideas as you do. It’s practice and like everything else, the more you practice, the better you get.

Not too long ago I read an article by James Altucher with an exercise for generating ideas. His suggestion is to write at least 10 ideas every day, typically around a theme like “10 businesses I can start” or “10 ways I can promote a product.”

The article was business focused, but the themes are up to you. You can write “10 things a horizontal line communicates” or “10 characteristics of the color purple” instead of ideas specifically about starting new businesses.

Step 3: Nurture Your Ideas

As an exercise collecting all your ideas is great practice, but hopefully you want to do something with the ideas you’re collecting.

The second function of your idea storehouse is to provide a place where your ideas can be nurtured. Ideas become something through their execution. The idea is the seed and seeds need to be cared for before they become plants. Your ideas need time to grow as well.

Unless I’m pressed for time when I’m recording an idea, I’ll usually jot down some quick thoughts with it. I might write down what I was doing just before the idea came to me. I might brainstorm and see where the idea takes me. Sometimes I have an immediate goal in mind for the idea and I’ll write that down.

I prefer to spend at least five minutes writing down whatever comes to mind, though I’ve at times spent an hour or more fleshing out the idea the moment it comes to me.

As you continue to collect ideas and spend a few minutes adding notes to them, you’ll start to notice things during your day that will work with an idea in your collection. Record what you noticed and add it to your idea when you’re moving things to your central storehouse.

While ideas are everywhere, most aren’t very good. Most are best left as ideas in your collection. Unfortunately it’s hard to know which ideas are the good ones and which are the bad ones until you’ve attempted to turn the idea into something finished. It gets easier with practice, but you do need to work through some ideas to get that practice.

Some ideas simply take time. Time for the idea to mature or even time for you to be ready to turn it into something more. Maybe one idea needs to be combined with another or some are really multiple ideas and need to be separated before you can do something with them.

You’ll likely revisit your ideas multiple times before you ever do anything with them, which means you’re going to need a way to retrieve them from your collection.

Step 4: Organize Your Ideas for Better Retrieval

When your storehouse has only a handful of ideas you can easily find them again, but hopefully you’re going to fill your storehouse with new ideas daily and pretty soon you’re going to need a way to organize ideas so you can retrieve them.

Your collection becomes a well to draw from whenever you need an idea or want to pursue one. How you organize it is up to you and what your collection tool allows. I recommend organizing your ideas in some way, whether it’s a directory structure with folders inside folders or a system of tags.

You want something that lets you view groups of ideas in isolation from other groups. I find folders are good to keep things separate, though tags offer more flexibility in how you combine them and filter your results.

I try to use both systems and I say try, because it’s a lot of work to remember to place things in the right folder or add a few relevant tags to an idea when you first record it.

Your organization should change and evolve over time as well. One of the main reasons I switch collection apps at times is because the new one offers better methods for organizing and retrieving what’s collected in it.

It’s also a good opportunity to review your ideas and organization.

Step 5: Review Your Ideas and Your Collection System

Your ideas need time to grow. Your organizational system needs time to evolve. You’re going to revisit your storehouse often and I recommend regular reviews of your ideas, system, and organization.

The review is a good opportunity to look again at your ideas after a little time has passed so you can see them with fresh eyes. It’s easy to get locked into an idea, even a bad one, after you’ve put a little time and effort into it. A review with fresh eyes makes it easier to see the ideas that are better left for later and those that are ripe now.

Sometimes during a review I find ideas I’d forgotten about. Sometimes seeing two separate ideas I notice a connection between them. Sometimes just looking over idea after idea, fills me with new ideas to record and add to my collection.

During reviews I’ll add more notes to the ideas I revisit. It might be a thought that pops to mind and it might be an active brainstorming session for the purpose of adding notes.

Little by little I build up ideas this way so that when I’m ready to work on one, it’s already more than a simple idea.

Ideas are anywhere and everywhere

Where do you find your ideas? Anywhere and everywhere. The trick is not to focus or worry about the ideas themselves, but to focus on the process of collecting ideas in general.

Set up a system where you have something to record ideas with you at all times. Record ideas as they come to you and add a few notes as time allows. As soon as possible move your ideas into a central repository where all your ideas are stored.

Having a process for collecting and storing ideas is good practice for generating more ideas. You’ll find the more you keep the habit, the easier it is to come up with new ideas and the better your ideas will be.

Nurture ideas that weren’t born ready. Review the ideas you’ve collected and add to them, combine them with other ideas, or let them inspire you to come up with completely new ideas.

If you keep at it, in time you’ll discover the question to ask isn’t where do you find ideas, but how do you find time to work on all the ideas you have?

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