#that i can't plot this! i have to design a tapestry about it! until i do some palate cleansing creative something and can regroup

[cjgladback]

Well now I know that if I do get facts relating to any of those crafts they might indeed be fun for you! I'm definitely more on the planning side of crafts as soon as I know vaguely how they work--I always want to design something from scratch in a replicable way versus just making A Good Object or (perish the thought) enjoying the process for its own sake. That might have something to do with the different kinds of patience--but has had mixed results with origami and if I'm not careful everything I knit ends up looking like a stitch sampler. (I'm hoping to go to a fiber festival in about a month and considering taking a dye workshop there--to hopefully discover if I have that brand of patience before I have to buy and store that gear.)

I think if there's craftsmanship to a discipline (which I'm going to define as a way to make the resulting product feel or operate better with more intention and skill), then it counts as crafts. So carpentry is definitely a craft! And if you got wild enough with mediums or needed them to fit a specific context, so could drawing and painting be. But maybe I'm just replacing the word "design" with "craft" in that case.

Nice to hear your perspective on the sketch-to-lineart-like writing process! I might just need more practice to be sufficiently comfortable writing that I don't feel like I'm losing connections between things when I go from acting something out in my head to even an animation or webcomic script where there will be a visual element. Or it might just be an unavoidable loss no different from editing out unnecessary exposition and letting the background be implied.

I've recently mostly been learning techniques (regarding specific software, video game optimization, animation, and fiber art) and am not to the point I can share them condensed into fun facts (or fish facts). So instead, if you wish, questions: do you practice any crafts? And do you often have to translate scenes into written form that you think of first or better in another medium?

I am sure you have facts!

But okay, yeah. I do. I'm not great at most of them! But I whittle and I sew a bit and I knit and I throw pots and I work with beads, things like that. I studied weaving in high school but I haven't touched a loom in years. I attempted dyeing I don't have the correct sort of patience. (There are so many distinct types of patience.) I got into spinning as a kid but I'm allergic to wool.

I also draw and paint but I think those are arbitrarily on the 'art' side of arts and crafts. I do a very little bit of carpentry. Is that crafts.

As for translating...maybe a little? Diana Wynne Jones advised that when setting a scene you should fix an image of as much detail as possible in your head and describe that, as if it was a real thing you have under observation, to avoid accidentally retreating into abstracts and gestures and therefore cliches, and she was so right.

And when it's heavily kinetic things like a fight scene, you are at a severe disadvantage if you're not doing your sketch at least partially in the physical.

But it rarely feels like translating, which is a word heavily freighted in my opinion with epistemological limitation; the treason of our minds in that one thing will never wholly become another, that the second version may be a fine thing in itself but can only approximate its original.

I'm comfortable with words as a medium, they're definitely the one I'm smoothest with, and the prior imagined version is only ever of my conjuring, specifically for the purpose of giving me something to set down in text, and doesn't exist in any larger sense, so I mostly experience this transcription process as quite an adequate capturing of the essence of the idea.

Even when it isn't satisfactory, it tends to feel more like when your linework comes out worse than the sketch somehow, if you know what I mean? Not like if you saw something beautiful and then your painting of it was shit. These are two distinct flavors of frustration.

If I was prone to like, tripping out on mushrooms for inspiration I would probably have that problem more. But my cognitive processes don't really run off ahead of me very often in a creative sense, except in terms of how fast I can type and if I lose my thread in the time it takes to get a pen or a keyboard ready.

For the most part, the bulk of the work is situated within the process.

This is also reflected in which crafts tend to work well for me; clay has always been nice because you can feel your way along and figure out the route as you get there, but the clay doesn't tend to have strong opinions about what you can do with it beyond its basic characteristics like plasticity, which is information you can detect with your hands.

[jeannereames]

This might be a bit of an odd question so please bare with me! I'm trying to make a pokemon ROM hack (if you don't know what that is just read it as "a 16-bit game") which has a portion set in the place Thessaloniki would have been living in when Alexander died (or a little before his death, within the year at least) -- from what I can tell that would be the palace at Pella, since she didn't seem to get married until after his death, so I'm not really sure where else she would be

I've found the layout of the palace online, and have a fairly simple little map made based around it, but I can't figure out what "Building II" (to the left from the main entrance, I think) would have looked like inside; it being a place to entertain guests is all I can find. What would some basic decor be in a room for entertaining guests? Couches? Rugs might look more Persian but around the time of Alexander's death the palace might have some Persian decor right? I'm admittedly taking liberties all over the place with the design of the palace for plot (or bc 16-bit doesn't allow for much detail, or because it looks cool...) so I'm not really looking for "this is the exact layout of this room we found blueprints" or anything! Just what kind of decor might be there :)

First, any layout of the Pella palace excavation is for the Hellenistic palace, not Philip’s. Like the nice big houses in the lower town, it’s later, enlarging on Philip’s palace. All these buildings show the absolute FLOOD of wealth that entered Pella as a result of Alexander’s conquests.

So that massive palace that’s the size of 2 football stadiums, end-to-end, is not the palace Alexander grew up in, but the prior palace, Philip’s palace, probably supplied the basic structure. Even when it was built, it was considered the largest free-standing building in all of Hellas. (Yes, larger than the Parthenon or Temple to Zeus in Olympia.)

The outer, or public, part of the palace, the front part, would have been a courtyard surrounded by offices, storerooms, and dining rooms. In my novels, I also gave it a “megaron” after the Mycenaean palaces: a throne room. Doubtful it had one, but we don’t actually know, so I can make up a (reasonable) structure. There were several dining rooms in the palace, the main room (where the king ate) and “spill-over” rooms for additional guests. This is probably the room you were curious about—one of the (several) dining halls. The average Greek symposial chamber, or “andron,” held only 7, 9, or 11 couches (yes, always an odd number). The dining rooms in the Pella palace were enormous.

As I recall, there’s some info about it in the Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedon, ed. By Lane Fox, a whole chapter that describes Pella (incl. palace), by Akamatis, chpt. 18.

As for décor, pebble mosaics seem to have been the style for ground-level floors in wealthy houses. Upstairs would be more lightweight material: wood, or perhaps even rushes, covered by rugs. And yes, these rugs might have been from Persia, but don’t think the modern Persian Rug. Carpet making in that area of the world is very old, but the modern patterns you see are medieval and later. Still, yes, Xenophon remarks on Persian carpets. They would have been made of wool (modern true Persian rugs are hand-knotted from silk; wool is still used, but cheaper and holds dye less well). There might also have been tapestries on the walls, but more likely paintings in the plaster (e.g., frescoes). Well from Persia—and India—would almost certainly have been visible, if not necessarily in the furniture. Likely smaller objects on display. (Supposedly ATG sent rubies from India to his mother and Kleopatra, btw, but we could bet Thessalonike got some too. Or maybe he sent her pearls. *grin*)

Yet the plain fact (pun intended) is that the insides of Greek (and Macedonian) houses were boring. The PUBLIC areas would have been decorated, just like the symposial chamber of a Greek house was by far the most decorated room; it was meant for guests. But most walls just didn’t have wall decor. They didn’t have cabinets or closets. Instead, things were hung on the walls. Look at vases. You’ll see random stuff (lyres, ladels, wreathes, cooking implements, tools, armor….) in the background sometimes. That’s meant to be hanging on walls, not just stuck there by the artist. (See below) Also, there wasn’t much in the way of furniture. Couches (doubled as beds), folding stools, chairs (without arms), chests, standing looms. Modern homes would be BUSY to the Greek eye. Also, windows were small and high…didn’t want strangers looking in at their women! Balconies and porches and courtyards were common, then as now, and decorated with plants, then as now.

While the Macedonian palace would have been much larger, I’ve included several pictures of Athenian homes just to give you an idea what they held. And how they were arranged. The Macedonian “back” part of the palace would have been the private quarters, with the women in the gunaikon (women’s rooms) upstairs. Also, a bathroom is, literally, a BATH room, not a toilet. The royal kitchen would almost certainly have been at least twice as large as a Greek house kitchen. They may even have had two of them, to produce enough food for royal suppers, and all those guests.

Last, the Pella palace had a round room or "tholos" which is a religious room for cult to the Argead ancestors/Herakles/Zeus: "ta patria." There was probably also an altar in the main courtyard, as well, for the king's daily sacrifice.