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The things that hide in our heads...
Oct. 11th, 2006 11:32 pmSo.
For the past week or so, Mark's been hip deep in a CAD-type program trying to put a shape on an idea he's been incubating for the past three months. As he works on the machine's skin, he tells me about its bones, its nature, the nature of the beast that invented it in the first place, the nature of the universe he's working it to live in. The fact that it'll have to be pilotted by someone 160 lbs. or less is turning less into a feature of the machine and more a plot device--your pool of potential pilots just got narrowed down to blokes built like Mel's Seamus or Ed. How many guys in a meat-and-starch-and-grain society are going to be that damn slender? You're SOL... Unless you open the pilotyness to women.
So while he's fleshing out his world building a machine, I'm wrapped around the axel of the idea of a person. What sort of woman thumbs her nose at a Victorian-era society's impressions of her place in the world and takes up a position with the military and their dangerous aerocraft? That kind of woman makes her own rules and then lives by them. She calmly, firmly doesn't take shit off of anyone. She's good. She's slick. She's tough as nails.
In my book, that means she's pretty.
Don't give a damn what she looks like; if she's walking around with that much brass and the steel beneath to back it up?
She's gorgeous.
Down I sat with a pencil and an attitude, then, determined to give this gamine a face.
Took a good six hours, but I've got her to my satisfaction.
I've spent the past thirty minutes looking at her--the expression in her eyes, the set of her mouth, the angle of her chin--because damn it, she looks familiar. Nothing like me, mind; I haven't spent that much time in front of the mirror for this one. No time at all, in fact--she's strictly a creature of memory, bone structure, and "yeah, that feels about right."
So how in hell could she resemble someone?
At first, the blonde hair throws me and I'm thinking I've internalised more Marilyn Monroe than I'd thought... But that's not right; there's no vamp in that face, no coquette, just serene strength...
And then it hits me.
In my mother's guest room is a photo of my grandparents holding my eldest aunt, who at the time was maybe three months old.
My touseled, peaceful, steel-boned aviatrix?
Is a blonde version of my grandmother in her twenties.
...
Isn't it interesting how we learn beauty?
...
...
...
.
For the past week or so, Mark's been hip deep in a CAD-type program trying to put a shape on an idea he's been incubating for the past three months. As he works on the machine's skin, he tells me about its bones, its nature, the nature of the beast that invented it in the first place, the nature of the universe he's working it to live in. The fact that it'll have to be pilotted by someone 160 lbs. or less is turning less into a feature of the machine and more a plot device--your pool of potential pilots just got narrowed down to blokes built like Mel's Seamus or Ed. How many guys in a meat-and-starch-and-grain society are going to be that damn slender? You're SOL... Unless you open the pilotyness to women.
So while he's fleshing out his world building a machine, I'm wrapped around the axel of the idea of a person. What sort of woman thumbs her nose at a Victorian-era society's impressions of her place in the world and takes up a position with the military and their dangerous aerocraft? That kind of woman makes her own rules and then lives by them. She calmly, firmly doesn't take shit off of anyone. She's good. She's slick. She's tough as nails.
In my book, that means she's pretty.
Don't give a damn what she looks like; if she's walking around with that much brass and the steel beneath to back it up?
She's gorgeous.
Down I sat with a pencil and an attitude, then, determined to give this gamine a face.
Took a good six hours, but I've got her to my satisfaction.
I've spent the past thirty minutes looking at her--the expression in her eyes, the set of her mouth, the angle of her chin--because damn it, she looks familiar. Nothing like me, mind; I haven't spent that much time in front of the mirror for this one. No time at all, in fact--she's strictly a creature of memory, bone structure, and "yeah, that feels about right."
So how in hell could she resemble someone?
At first, the blonde hair throws me and I'm thinking I've internalised more Marilyn Monroe than I'd thought... But that's not right; there's no vamp in that face, no coquette, just serene strength...
And then it hits me.
In my mother's guest room is a photo of my grandparents holding my eldest aunt, who at the time was maybe three months old.
My touseled, peaceful, steel-boned aviatrix?
Is a blonde version of my grandmother in her twenties.
...
Isn't it interesting how we learn beauty?
...
...
...
.
