In pursuit of a quote...

I played Dominion tonight with some friends. As I've already mentioned Dominon on here, I won't go into details on the game. Just suffice it to say that there are a lot of cards that you can possibly have in a game, but not every card is used every time, and I have a new set of cards that we haven't played with that often. Anyway, the point of this story is that I kicked bajajazootiebootie at Dominion, tonight.

... ok that's not actually the point, but it's along the road to the point!

The point is that the reason I was so good at Dominion tonight is that we'd played with these cards before, and I'd lost horrendously- but we only played with them once and it was a while ago. See, the thing is, I'm not actually very good at coming up with strategy for Dominon. What I'm good at is remembering what strategy works well with what cards. And so here's how the arc of my game stats go, over many instances of play. The very beginning- Abysmal. Then suddenly I shoot to super-rockstar-awesome status, the second time we play. But then other people start to remember what the best strategy is for what cards and my stats drop back down to below average, because when everyone is using the same strategy, the more effective one is the one everyone isn't using.

I think this kinda goes hand in hand with my style. I'm a mimic. It's true of social situations, it's true of communication styles and personality quirks/gestures, and it's true of creativity. Well, with creative things it's a little stranger, when my mimicry and creativity meet I get an effect I call bastardization. (Some might call it adaptation, but they are less colorful than I am.) This adaptation skill was put to use quite a bit when I was doing theatre-- How do we get this church to look like the inside of a house for 3 days? We paint some flats and foam sheets with fake wall paper and add some furniture and voila!*

I work best when I already have a base to work off of, though-Then I can take other people's ideas and change them to suit my needs... Like how do I make a katamari costume? Well, I buy a pattern for a tennis ball/pumpkin costume and then I add katamari nodules on it.*

How do I make a good gnome clip art for t-shirts for Drama club? I take a Santa picture and change his clothes and add a tall pointy hat.*

It's still definitely creative-- "Hey, look, the handle of this spoon can be the nose on a Sponge Bob cake if we color it yellow!"* It's still looking at things with new eyes and from a unique perspective. "Hey, if I take the sleeves off this blue velor mini dress, iron a fancy insignia on the chest, rip the seams up the sides about 3 inches and belt it with a big belt and some short pants and the right shoes, it's a perfect prince costume!"*

Inventive, yes... bastardization, definitely. I'm like the MacGyver of creativity.

And yes, I did write this entire post just so I could use that last line. I'm told I'm quotable... then again, mayhaps that person was just being nice.

*all of these examples are pulled from my real life. I'd include pictures, but I can't seem to find all of them.