I did my map! Yay me! :)
Ted and I also put together the new shelves for my office, so that room is starting to be unpacked for the first time in almost two years. While I was unpacking and putting things up, I had a realization: if you took 16 year old me, just graduated from high school, and dropped her into my current office, she would recognize it. It would clearly, to her, be herself.
Oh, there are *details*, sure. The Rogue thing, for example. I didn’t get into Rogue or the X-Men until a year or two after I graduated high school, when I was in Fairbanks and there was a comic shop readily available. She wouldn’t specifically go, “OMG, she’s still into Rogue!” or anything like that. (She wouldn’t go OMG at all, actually, because she’d be totally unfamilar with that particular acronym. Nevermind that.) But she would say, “Ok, yeah, sure, I can see it,” especially if I had any sort of the classic Jim Lee Rogue displayed (which I do), since that was the Rogue that got me into the whole thing*.
There’s stuff she’d quite literally recognize: there are at least four pieces in there that I’ve had since high school. There’s an original pencil sketch of Ember by one of the later ElfQuest artists; she’d *certainly* recognize the character, if not the drawing itself. If I had the Goodtree print–no, she wouldn’t recognize that, not literally; that was a 1991 calendar, I think. She’d recognize the music–musicals and Bon Jovi, anyway–if not the format. She’d be a little horrified at the lack of books in the room (it’s all research or things I wrote, but OTOH, things I wrote!), but she’d presumably accept it as a workspace choice.
It’s possible she’d look around and say, “My God, I haven’t grown up at all!”, but I think, really, that she’d be pretty pleased.
So would you recognize yourself from a room twenty years in your future?
*Speaking of which, can anybody, off the top of their heads, tell me which issue of “X-Men” (as opposed to “Uncanny X-Men”, I’m pretty damned sure) it is that Rogue’s up on the rooftop sulking and Gambit comes up to talk to her, nearly touches her shoulder, gets belted for it, and comes back with a blanket to wrap around her shoulders so he can hold her, and promises everything’s going to be okay? Because that’s the specific issue that did me in, and Jim Lee’s going to be the GoH at Dublin Comic Con this year, and I Must Have That Issue Signed. It’s before issue #30, which is Scott and Jean’s wedding.
eta: Mom requested office-in-progress photos, so they start here. :)
Ack. That would require digging out the half dozen boxes of comic books and actually looking.. or asking Mark.}:P
Or not.. he says that must be a new series cause the older series of X-Men was in the 100’s.
*shrugs* We don’t have the newer comics, well, not many, we have older ones- 80s,90s and early 2000s.}:P
The comic in question is from somewhere between 1991-1993. And, having actually gone to the trouble of *looking* myself, I’m pretty sure it’s X-Men #24, which means it was pencilled by Andy Kubert, not Jim Lee, so huh.
Mmph. Books, papers, disks all over every flat surface, including the desk, the chair, the floor (that latter not my fault so much any more, it’s the cats these days, pushing things off the shelves; but still infinitely familiar from the days when, yup, that was me); heavyweight computer gear; empty coffee cups; boxes full of books; walls & ceiling & woodwork in bright, emphatic colours (gold and crimson, more or less, these days; twenty years ago it was more the green & purple, but still…); one solitary piece of art, my all-time favourite painting, then and now: yes, of course. What’s not to recognise? I have, emphatically, not grown up at all.
Well, given that it’s been 20 years since I graduated from high school…
I’d recognize the mess, most definitely. And the books. Well, I’d be startled at how many non-fiction books I own, but not so much the topics. What would be a surprise is the computer and all the computer games. Considering that personal computers were not all that common, and they didn’t have anywhere near the processing powerd they have today…That would be startling.
And there would be the disappointment that this room isn’t anywhere near a NASA facility. But oh, well. I ended up where I’m at.
Yay on achieving maps! (Personally maps are the hardest part for me, even more despised than the dreaded synopsis. Then, again, I can’t draw).
As for my office–my eighteen year-old self would recognize it as hers. I still have my desk from college (now used to hold printer and other electronics), the dictionary I was given as a high school graduation present, and the stuffed koala that was my companion in college. Plus, of course, there are books literally everywhere, both fiction and non-fiction, which has been a trademark of my living spaces since I earned my first paycheck.
I think what would surprise me most is how many of those books have my name on the spine :-)
In this particular case, since the story is set in an alternate-world Europe, the map was not really all that *difficult* to do. I just had to get my act together and *do* it. :)
*beams* Hooray for books with your name on the spine. Eheheh. :)
The map for my current series is best described as “a crab with claw issues.”
Which is better than the map for the Devlin books, where honest to god they hired an artist to trace the map I’d done, complete with SQUARE ISLANDS. Yes, square islands, found only in the finest fantasies.
20-year-ago Scott would recognize today’s Scott’s workplace. It’s an open space (a dining table in the living room) that is defined as a “space” because it is open. There’s candles and a selection of pens and notepads (usually unused except when they’re very used)and five boxes with odd things inside that make the boxes exciting and interesting to open. The bookshelf is near at hand and jammed, and the only actual book on the table is Creatures of Light and Darkness, which I’ve been wearing out for about two decades.
The only thing twenty-year-ago Scott would be surprised at is the area around the space is not a ridge of clutter shoved off of the table. Progress, I feel, although he might wonder who is tidying up around him. :)
I wouldn’t necessary recognize particular things, but I’d be suspicious because of the way I shelve books — they start off shelved correctly, but end up in bizarre stacks, some on the shelves, some on the floor in front of the shelves. This happens even if there’s room on the shelves for everything to be done correctly. It just never is.
Yay on the map!
I’m not sure 15 year old me would recognize my desk space as hers, per se. I think she’d feel pretty darn comfortable in it though. My desk area has a lot of games, and my craft books. Many of the games are a genre of which she’d enjoy (she just doesn’t know it yet, she hardly has access to a computer). She might be interested in the craft books – she’d taken up knitting for a bit at one point, so seeing this might encourage her again.
Now, if you were to drop her into my living room.. she’d be ecstatic, and not be at all surprised it’s hers. There’s my copy of the Chronicles of Narnia I’ve had since I was 7. My charlie & the Chocolate factory I’ve had almost as long.
The 16 year old me would recognize my bedroom most easily. It’s got floor to ceiling bookshelves (and I’ve had some of those books since then), it’s messy, there are baskets of laundry waiting to be put away, and there are an array of sneakers scattered around. She’d snort and say, “well, some things never change.” My office (at work) though…not as much. She’d enjoy the picture on the wall. She’d get the vacation photos all ove the white board, since she had even more wanderlust than I do (which is saying a lot). But the vase of fresh flowers? The stuffed alligator which I didn’t get until grad school (she’d like that, but wouldn’t get it)? The REALLY ugly (intentionally) coffee mug? The book shelf covered in epi and statistics books (and medical ones– those she’d think were cool)? The white board full of math? These things would confuse her.
16-yr-old me would recognize my taste in artwork and eclectic furnishings, if not the furnishings themselves. One set of bookshelves is my brother’s castoff non-IKEA storage unit. There are also wall-mounted shelves, similar to the ones I used at school. The purple-and-white heart-cutout display shelf decorated with fairies is *totally* me, as is the need to have my shinies where I can see them. The rainbow curtains are the ones I took to school.
Some of the other artwork would make 16-year-old me think, “Cool.” The framed photo of a space shuttle launch complete with commemorative launch coin. The torn-out page of a magazine that had an ad featuring an Alice in Wonderland character I thought was neat. A framed flyer from when I spoke at the Library of Congress.
There’s the piles of clutter, of things I was doing and lost interest in, that I keep meaning to clean up and do something with, but there are so many more interesting things to do… And the books stuffed two-deep and piled on top and in front of bookshelves that cover every available wall.
So, yeah, 16-yr-old me would be able to nest quite comfortably in my study. She’d probably be a little disappointed that the sudden onset of neatness she kept foretelling would happen “next year” never did manifest, though.
And if she was hot? *L*
Then he would look forward to the future.
I was actually asking if he’d be wondering.
Heh. No…because everyone was hot, to him. It was just a matter of degree. :)
Ahh, see he was in Okinawa and I was in bootcamp, then schooling, then Okinawa those years, so we wouldn’t have gotten them readily.}:P Hope you find one by Jim Lee anyway.
I actually have some things I’d recognize — a piece of ruby cullet I got in high school, a crocheted snake my grandmother made for me as a kid (and some of her stuff that I got after she died), a couple of couch pillows I kept from that (then current) wild couch pattern. Most of my sf/f, old tarot/magic books. A couple of pieces of art.
I’d realize it would be ME and be fascinated. The newest thing I have in here is a watercolor I bought this year.
I would be STUNNED by my bookcovers, probably burst into tears and faint, I’d be so happy. I hadn’t started writing seriously, of course.
Thing is, I don’t see much changing in the next twenty…
Robin