fic recs (FMA) and some linkage

[astridv]

A Modest Proposal by bob_fish
Roy/Riza; mild NC-17; spoilers for Ch58, Ch60, and Ch89; 7428 words
Summary: You've got to start a career in skullduggery somewhere. In this case, it starts with two lonely, bored teenagers left unsupervised with a cabinet of hard liquor, a cocktail shaker and a stack of banned books.

Wonderful snippet of backstory with great character voices. (I just re-read it in order to rec it; this story has so many good lines that it's just as entertaining on the second read.)

Wrong Turn by bob_fish
Roy/Ed-ish gen; R for Ed's swearing; spoilers thru ch.35; 5763 words
Summary: This really was turning out to be a day of surprises, thought Roy.

I loved this story... and this is coming from a card-carrying Roy/Riza shipper. The fic is nearly gen with some subtly done Roy/Ed subtext, Riza gets a sizable part and great lines, and the voices are spot-on all around. During a battle Roy manoeuvres himself into a tight spot and is in need of rescuing. Ed gets to be the knight in shining automail. Excellent action and setting descriptions... like watching the anime version in my head.

Top Banana by bob_fish & enemytosleep
NC-17; Roy/Maes (with Roy/Riza/Maes/Graecia background OT4); Word Count: 9550
Summary: Kids, don't try this at home... Roy gets a promotion and Maes helps him celebrate in a night neither will never forget.


The other day I recced First Few Desperate Hours by bravenewcentury and I thought I'd add a link to the commentary she's written for that fic, because it comes with all kinds of interesting ponderings and insights into the characters. (But read the fic first!)

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linkage: This was linked in reply to one of those fandom secrets that went along the lines of I'm no good at drawing so I'm giving it up.: Fuck the Karate Kid

Not just that movie, but all of the movies like it (you certainly can’t let the Rocky sequels escape blame). Basically any movie with a training montage.
You know what I’m talking about; the main character is very bad at something, then there is a sequence in the middle of the film set to upbeat music that shows him practicing. When it’s done, he’s an expert.
[...]
In the real world, the winners of that Karate tournament in Karate Kid would be the kids who had been at it since they were in elementary school. Skipping video games and days out with their friends and birthday parties so they can practice, practice, practice. And that’s just what it takes to get “pretty good” at it. Want to know how long it takes to become an expert at something? About 10,000 hours, according to research.
That’s practicing two hours a day, every day, for almost 14 years.

I'm actually looking forward to the remake of that movie like you won't believe, but I digress...

Comments

[ratcreature]

Personally as a lazy person, I think the trick is to find things that you enjoy doing even if you are not awesome at them. I'm not really fond of this puritanical work ethic approach, especially not with recreational things. (I grant that if you want to do things like say cutting people open or something, a lackadaisical approach is no good, because it has such horrible side effects, but no audience will croak upon merely seeing a really inept drawing.)

[astridv]

Personally as a lazy person, I think the trick is to find things that you enjoy doing even if you are not awesome at them

Oh yeah, that's the key. Find something where the mere act doing it already gives you joy. It'll still take its 10,000+ hours, but it will be fun hours instead of tedious.

[ratcreature]

Also, ten thousand hours to expertness or not, in many cases the results you produce with little practice and just some effort may be far from flawless, but still perfectly alright for what they are supposed to be. So for the most part it is not as if a newly learned skill was worthless until you practice for years.

That's the upside of skills not progressing linearly with effort: At the beginning of many things you get from not knowing anything to "imperfect but quite useful" very quickly. (Though of course the downside is that then come the long stretches when there aren't any equally dramatic leaps to show for the effort.)

Like, in my life so far I have made a total of three patchwork quilts, and I don't even sew normally. And when I made that first quilt I didn't want one of the easiest patterns either. So of course anyone looking at that quilt closely can see how the squares don't match up perfectly, and see sewing errors and all kinds of things, but it looks perfectly alright and quite pretty on top of a bed, and almost nobody will examine blankets for errors, while it still comes across as a unique bed cover in colors I like with a nice pattern. That it is very far from a quilting masterwork misses the entire point. (And the total of four quilted pot holders that were the practice I did before that first quilt are usable too, despite the even worse quilting.)

And the same was true for the baby quilt I gave my niece for her birth, and actually for most of my crafty projects. I don't enjoy sewing and quilting enough to do it often and practice it (also it is quite expensive as a hobby, even if you shop around for relatively cheap scrap fabric), but I still like the results I can produce enough as blankets to do it every now and then. Perfectionism has its place, but it doesn't need to be everywhere.