…”Magical” results and strange things are far more likely to happen to me if the results will tickle my funny bone.

Yup.

rootandrock:

Except, it never feels very flattering…

Early on in my Pagani “career”, I had a friend who was very sticky-fingered. She didn’t physically steal objects (er, at least at first), but if I did something she strove (sometimes to the point of ridiculousness) to do the exact same thing. She would usually complain that none of her ‘spells’ worked, or that she didn’t know why I used XYZ item or incense, because she couldn’t stand it. It even went as far as her adopting the same pantheon, and same deities, as I honored (at the time).

It grew so irritating and frustrating that at one point I packed up all of my things in an old crate any time she was going to come over, and refused to discuss “woo woo” topics with her, period. When I next visited her home she had a nearly identical crate with all of her things in it - and complained about how ugly the crate was.

I blew up. Her response was that doing her -own- thing was “too hard”, that what I did “made sense”, and so… she just went with it. That I “knew more” than she did, so if she did what I did, it would be a shortcut.  I explained that when you attempt to imitate someone elses connections - you actually get further from having any connection at all.

Most people are of the mindset that learning is memorization of facts, and then regurgitating them. In that mode, sure, imitation sounds like it might work. But Craft is not a math test. In order to do and be, you actually have to do and be. Wait, I got the emphasis wrong on that… In order to do and be you actually have to do and be.

She copied the crate.

If it were me being copied, I would have kept doing increasingly bizarre and ridiculous things in front of her, just to see how far she’d take it.  >3

• Clap Your Hands If You Believe
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink
• It Runs On Nonsenseoleum
• Rule of Cool

…Yes, I’m a troper.