[pseudoblog/drabble] a little cubism
Summary: Jiyong (actually, me) does a random personality test.
Interesting: try this yourself before you read my answers aka the fic:
DRAW A CUBE PERSONALITY TEST
In his mind Jiyong pictures a slightly shimmery clear cube floating in the vast space of the empty desert. Conflicting ideas on whether to make the sand fine and golden like the classic barren African deserts or red and earthy like the Mexican stereotypes he's seen in cartoons conjure up random stray cacti in the periphery of his mind. Sweeping the unverified Mexican caricatures aside, he settles for the soft dunes of the neverending African desert, the kind he's seen on Discovery laid out like a many-times-magnified playground sandbox, only the gentlest of dunes ruffling the smooth surface in unbroken undulations. His mind's eye even takes special care to make sure he can see the vertices of the cube on its far side, and the shadow it barely casts on the dune floor.
Sure, it's transparent, like a large glass prism in which he could easily stand up, the size of a small room perhaps. It's tilted on its side like the classic rhombus he's been taught about in math classes, light winking off its smooth sides. It's neither near nor far, he decides, composing his mental mise en scene so that the midgrounded cube takes centrestage in a 1:5 ratio to its arid backdrop.
The next stage calls for a ladder, but he dismisses the idea summarily. There wouldn't be a ladder, it hardly gels with the rest of the image. He skips all the questions regarding the ladder, not caring if it distorts the outcome of the test.
There is a horse. A flesh-and-blood brown workhorse with a shaggy white mane materialises on the right of the cube, but it looks ill at ease. Instead, he converts it to a Dali-esque skeletal, sunbleached remain lying half-buried in the sand to the left of the picture. "House" - he's confused for a moment by the misspelling, but snorts soon enough at the error. Bones would be the colour of bone, naturally. There's no saddle or tie - it's not going anywhere in a hurry. Even to him, it looks rather bleak in its stillness.
A storm boils up out of nowhere, swirling sand round the cube and obscuring it partially from sight. It centres on the shimmering box, large enough to mesh it in but posing no danger to the onlooker. Satisfied with his mild little sandstorm, Jiyong lets it lie. As with all extreme weather phenomenon, they will tire of themselves eventually.
Flowers appear as the hardy cacti bloom, an uncertain and unclear yellow - and perhaps a pink. He dwells little on this, content to settle on the hint of existence rather than to ascertain it.
He scrolls, impatient to get to the answers.
He admits readily that he's got quite the ego. He's Kwon Jiyong after all, and it would be a lie to say he wasn't more than a little self-absorbed. Even so, he's quite the open book - it's true. It would hardly take a genius to figure out how he was feeling simply by watching his face and body language. Then again, he's never seen the need to hide, merely channel it into a song, a lyric, a video. Which would only be done justice by an audience. Certainly. Distance-wise, he ponders the meaning of having set it in the midground. Does it indicate that he's able to step away from himself somewhat, size himself up and see what others see? Yet still too involved, not able to move too far from it? It seemed important for an artiste to do both, equal measures of critique and confidence in his individuality. He decides it can't be interpreted negatively.
The ladder he's casually thrown away turns out to represent the friends in his life. An absence of a ladder perhaps indicates an absence of friends. Not technically true - he has friends aplenty - but he acquiesces that he often feels lonely without friends who truly understand him. Fair enough. It's a lonely life, but someone has to live it.
The horse is a lover. In that case, he mentally sniggers that he's chosen a skeletal remain. If anything, his love life certainly seems like a harsh desert right now. The exes are as good as dead, the future unforeseeable. Recalling his own remark on the tie and saddle has a poetic matchiness with the state of it - it isn't going anywhere in a hurry.
A storm represents the obstacles in his life. He pulls up the image of his glamorised sandstorm, a curtain of fine golden mesh spinning around the cube. Explained by the quiz, it would mean that he had a somewhat large but possibly uncomplicated problem. But it would be patently unreasonable to say that anyone had no hardships in life. He figured that he would eventually find the way out of his.
Cacti flowers didn't seem like children in any way, but they perhaps symbolise a certain toughness, thriving against all odds. It was a nice thought, to feel that his children might take on such a quality, yet it intimated a certain hardship in their formative years. A passing dull ache pangs his heart that these children that he has yet to visualise might suffer for his bringing them into the world. It's still too early to tell, though. He surmises that the indistinct image he had perhaps signifies that he's never really given thought to the issue and it is as yet unformed. Still, might a yellow and a pink point to a son and a daughter? He thinks it's a nice thought. To sight flowers in the desert strike him as something hopeful, positive, a bright spot in a hopeless situation. The mental image doesn't position the flowers particularly closely to the cube, but floating in a way he can't grasp. Perhaps the idea of offspring is too elusive to really set in stone right now, whatever has gone before.
He wonders why he's wasted so much time on this personality test, now that he's come to the end of it. Nonetheless, he clicks on a button and forwards it to Youngbae and the rest.
Interesting: try this yourself before you read my answers aka the fic:
DRAW A CUBE PERSONALITY TEST
In his mind Jiyong pictures a slightly shimmery clear cube floating in the vast space of the empty desert. Conflicting ideas on whether to make the sand fine and golden like the classic barren African deserts or red and earthy like the Mexican stereotypes he's seen in cartoons conjure up random stray cacti in the periphery of his mind. Sweeping the unverified Mexican caricatures aside, he settles for the soft dunes of the neverending African desert, the kind he's seen on Discovery laid out like a many-times-magnified playground sandbox, only the gentlest of dunes ruffling the smooth surface in unbroken undulations. His mind's eye even takes special care to make sure he can see the vertices of the cube on its far side, and the shadow it barely casts on the dune floor.
Sure, it's transparent, like a large glass prism in which he could easily stand up, the size of a small room perhaps. It's tilted on its side like the classic rhombus he's been taught about in math classes, light winking off its smooth sides. It's neither near nor far, he decides, composing his mental mise en scene so that the midgrounded cube takes centrestage in a 1:5 ratio to its arid backdrop.
The next stage calls for a ladder, but he dismisses the idea summarily. There wouldn't be a ladder, it hardly gels with the rest of the image. He skips all the questions regarding the ladder, not caring if it distorts the outcome of the test.
There is a horse. A flesh-and-blood brown workhorse with a shaggy white mane materialises on the right of the cube, but it looks ill at ease. Instead, he converts it to a Dali-esque skeletal, sunbleached remain lying half-buried in the sand to the left of the picture. "House" - he's confused for a moment by the misspelling, but snorts soon enough at the error. Bones would be the colour of bone, naturally. There's no saddle or tie - it's not going anywhere in a hurry. Even to him, it looks rather bleak in its stillness.
A storm boils up out of nowhere, swirling sand round the cube and obscuring it partially from sight. It centres on the shimmering box, large enough to mesh it in but posing no danger to the onlooker. Satisfied with his mild little sandstorm, Jiyong lets it lie. As with all extreme weather phenomenon, they will tire of themselves eventually.
Flowers appear as the hardy cacti bloom, an uncertain and unclear yellow - and perhaps a pink. He dwells little on this, content to settle on the hint of existence rather than to ascertain it.
He scrolls, impatient to get to the answers.
He admits readily that he's got quite the ego. He's Kwon Jiyong after all, and it would be a lie to say he wasn't more than a little self-absorbed. Even so, he's quite the open book - it's true. It would hardly take a genius to figure out how he was feeling simply by watching his face and body language. Then again, he's never seen the need to hide, merely channel it into a song, a lyric, a video. Which would only be done justice by an audience. Certainly. Distance-wise, he ponders the meaning of having set it in the midground. Does it indicate that he's able to step away from himself somewhat, size himself up and see what others see? Yet still too involved, not able to move too far from it? It seemed important for an artiste to do both, equal measures of critique and confidence in his individuality. He decides it can't be interpreted negatively.
The ladder he's casually thrown away turns out to represent the friends in his life. An absence of a ladder perhaps indicates an absence of friends. Not technically true - he has friends aplenty - but he acquiesces that he often feels lonely without friends who truly understand him. Fair enough. It's a lonely life, but someone has to live it.
The horse is a lover. In that case, he mentally sniggers that he's chosen a skeletal remain. If anything, his love life certainly seems like a harsh desert right now. The exes are as good as dead, the future unforeseeable. Recalling his own remark on the tie and saddle has a poetic matchiness with the state of it - it isn't going anywhere in a hurry.
A storm represents the obstacles in his life. He pulls up the image of his glamorised sandstorm, a curtain of fine golden mesh spinning around the cube. Explained by the quiz, it would mean that he had a somewhat large but possibly uncomplicated problem. But it would be patently unreasonable to say that anyone had no hardships in life. He figured that he would eventually find the way out of his.
Cacti flowers didn't seem like children in any way, but they perhaps symbolise a certain toughness, thriving against all odds. It was a nice thought, to feel that his children might take on such a quality, yet it intimated a certain hardship in their formative years. A passing dull ache pangs his heart that these children that he has yet to visualise might suffer for his bringing them into the world. It's still too early to tell, though. He surmises that the indistinct image he had perhaps signifies that he's never really given thought to the issue and it is as yet unformed. Still, might a yellow and a pink point to a son and a daughter? He thinks it's a nice thought. To sight flowers in the desert strike him as something hopeful, positive, a bright spot in a hopeless situation. The mental image doesn't position the flowers particularly closely to the cube, but floating in a way he can't grasp. Perhaps the idea of offspring is too elusive to really set in stone right now, whatever has gone before.
He wonders why he's wasted so much time on this personality test, now that he's come to the end of it. Nonetheless, he clicks on a button and forwards it to Youngbae and the rest.