DE: Notes

[yakalskovich]

How does your character keep notes and organise what they are doing? Have they acquired anything new in Milliways that doesn't yet exist in their worlds? How does their world organise work and possessions?

Discuss.


Stealing the DE again because I just had a discussion about tools to use or not use.-

Comments

[master_bruce]

Gene - doesn't, at least in the 70s. If there's paperwork, he gives it to Sam. In the 80s he's a bit more on it, but mostly so he can write up his team's reports for them and decide what they were doing at any given moment. It bears little relation to the truth, and there's little actual organisation. His system is of the 'piles of files on random chairs' variety.

Javert - is extremely organised with his paperwork, but not a great deal is required. With regard his practical stuff, he just puts things where they should be, and expects them to be there when he goes back.

Valjean - buries money in the woods on one hand, and seems like a pretty organised mayor-type on the other. Being the 19th century, things were written down and he was a good businessman so I'm going to say he was pretty organised at putting documents in boxes.

Courfeyrac - notes are dangerous if you're an illegal revolutionary! And unlikely when you're a terrible student who only turns up to class occasionally. Organisation is mostly someone else's problem.

Bruce Wayne - everything's on computer, databases, spreadsheets, what have you. Necessary when you're in charge of a multi-billion dollar business. There are staff for organising the necessary bits and pieces. Bat-stuff is a mixture of super-endrypted computer programs for schematics and whatnot, and shiny rooms where he puts the suits in glass cabinets. So, he's organised.

Bruce Banner - scribbles notes on random bits of paper when he needs to, and gets around to filing them when he remembers. Important stuff is all on computer, but when he was teaching he had various piles of essays and post-its lying around. These days he has nothing to file or organise, barring his research into a cure, and that's all on computer.

Aubrey - writes things by hand, and complains about it. The ship's records are kept meticulously, but personal correspondence and notes about things to remember are often kept under a pile of charts, etc.

Jim - oh, man. This will actually come up in an OOM at some point, but he has an archivist's heart and his computer is kept as meticulously as any library in the world. He has all the information in his head, but he's not as stupid as Magnusson, who learns the weakness of that folly via a bullet in the brain. He has hard copy of things, he records so much stuff, he writes a lot - sometimes just pouring thoughts out, sometimes stuff that would make academics weep - and all of it is encrypted and locked away in programs he's personally designed to be unbreakable by anyone else. His relationship with his computer is interesting, because it holds everything and is...really the only thing he has to speak to. He still finds it limiting, and he plans everything in his head before recording anything because there's more visual space in there to lay it all out. Then he chops it up into programs and numbers, and stores it in a way that would make no sense to anyone else.

[bjornwilde]

[Thank you for stealing! I was blanking on a topic.]

Ahsoka has no method beyond being raised with the rigid Temple schedule.

Sabine keeps a digital calendar and to do list. She is likely pretty organized having come most of the way through an Imperial Academy.

Hank keeps a mental calendar but makes to do lists and notes to help reinforce it. Paper and pen most like, or maybe a personal tape recorder (ala Dale Cooper). In the future I am sure he will embrace computers and the digital world.

Rollo has no system.

Sam prefers paper and pen, likely keeping a little notebook with him. He'll make digital notes on his smart phone and uses the digital calendar, but he writes things down first. The smart phone is the back up and reference device.

Izana uses their phone I am sure. Strictly digital. They keep a calendar of events, to do lists, bullet journal type entries, and a daily diary. Not to mention all the notes from classes.

Selina has no system. At present, she doesn't need one.

Eliot is never shown using a system so this will be straight up head canon. I think he depends on his memory for now. His childhood taught him not to leave any evidence behind and so writing things down simply gives your tormentors a weapon. I could see him password protecting a calendar and diary on a smartphone though.

[genarti]

Enjolras has a commonplace book, aka little all-purpose notebook, on him at all times. (As I understand it, he would probably have been actually taught How To Organize A Commonplace Book as a skill, at least to some degree.) He's learned about computers and stuff through Milliways, but this is still a more natural way for him to keep track of stuff; this is how he spent years keeping track of everything, and he's a faster writer than a typist still, and is used to flipping through pages, and all. He's probably one of the more organized of his friends, because he has a tidy and focused and pragmatic mind, and is a community organizer at heart.

That said, anything that's sensitive information is going in there only deeply in a private code, if at all, and lots of that he just keeps in his memory. That was even more true in life. You bet he has a ton of notes from the Milliways library, though.

Cosette might also have a commonplace book, but it's very different from Enjolras's. Much sparser, for one thing; she might jot down a note or two in a day, and nothing the next. Much more domestic information, by and large -- planning her garden, fashion notes, little bits of budgeting, drawings of flowers, etc. And the thought of private code for secret information has never occurred to her.

Thor... uh. Thor has to take notes sometimes, right? I suspect he has a voice-activated glowy knotwork Asgardian computer thing for when he feels the need. Mostly he keeps things in his head, though, and expects that other people (clerks, scholars, etc -- you know, People Who Do This Kind Of Thing) will be the reference library for him when such is needed.

Kazul has an extensive library (and an extensive treasure collection). She can find a lot of things in it fairly readily, by memory, but there's also a reason she got a princess to organize her stuff for a while. Cimorene's organizational system is still mostly in place, but Kazul is probably starting to absent-mindedly put things back in the wrong places or leave them lying around again. I think she only does note-taking when she's trying to keep track of a lot of very complicated or very dry and forgettable stuff, though. Mostly, she relies on her memory, and it works out pretty well.

[a1enzo]

With a Notepad doc, of course.

[aberration]

Will has an eidetic memory. He's been in law enforcement long enough that he'll fill out his paperwork adequately and with fewer metaphors than one might imagine, but he's never otherwise taken or kept any kind of copious notes, as he just doesn't need them. Everything he's seen sticks in his mind and mixes and mashes as necessary. He'll never have one of those crazy serial killer walls because his brain is a crazy serial killer wall.

Asami has multiple shelves of notebooks and sketchbooks. She tries to keep them somewhat ordered, but she doesn't have any hyperorganized, rigid systems. She more just tries to get a handle on her notes when they start to build up. Her world doesn't have advanced electronics, and so far while she's explored advanced technology, she hasn't used it too often yet, so it's all pen and paper for her.

Elle rarely took notes on her job and was the bane of the Company's intelligence compilers. When she started working on her own, she did collect sparse lists and notes, but most of it was still pretty minimal. This is in part because she was admittedly a little lazy when it came to it, but also because she felt recording information carried inherent risks.

[i_am_your_host]

Emcee has no reason to take notes or organize anything.

I'm sure Floki would find some sort of physical file system for ship schematics useful, but everything is in his head, and he probably prefers it that way.

Pam manages the office date book and will occasionally put reminders into her phone. But usually if she tells you "I'll pencil you in," she really doesn't give a shit. However, she does have a mental vault of people she finds exceptionally attractive and/or interesting. ...It's a very exclusive vault.

[sdelmonte]

Knox was the first kid on his block to have an iPod and an laptop computer, but never quite figured out how to use them to be more efficient (especially since he couldn't exactly show them to people in the 90s). He was using a dictaphone-style tape recorder in canon, and is going to keep using it until he gets a Blackberry.

[inlovewithwords]

Eriond doesn't actually do notes or organization.

Henry is about typical for an eleven year old. Any organization is forced upon him.

Evelyn is reasonably organized about books and journals of class notes, but her personal stuff is a little more haphazard.

Lois does organization very well, in that she just about always knows where everything is at all times. The fact that this is in stacks of files and things spread all over the floor that no one else knows how to navigate is utterly irrelevant. It works for her.

R2-D2 has a highly organized internal file-system, heavily encrypted and potentially protected with some inconvenience.

Anakin avoids paperwork like the plague. Luckily there's not much of it in his position.

Tavi learned how to be organized when he entered the Legions and especially after becoming Captain of the First Aleran. Truth be told, these days he is not really the one in charge of organizing his own notes and such forth, including the many things with high classifications and encoding and secrecy. He has People (and by People we mean Ehren) to do that for him so he can do more important things (like run an empire).

[merryeccentricities]

Joly has a little tablet computer-notebook thing that really works almost just as a high powered nigh-magic notebook. He mostly uses it to store experimental notes and scientific articles he's reading and whatnot. He adores it; finally, he doesn't have to read his own writing! He can just type things in! Or talk! Or record video! It is the bestest notebook ever.

Bahorel knows what he's doing. If other people don't, they can ask. The visual notes and sketches he does are about the closest he comes to really organizing his own plans; decipherable notes about personal intentions are not the revolutionary's friend.:P

Gringoire's life probably deserves a Dis-Organizer. Bingledy bingeldy beep!

[varadia]

Ysalwen organizes her notes in stacks and piles to better disguise the non-descript notebooks that actually contain her real notes. The notebooks may be color-coded. She is very precise.

X's brain is a computer. She organizes things in a mental structure of vast filing rooms, and does not forget anything. So.

[rudderless]

AHAH.

Poorly.

The only one who exercises any sort of planning or forethought is Juliet, who mainly uses files and text.