Ok, totally psyched to work on DS now! p(^w^)q Here's a Van "yosh, yosh" picture:
Thursday, November 30, 2006
The Sound of Falling Snow 2
My class thought The Sound of Falling Snow would be better if the present scene was written in present tense, so the differentiation between memories and actual events would be clearer. They also wanted a clearer setting in the scenes for added details (why was oranges hard to get? does Emma still live in Philly?). Oh, one interesting thing--the ending would be better without the lat paragraph, and that was actually my original intent. I suppose my reason for adding it was superfluous. Otherwise, the main comments were the same as Sincerity's--tone, imagery, and sentences were ok. I'm excited that my professor thought I should continue writing. That's the question I've wanted to ask but have been too afraid to ask :P
Ok, totally psyched to work on DS now! p(^w^)q Here's a Van "yosh, yosh" picture:
Ok, totally psyched to work on DS now! p(^w^)q Here's a Van "yosh, yosh" picture:
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Japanese 3
Yay, my orders from Yahoo Japan auctions are here! \(^o^\) I flipped through film books 5 & 6 tonight, and will take some time this week to solidify translation on interesting passages. I also got my doujinshi, and it's...pretty wacky. I suppose that's what I get for buying something with the title "Van Fanel Remodeling Plan", hahaha. This will take longer to put up, though, since I'll need to scan and translate fairly accurately.
Speaking of translation, I've been preparing this post on "omoi" for quite a while :P
思い (おもい, omoi) has several meanings: thought, mind, heart, feelings, emotion, sentiment, love, affection, desire, wish, hope, expectation, imagination, experience.
おもい is used extensively in its multifaceted meanings in Esca. It's too bad that there's no real English equivalent, and thus each おもい is translated into different words.
- Leon's revelation that wishs will come true
- the thoughts from Atlantis that created Gaea
- Van's love that brought Hitomi back in ep24
- Folken's cares toward Van
- V+H's emotions that ended the Fate Alternation Machine
The pun on おもい (although not intended by Sunrise) is another word with the same pronounciation, 重い, which means heavy, severe.
One translation I'm always a little sad about is the inability to distinguish very clearly in English the difference between 好き and 愛する, which are both translated "to love". But 好き is closer to "like" than "love". It's commonly used in shoujo manga when the heronine/hero confesses. Hitomi used 好き for her feelings toward Van and Allen, but Allen used 愛する in his moonlight proposal.
Anyway, I've started working on DS again yesterday, and it was amazingly hard to write after not writing for a couple of weeks. The words came awkwardly, and the "effect" spirit was faraway. Really need to write regularly, I suppose.
Speaking of translation, I've been preparing this post on "omoi" for quite a while :P
思い (おもい, omoi) has several meanings: thought, mind, heart, feelings, emotion, sentiment, love, affection, desire, wish, hope, expectation, imagination, experience.
おもい is used extensively in its multifaceted meanings in Esca. It's too bad that there's no real English equivalent, and thus each おもい is translated into different words.
- Leon's revelation that wishs will come true
- the thoughts from Atlantis that created Gaea
- Van's love that brought Hitomi back in ep24
- Folken's cares toward Van
- V+H's emotions that ended the Fate Alternation Machine
The pun on おもい (although not intended by Sunrise) is another word with the same pronounciation, 重い, which means heavy, severe.
One translation I'm always a little sad about is the inability to distinguish very clearly in English the difference between 好き and 愛する, which are both translated "to love". But 好き is closer to "like" than "love". It's commonly used in shoujo manga when the heronine/hero confesses. Hitomi used 好き for her feelings toward Van and Allen, but Allen used 愛する in his moonlight proposal.
Anyway, I've started working on DS again yesterday, and it was amazingly hard to write after not writing for a couple of weeks. The words came awkwardly, and the "effect" spirit was faraway. Really need to write regularly, I suppose.
Monday, November 27, 2006
The Sound of Falling Snow
The story below is for my class this week. As my habit, I'll comment at the end of the story. It seems long in blog format, but really only 1500 words.
-
The Sound of Falling Snow
I’ve been sitting at this window for as long as I could remember.
Just before dawn the plow had driven by, scattering the white coverlet into distinct sections. Road and snow. Black and white. Man and nature. At six the cafe boy walked up the street, unlocked the shop door, tried to scrap off his boots, and went in. He reappeared at six-ten with a shovel, and cleaned the sidewalk next door as well as his own. Good boy. The used bookstore’s owner was a bent old man, with delicate silver frames and a lion-headed cane, and would not come downstairs from the apartment above his shop until nine thirty. At six-thirty the first customers at the cafe appeared: black wool coat, turtleneck, cashmere scarf, striped gloves. They each came out with a cup in both hands. Escaped steam from the cover slit curled in the early morning brightness.
And on it went, the coming and going of the street. Dogs, delivery trucks, mothers, schoolchildren, the postman. They exist only in the one minute they pass by on the street below.
The sky was fast falling dark outside, the last glowing vestige of the afternoon shrouded in a haze of gray. A man with brown hair and an elegant suit walked with long strides, a leather briefcase held over a shoulder casually. In front of the cafe, he paused, looking up at the sky. A woman with a trailing white scarf and a paper bag full of apples in her arms walked toward him. Her shadow was long behind her, and each prismatic fragment of her breath shone in the fading sunset.
* * *
I was carrying a bouquet, on my way to the theatre. Edward’s symphony was stopping in Philadelphia that night, and I hadn’t seen him since he left home. Father had begrudgingly given me permission to go into town, though he declared he was not going to see that good for nothing son himself. Father had not approved of Edward’s decision in music. Respectable young men go into medicine or business or law. Cello was a diversion, and artists a sham.
Mother longed to see Edward, too, I knew, but her needs were always dwarfed by Father’s gout and moods. She had stayed silent, and only gave me a tight smile when I told her in confidence that I would bring back a program for her.
The spring day was fine, and as I was allowed to be in town by my own, I had planned carefully. One never knew who one might meet at the theatre. I paused to check my reflection in a shop window. The white cap sleeve dress with lime green polka dots shone in the afternoon light. And as I turned to go, the cafe door opened and its bells jingled, and a man walked right into me.
He grasped my arm and stopped my fall, but the gossamer ribbon on the bouquet broke. The flowers scattered around our feet in a shower of petals and blossoms. He apologized and insisted on replacing the bouquet, and before I could respond or make sense of what happened, he was already guiding me back down the street to the flower stand. I stood a shoulder behind him awkwardly while he talked to the flower girl. The night wasn’t how I had imagined. My only thought was that perhaps he hadn’t noticed it was entirely my fault. Or at least, that he was too much a gentleman to point it out. Then I realized that the man was finished, and was holding the flowers with one hand, looking down at me with an amused expression. He gave me the bouquet, tipped his hat, and said goodbye.
It wasn’t until I got to the theatre doors that I noticed that he had reproduced the bouquet exactly: marigolds, English roses, strings of bluebell, dahlias, tipped carnations, amaryllis, white begonias, azaleas. In their midst was a single tulip. I pulled it out by its delicate stem and buried my nose in it. Then I pinned the snowy blossom on the bow of my hat. Maybe the day wasn’t such a disaster, after all.
Edward had given me a good seat, and smiled at me when the curtains came up. He looked happier than I last saw him, although a little thinner. The orchestra started on Beethoven’s 9th, and was halfway through the first movement before I was able to see anything else but my brother.
The man with the tulip was sitting across from Edward, his bowtie now even, a deep red violin in his hands. He was the concertmaster. And as he played, it seemed as if he wasn’t in the theatre, wasn’t watched by the audience in their stiff coats and glossy gowns, but instead on the edge of a sea cliff, feeling the sun and the whip of salty wind, looking into the glimmer on the crests of faraway waves.
After the performance, Edward came out from backstage and embraced me with a fierce happiness before I could hand him the flowers. “Emma, I’m glad you’re here.”
He called out to someone behind me, then said, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. He’s saved me many times since I joined the symphony. And I’ve talked about you so much, Emma, that I promised I’d introduce him to my little sister.”
I turned around, and there was the man with the tulip. He said his name was Leon, and took my hand as if we hadn’t met under embarrassing circumstances. He had brown hair that almost seemed black in a dark room, eyes of the sea, and calluses on his left fingertips.
He was twenty-eight, I was nineteen.
* * *
There was a blur of red on white. The man in the suit caught an apple before it tumbled into the ridge of dirty snow at the edge of the sidewalk. He crouched by the kneeling woman and dropped it into the bag. They looked at each other for a moment, and then rose together.
* * *
In the winters when I came down with the flu, Leon would cease his Shostakovich and his Mahler, and go out into the cold. After an hour, sometimes longer, he would return and hand me an orange from underneath his coat. I never knew where he went to procure these oranges, and they were never the same. One year it had a thick dimpled cover of fragrant peel and pith, and one year it was smooth to the touch and the oils on its surface made it almost waxy.
He would draw the curtains and lay me on the sofa. Then he sat in a chair next to me and played slow pieces on the violin, like the sound of falling snow. On my spot on the sofa I would peel the orange carefully to take it off in one sheet, then separate the fruit piece by piece, eat one, and lay the rest on a clean cloth over the radiator. I’d settle back into the pillows to watch and listen to Leon and his violin. Soft light beneath the cream curtains framed his silhouette in a halo of gold, and danced between his fingers as he played.
The orange would be ready when he got to Saint-Saëns: taunt on the surface and slightly dry at the corners, but plump and warm. Its soft flesh would pop from the papery skin. When he finished Paganini, he would smile like a little boy as I placed the last piece in his palm. He ate it with his eyes closed.
* * *
I felt a weight settle over me and opened my eyes. A young man stood before me, adjusting a wool throw around my shoulders. He smiled, and his dark hair made his eyes seem brighter.
“Did you have a good day, Grandma?”
He spoke so intimately that I didn’t have the heart to correct him. I looked down at my hands, stalling my response. They were brittle and creased. Veins crossed over tendons like little blue streamers. Someone else’s hands.
The man was still smiling down at me, his eyes expectant and familiar.
“Yes. I had a nice dream.” I said.
He went behind my wheelchair. “It’s time for dinner.”
I turned to face him. “Is Leon back yet from New York?”
He paused, then bent down close to me, and laid his hands on my mine. I could feel his fingers around my palms. His tone was gentle, as if I’ve asked this before. “No, Grandma”
“Oh,” I said. “All right.”
He tried to smile and held my hands for a moment before we went out together into the dining room. There were light calluses on his fingertips.
Outside, the street was empty, all shadows and pale light from warm windows and lonely streetlights. Snow started falling again. The flakes drifted down as if they were almost weightless, turning over in their slow, silent descent.
“Jack.” He turned, his eyes widened. The name came unbidden, but whether it was his name or not, perhaps it didn’t really matter. “Where’s my cane?”
-
In my initial drafts I didn't have the last paragraph. I think it's better to have hope at the end, otherwise the sadness of her dementia is too overwhelming, in addition to the realities of being old in our society. Also I changed the street scene to be more ambiguous.
Anyway, pretty serious story compared to DS. The main problem (plenty of other ones, as well, of course) with this story is my inability to execute the idea of making Emma's reality more complex and unclear, to contrast with the clarity in her memories. But it was very difficult manipulating my sentence structure to make that feeling come alive. This was disappointing, especially since I wanted to write this story because I love how Flowers for Algernon and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time manipulated narrative storytelling. (The latter's title is actually from Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." "The dog did nothing in the night-time." "That was the curious incident.")
-
The Sound of Falling Snow
I’ve been sitting at this window for as long as I could remember.
Just before dawn the plow had driven by, scattering the white coverlet into distinct sections. Road and snow. Black and white. Man and nature. At six the cafe boy walked up the street, unlocked the shop door, tried to scrap off his boots, and went in. He reappeared at six-ten with a shovel, and cleaned the sidewalk next door as well as his own. Good boy. The used bookstore’s owner was a bent old man, with delicate silver frames and a lion-headed cane, and would not come downstairs from the apartment above his shop until nine thirty. At six-thirty the first customers at the cafe appeared: black wool coat, turtleneck, cashmere scarf, striped gloves. They each came out with a cup in both hands. Escaped steam from the cover slit curled in the early morning brightness.
And on it went, the coming and going of the street. Dogs, delivery trucks, mothers, schoolchildren, the postman. They exist only in the one minute they pass by on the street below.
The sky was fast falling dark outside, the last glowing vestige of the afternoon shrouded in a haze of gray. A man with brown hair and an elegant suit walked with long strides, a leather briefcase held over a shoulder casually. In front of the cafe, he paused, looking up at the sky. A woman with a trailing white scarf and a paper bag full of apples in her arms walked toward him. Her shadow was long behind her, and each prismatic fragment of her breath shone in the fading sunset.
* * *
I was carrying a bouquet, on my way to the theatre. Edward’s symphony was stopping in Philadelphia that night, and I hadn’t seen him since he left home. Father had begrudgingly given me permission to go into town, though he declared he was not going to see that good for nothing son himself. Father had not approved of Edward’s decision in music. Respectable young men go into medicine or business or law. Cello was a diversion, and artists a sham.
Mother longed to see Edward, too, I knew, but her needs were always dwarfed by Father’s gout and moods. She had stayed silent, and only gave me a tight smile when I told her in confidence that I would bring back a program for her.
The spring day was fine, and as I was allowed to be in town by my own, I had planned carefully. One never knew who one might meet at the theatre. I paused to check my reflection in a shop window. The white cap sleeve dress with lime green polka dots shone in the afternoon light. And as I turned to go, the cafe door opened and its bells jingled, and a man walked right into me.
He grasped my arm and stopped my fall, but the gossamer ribbon on the bouquet broke. The flowers scattered around our feet in a shower of petals and blossoms. He apologized and insisted on replacing the bouquet, and before I could respond or make sense of what happened, he was already guiding me back down the street to the flower stand. I stood a shoulder behind him awkwardly while he talked to the flower girl. The night wasn’t how I had imagined. My only thought was that perhaps he hadn’t noticed it was entirely my fault. Or at least, that he was too much a gentleman to point it out. Then I realized that the man was finished, and was holding the flowers with one hand, looking down at me with an amused expression. He gave me the bouquet, tipped his hat, and said goodbye.
It wasn’t until I got to the theatre doors that I noticed that he had reproduced the bouquet exactly: marigolds, English roses, strings of bluebell, dahlias, tipped carnations, amaryllis, white begonias, azaleas. In their midst was a single tulip. I pulled it out by its delicate stem and buried my nose in it. Then I pinned the snowy blossom on the bow of my hat. Maybe the day wasn’t such a disaster, after all.
Edward had given me a good seat, and smiled at me when the curtains came up. He looked happier than I last saw him, although a little thinner. The orchestra started on Beethoven’s 9th, and was halfway through the first movement before I was able to see anything else but my brother.
The man with the tulip was sitting across from Edward, his bowtie now even, a deep red violin in his hands. He was the concertmaster. And as he played, it seemed as if he wasn’t in the theatre, wasn’t watched by the audience in their stiff coats and glossy gowns, but instead on the edge of a sea cliff, feeling the sun and the whip of salty wind, looking into the glimmer on the crests of faraway waves.
After the performance, Edward came out from backstage and embraced me with a fierce happiness before I could hand him the flowers. “Emma, I’m glad you’re here.”
He called out to someone behind me, then said, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. He’s saved me many times since I joined the symphony. And I’ve talked about you so much, Emma, that I promised I’d introduce him to my little sister.”
I turned around, and there was the man with the tulip. He said his name was Leon, and took my hand as if we hadn’t met under embarrassing circumstances. He had brown hair that almost seemed black in a dark room, eyes of the sea, and calluses on his left fingertips.
He was twenty-eight, I was nineteen.
* * *
There was a blur of red on white. The man in the suit caught an apple before it tumbled into the ridge of dirty snow at the edge of the sidewalk. He crouched by the kneeling woman and dropped it into the bag. They looked at each other for a moment, and then rose together.
* * *
In the winters when I came down with the flu, Leon would cease his Shostakovich and his Mahler, and go out into the cold. After an hour, sometimes longer, he would return and hand me an orange from underneath his coat. I never knew where he went to procure these oranges, and they were never the same. One year it had a thick dimpled cover of fragrant peel and pith, and one year it was smooth to the touch and the oils on its surface made it almost waxy.
He would draw the curtains and lay me on the sofa. Then he sat in a chair next to me and played slow pieces on the violin, like the sound of falling snow. On my spot on the sofa I would peel the orange carefully to take it off in one sheet, then separate the fruit piece by piece, eat one, and lay the rest on a clean cloth over the radiator. I’d settle back into the pillows to watch and listen to Leon and his violin. Soft light beneath the cream curtains framed his silhouette in a halo of gold, and danced between his fingers as he played.
The orange would be ready when he got to Saint-Saëns: taunt on the surface and slightly dry at the corners, but plump and warm. Its soft flesh would pop from the papery skin. When he finished Paganini, he would smile like a little boy as I placed the last piece in his palm. He ate it with his eyes closed.
* * *
I felt a weight settle over me and opened my eyes. A young man stood before me, adjusting a wool throw around my shoulders. He smiled, and his dark hair made his eyes seem brighter.
“Did you have a good day, Grandma?”
He spoke so intimately that I didn’t have the heart to correct him. I looked down at my hands, stalling my response. They were brittle and creased. Veins crossed over tendons like little blue streamers. Someone else’s hands.
The man was still smiling down at me, his eyes expectant and familiar.
“Yes. I had a nice dream.” I said.
He went behind my wheelchair. “It’s time for dinner.”
I turned to face him. “Is Leon back yet from New York?”
He paused, then bent down close to me, and laid his hands on my mine. I could feel his fingers around my palms. His tone was gentle, as if I’ve asked this before. “No, Grandma”
“Oh,” I said. “All right.”
He tried to smile and held my hands for a moment before we went out together into the dining room. There were light calluses on his fingertips.
Outside, the street was empty, all shadows and pale light from warm windows and lonely streetlights. Snow started falling again. The flakes drifted down as if they were almost weightless, turning over in their slow, silent descent.
“Jack.” He turned, his eyes widened. The name came unbidden, but whether it was his name or not, perhaps it didn’t really matter. “Where’s my cane?”
-
In my initial drafts I didn't have the last paragraph. I think it's better to have hope at the end, otherwise the sadness of her dementia is too overwhelming, in addition to the realities of being old in our society. Also I changed the street scene to be more ambiguous.
Anyway, pretty serious story compared to DS. The main problem (plenty of other ones, as well, of course) with this story is my inability to execute the idea of making Emma's reality more complex and unclear, to contrast with the clarity in her memories. But it was very difficult manipulating my sentence structure to make that feeling come alive. This was disappointing, especially since I wanted to write this story because I love how Flowers for Algernon and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time manipulated narrative storytelling. (The latter's title is actually from Doyle's Sherlock Holmes: "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." "The dog did nothing in the night-time." "That was the curious incident.")
Friday, November 24, 2006
Doujinshi 2
Happy Thanksgiving! Sorry that it's been quite a while. I've been playing 3Kingdoms and Dwarf Fortress, and doing lots of exciting reading. So in lieu of actual DS things, let's talk about doujinshi some more today.
I'm reasonably happy with the deputy service, but shipping costs deter me from buying any more Esca doujinshi unless it's absolutely stunning ._. (Browsing through auctions is always fun, though.) It's sad that so many things are relatively inaccessible because I live in the wrong country. Many doujinshi are also either rare or expensive on auctions, because of their limited production and quality. But the worst thing is that I'd really prefer to buy them from the authors, instead of giving the profits to a third party. I wonder if any of them would be interested in an e-book sort of thing. I'd totally buy it.
There was the 8th Escalation (Escaflowne doujinshi festival) last month. LOVE&PEACE's blog entry has pictures of the prizes she won from the scratch lottery (scroll down to 2006.10.25). She did a special 10 year celebration doujinshi called 10 Year Love and is taking orders right now *sigh* Minato made better clothing for Van and Merle; too bad I already wrote ch2.
I've been struggling over whether or not I should talk about "mature" doujinshi here, but finding "Momentary Breeze, Eternal Moment" was as exciting as finding a great Esca fanfic on ff. It illustrates the relationship between Van and Folken in an interesting way that I never quite thought about before, and it can stand alone very well without the erotica. So I will talk about its rendition of character development and storyline:
The main idea of MBEM lies in the fundamental juxtaposition between the brothers' relationship in Van's childhood and "now," as Esca already set up.
5 years old Van finds Folken at the gardens, asking if Folken is becoming king. Folken says yes, he will probably become king, and asks if Van would dislike him if he kills a dragon. Van says no, because he likes his brother. This scene was especially great because during the conversation, Folken reties the bow on Van's shirt :3
In the "now," although he is constantly reminded of Fanelia and Balgus, Van finds himself unable to resist Folken or hate him, because he so desires their past relationship, of being close to Folken. When Van has a chance to kill Folken in his sleep, he is unable to do it. Folken wakes up, asks if Van still hates him. Van replies, no, he wants Folken to live. He cannot forget the time they've spent together.
Of course, the set up is changed to cast Van into the feminine role. His change is not only physical (more complex hair, feminine facial features, less body definition), but also emotional (attachment to the past, longing for love, hard decision to kill Folken). But the emotional depth to the story was well done and the art beautiful, and it really wasn't very yaoi except for a few pages. I had always viewed yaoi as "ew" since there are so many bad examples, but after reading MBEM I found a new level of appreciation for it. Or maybe I just like feminine boys.
I'm reasonably happy with the deputy service, but shipping costs deter me from buying any more Esca doujinshi unless it's absolutely stunning ._. (Browsing through auctions is always fun, though.) It's sad that so many things are relatively inaccessible because I live in the wrong country. Many doujinshi are also either rare or expensive on auctions, because of their limited production and quality. But the worst thing is that I'd really prefer to buy them from the authors, instead of giving the profits to a third party. I wonder if any of them would be interested in an e-book sort of thing. I'd totally buy it.
There was the 8th Escalation (Escaflowne doujinshi festival) last month. LOVE&PEACE's blog entry has pictures of the prizes she won from the scratch lottery (scroll down to 2006.10.25). She did a special 10 year celebration doujinshi called 10 Year Love and is taking orders right now *sigh* Minato made better clothing for Van and Merle; too bad I already wrote ch2.
I've been struggling over whether or not I should talk about "mature" doujinshi here, but finding "Momentary Breeze, Eternal Moment" was as exciting as finding a great Esca fanfic on ff. It illustrates the relationship between Van and Folken in an interesting way that I never quite thought about before, and it can stand alone very well without the erotica. So I will talk about its rendition of character development and storyline:
The main idea of MBEM lies in the fundamental juxtaposition between the brothers' relationship in Van's childhood and "now," as Esca already set up.
5 years old Van finds Folken at the gardens, asking if Folken is becoming king. Folken says yes, he will probably become king, and asks if Van would dislike him if he kills a dragon. Van says no, because he likes his brother. This scene was especially great because during the conversation, Folken reties the bow on Van's shirt :3
In the "now," although he is constantly reminded of Fanelia and Balgus, Van finds himself unable to resist Folken or hate him, because he so desires their past relationship, of being close to Folken. When Van has a chance to kill Folken in his sleep, he is unable to do it. Folken wakes up, asks if Van still hates him. Van replies, no, he wants Folken to live. He cannot forget the time they've spent together.
Of course, the set up is changed to cast Van into the feminine role. His change is not only physical (more complex hair, feminine facial features, less body definition), but also emotional (attachment to the past, longing for love, hard decision to kill Folken). But the emotional depth to the story was well done and the art beautiful, and it really wasn't very yaoi except for a few pages. I had always viewed yaoi as "ew" since there are so many bad examples, but after reading MBEM I found a new level of appreciation for it. Or maybe I just like feminine boys.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Progress Update 12
This week's realization: that certain elegant dignity Van is missing in ch6 is confidence. He's the king, he acts like the king, and he's expected to be the king.
The change will make Leal's part flow faster, and will set up good contrast with Hitomi's part later in the ch. I don't know exactly yet what should happen with V+H in the library though, beyond discussions on the Palas meeting and Melidoul and a hint of their previous embarrassment.
I also thought of a VH AU idea, but I'm not quite sure if it'd make a good story yet. It's definitely less serious and more fluffy, maybe around 5 chs. Well, I have time to think about it, since DS is going to take a long, long time, hah.
Sentence:
Their visitor was conspicuous in the somber room like a red-crested bird. Cim’s blond hair was as full and curly as a Basram child’s, with the color of a bright summer dawn.
The change will make Leal's part flow faster, and will set up good contrast with Hitomi's part later in the ch. I don't know exactly yet what should happen with V+H in the library though, beyond discussions on the Palas meeting and Melidoul and a hint of their previous embarrassment.
I also thought of a VH AU idea, but I'm not quite sure if it'd make a good story yet. It's definitely less serious and more fluffy, maybe around 5 chs. Well, I have time to think about it, since DS is going to take a long, long time, hah.
Sentence:
Their visitor was conspicuous in the somber room like a red-crested bird. Cim’s blond hair was as full and curly as a Basram child’s, with the color of a bright summer dawn.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Progress Update 11
I've started to revise ch6 based on Chocolatelova's comments and my own list of what I see is wrong. The main problem is the line between mystery and messy. Also, I really don't have everything worked out--and hinting at unsure things is not the greatest of ideas.
In one of the earlier chs, Sapphirefly had mentioned that she would like to see Van more authoritative both within Fanelia and outside. Her idea makes for a stronger Van: he is specifically reared for the throne, so he wouldn't see his responsibilities as overwhelming or restrictive, and he would be at ease the most in meetings with his staff and in talks with other heads of state. And it's true he should be that way. By now he's been officially crowned for 10 years, and he's lived and breathed his role since 5.
So I've been trying to make his responses more definite, but being someone who avoids talking if I could communicate by writing instead, it's hard to think up good lines, haha. That certain elegant dignity remains elusive despite use of active verbs, shorter sentences, and stronger words. /sigh
Today's sentence:
The audience chamber was as sparse as the rest of the castle, its only indication of authority the solitary chair underneath the brass mark of Fanelia.
And new sketch :D I'm really happy with this one. Can you tell what Van is thinking? ;3
In one of the earlier chs, Sapphirefly had mentioned that she would like to see Van more authoritative both within Fanelia and outside. Her idea makes for a stronger Van: he is specifically reared for the throne, so he wouldn't see his responsibilities as overwhelming or restrictive, and he would be at ease the most in meetings with his staff and in talks with other heads of state. And it's true he should be that way. By now he's been officially crowned for 10 years, and he's lived and breathed his role since 5.
So I've been trying to make his responses more definite, but being someone who avoids talking if I could communicate by writing instead, it's hard to think up good lines, haha. That certain elegant dignity remains elusive despite use of active verbs, shorter sentences, and stronger words. /sigh
Today's sentence:
The audience chamber was as sparse as the rest of the castle, its only indication of authority the solitary chair underneath the brass mark of Fanelia.
And new sketch :D I'm really happy with this one. Can you tell what Van is thinking? ;3
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Ch5 Posted
Getting the second round of comments from Chocolatelova tonight made me so excited about ch5 that I just had to revise immediately and post it on ff. The things she mentioned--Folken in the dream, the prophet's threat, Van's meetings--the new changes are now much, much better. And here are the sentences because I'm on a posting high and totally happy with the revision:
1) On certain nights he would dream of an unquenchable fire, the faces of death amid the flames and ashes. And last would come Folken, his wings sometimes white and sometimes black, but always with his back turned, his face in the darkness. Van would reach out to grasp his brother’s shoulders, but his hands would never touch him, as if Folken was of smoke and mists.
2) There had been an especially wearying case on inheritance, and at one point in the screaming match he was tempted to put the wife and the dead merchant’s lover and their wailing children out of his hall until they can speak in coherent, civil sentences.
I always think my newest ch is so much better than previous ones. I don't think that's just the excitement and the chocolate cake talking. We'll see what happens in the next 15 chs!
1) On certain nights he would dream of an unquenchable fire, the faces of death amid the flames and ashes. And last would come Folken, his wings sometimes white and sometimes black, but always with his back turned, his face in the darkness. Van would reach out to grasp his brother’s shoulders, but his hands would never touch him, as if Folken was of smoke and mists.
2) There had been an especially wearying case on inheritance, and at one point in the screaming match he was tempted to put the wife and the dead merchant’s lover and their wailing children out of his hall until they can speak in coherent, civil sentences.
I always think my newest ch is so much better than previous ones. I don't think that's just the excitement and the chocolate cake talking. We'll see what happens in the next 15 chs!
Monday, November 06, 2006
Van's Thoughts
Finally, finally concluded revisions on Van's part in ch5 (at least until I get comments back). Of course, after my last blog post, I wavered again in my decision to split chs. I suppose I'll see how the clarifications on Leal's part turn out this week. I don't really know anymore ._, I swear, sometimes I feel like the only clear decision I can make is what to eat next.
Today's post is on Van, a popular topic here, I know. More accurately, it's about his damned duality of action and emotion that creates his whole allure but makes getting into that head so hard because he hardly ever admits true feelings and sometimes is so overly masculine in his brevity and statements on the obvious and then turns around into the embodiment of sad expression. Grr. Pant, pant.
So in a previous blog post I had planned to toy around with "projection of a projection", as Van probably would perceive his own feelings as a reflection belonging to others. It was a grand plan. I was almost giddy with my own cleverness.
Except, in my rewriting I couldn't even get past his thoughts, much less even consider his thoughts on Hitomi's thoughts. I've never felt so frustrated in writing for DS since I started in May. As I pictured the scene--Hitomi tending to Melidoul, Van watching--I see Van's expression, unfathomable and precisely why I love him so much, but when I need to report on his thoughts and twist his feelings into prose, I only felt like shaking him and shouting into his ear to tell me what the heck is going on inside.
Ironically, I enjoy writing Van much more than Hitomi. Or at least reading the result. It's like a double curse.
Today's sentence:
Her voice was mellow and her gaze intimate. He was an intruder tumbling into a secret, or perhaps the heavy-booted wayfarer stumbling into the green peace of a nymph grove.
Another doujinshi cover:
Today's post is on Van, a popular topic here, I know. More accurately, it's about his damned duality of action and emotion that creates his whole allure but makes getting into that head so hard because he hardly ever admits true feelings and sometimes is so overly masculine in his brevity and statements on the obvious and then turns around into the embodiment of sad expression. Grr. Pant, pant.
So in a previous blog post I had planned to toy around with "projection of a projection", as Van probably would perceive his own feelings as a reflection belonging to others. It was a grand plan. I was almost giddy with my own cleverness.
Except, in my rewriting I couldn't even get past his thoughts, much less even consider his thoughts on Hitomi's thoughts. I've never felt so frustrated in writing for DS since I started in May. As I pictured the scene--Hitomi tending to Melidoul, Van watching--I see Van's expression, unfathomable and precisely why I love him so much, but when I need to report on his thoughts and twist his feelings into prose, I only felt like shaking him and shouting into his ear to tell me what the heck is going on inside.
Ironically, I enjoy writing Van much more than Hitomi. Or at least reading the result. It's like a double curse.
Today's sentence:
Her voice was mellow and her gaze intimate. He was an intruder tumbling into a secret, or perhaps the heavy-booted wayfarer stumbling into the green peace of a nymph grove.
Another doujinshi cover:
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Doujinshi
After a few days of browsing Yahoo Japan auctions (thanks to Sincerity's link), it's no longer a surprise to find boyslove doujinshi (ok, so AllenxVan or DilandauxVan might work, but FolkenxVan is a bit disturbing, and DrydenxVan is stretch imo...), but today's search had a happy, marvelous surprise ->According to the seller comments, they're by a circle named Nanoka, but I couldn't find any information about them in searches. Although the Escaflowne fanbook and actual copies of seiyuu scripts are also on YJA, this particular packet of doujinshi is more interesting. It's like what I like to draw, but better ._. I guess I'll keep an eye on its auction this week and see what price it gets up to.
I worked on ch5 some more this weekend, and now I want to keep the ch's original format. The second section with Cim will be long and complicated and full of hints, but I think it will work better if most of the explanations come in ch6 from Hitomi's pov.
Hmm, there hasn't been a "best sentence of the day" here for a long time.
Her look had reminded him of Housemother Sara’s expression whenever she asked his permission to commission new shirts for his already full closet—there wasn’t any other answer but acceptance.
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