IWSG: April 2025

 

    Since I don't have much to say about my writing at the moment aside from an extension of the general "I can't seem to get anything done and my methods are feeling like they're interfering with my progress" that I was saying last month, I guess I'll do the suggested discussion question instead.

April 2 question - What fantasy character would you like to fight, go on a quest with, or have a beer/glass of wine with?

    Well.

    Given my current obsession, I feel like the obvious answer is "Wei Wuxian."  But that's kinda cheating?  Because technically who I would want there would be both Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji so I could watch them being all sweetly romantic with each other.  (Though if they look like the actors from The Untamed then I would probably be satisfied with just Wei Wuxian because damn is he pretty!  I mean, both of them are, but I could definitely stare at Xiao Zhan in Wei Wuxian mode all day and then some.)

    As I try to think of others I might want to meet--well, I guess to answer the question properly it would have to be "go on a quest with" 'cause no hecking way am I fighting anyone, and I don't like alcohol in any form, so beer and wine are vomitously out--I am struck by how little of my recent fantasy reading/watching has actually been Western in origin.  'Cause my first thought after Wei Wuxian is Lina Inverse (a thought quickly rejected, ofc, because being around Lina Inverse can be pretty hazardous to one's health, particularly if it's the anime version of Lina rather than the light novel version, as she casts 'Dragon Slave' a lot more often in the anime than in the novels), and my next thought after that was Maomao but actually she doesn't count because The Apothecary Diaries is not a fantasy.  (I'm not quite sure what it does count as, though.  It's hard to call it 'historical fiction' since it's in a made-up setting that merely resembles Imperial China in virtually every respect, and it's not exactly a 'palace novel,' either, so...but either way there's no magic or monsters, so definitely not a fantasy.)  Holo might also be fun to meet, especially if there was some reason for her to revert to her giant wolf form.

    After that, my mind flits about to various video game characters, again mostly Japanese in origin.

    Hmm.

    Maybe the thing to take away from this is that I need to read more fantasy works that didn't originate in Japan or China.  (Lately most of them have been Chinese, but I do have a big stack of the Slayers light novels waiting for me, though I wanted to wait until all of them are out physically so I can read the entire series in one giant binge.)  Or at least that I should try to read some that are less "pop culture" and more "culture" if that distinction makes sense; light novels and web novels are kinda...I mean, they're less the sort of thing that my parents would look down on than manga and graphic novels, but they're still...they feel somehow less "legit"...but maybe that's just a generational issue and younger people don't feel like they're failing as readers to have shelves and shelves full of light novels...?

    Though I did actually buy an English-language fantasy novel on a whim while I was picking up the first volume of Legend of Exorcism, now that I think about it.  I should read that next.  (Though the chances of any of its characters fitting the bill for this question are pretty slim...)  Uh, when I say "English-language fantasy novel" I mean "fantasy novel that was always in English rather than one that's been translated into English" since I am absolutely rubbish at learning languages.  (Also doesn't help that two of the three foreign languages I spent any serious amount of time learning were dead languages.  Limited number of things to read in those.)

    I mean, not to say that I haven't read a fair chunk of English-language fantasy in my time, but most of it has not really stuck with me aside from The Last Unicorn and the works of Tolkien, and to some extent the Prydain Chronicles.  Oh, and several of the Discworld novels, but my brain tends to classify those more as comedy than fantasy, even though they are most certainly fantasy.  (Wait, does Alice in Wonderland count as fantasy?  I remember that and Through the Looking Glass quite well, too...)  As to non-English-language (originally) but still Western works of fantasy...all that leaps to mind is that I've read The Neverending Story a couple of times (and even bought an untranslated copy back when I thought I was going to finally actually learn German during my studies for my Master's Degree) but mostly the details that stick with me are only the ones most closely connected to what's in the movie.  (A shameful truth, but I've only read the novel a few times, whereas I've seen the movie countless times.)

    ...anyway...I guess...getting back to the original question...

    I suppose the answer really is 'Wei Wuxian' at the moment.  Either in the pre-fall of Lotus Pier teenage version or in the post-canon version, but definitely not any of the versions in between, as I'd want to feel sure that I would survive the 'quest' and also that I wouldn't have to witness the horrors of war or him acting all...well, I wouldn't want to see him at his lowest psychological point, because he got pretty grim and unlike his usual cheerful self in there for a while, and that would be very upsetting to witness.  (One of many changes for the live-action drama was to tone that personality shift down to make for a more pleasant viewing experience...)  The teenage version might be better for me, personally, since even post-canon there would likely still be a lot of fierce corpses involved in any 'quest' Wei Wuxian might go on, and I'm pretty squeamish, so I don't know if I could handle being around any fierce corpses (other than Wen Ning).

    Getting to experience the world he lives in would really help me trying to capture very different worlds from my own in my writing, as would studying his behavior in person, as his cheerful, indefatigable, extroverted, extremely confident personality is pretty much the opposite of mine in most respects.  (And yes, of course I would also want to watch him and Lan Wangji making eyes at each other, because who wouldn't want to watch that?  Though if it was the teenage version of Wei Wuxian, then Lan Wangji wouldn't be there, but Jiang Cheng probably would be, and I do love the brotherly relationship between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, so that would be fun to witness, too.)

    Wait, y'know who else might be fun to go on a quest with? The Luggage from Discworld.  It can carry basically anything you might need with you, and you could probably ride it if the need arose.  😅

IWSG: um...March

    As usual, I am having trouble writing.  Also having trouble with everything else, but that's an entirely different issue.

    One thing that's particularly frustrating me is that I've spent so long being a pantser that I kinda don't know how to write any other way any more, and I had a project I wanted to do that really needs to be planned out pretty carefully before I can start writing it.

    So I got to a certain point in the planning process and just...stopped.

    Not because I didn't want to do the project anymore, but because I just couldn't go any further.

    I needed to fully define the supporting characters and plan out their side stories, and....I just couldn't.  When I tried, I'd just sit there, staring at my planning document for a while, then give up and do something else.

    This happened over and over again until I eventually stopped even opening the file.

    I don't know how to rewire my writing brain.  I've been writing the same basic way since the 1990s.  Admittedly, things have changed a little, in that now I write my ideas down rather than trusting that I'll remember them, but they're still pretty nebulous, especially as they progress; I might have a pretty strong outline for the opening, and a relatively well-defined idea of the early middle, but the "outlines" always eventually devolve into "not sure where it goes from there, but the good guys win in the end" territory.  And sure, eventually I get near the vague parts and find myself writing a new partial outline, which then takes me through another section of the story, but it's still more pantsing than plotting, you know?

    Which is fine if it's just silly fan fiction or a novel I don't ever intend to show to others.

    It's a different issue entirely when it's the idea for a visual novel that would require me to hire artists and such in order for the final project to be completed.  I can't waste my money and/or their time working on a project that can never go anywhere because I can't visualize the details of the story until I've worked on part of the story.

    Admittedly, I wouldn't want to hire artists until I'd written a full draft of the script anyway, but if I can't ever start writing it, then it's still wrecked up.  And because it's something more complicated than I usually attempt--even though each story is planned to be linear, with only flavor text different based on player choice, the idea is still to have each major NPC have their own line of (mostly optional) sidequests to give them each their own story--I can't just say "well, heck with it, I'll just start writing and hope for the best!" because the best is not what would happen if I do.  It would just be my usual muddled mess.

    It's very frustrating and I have no idea what I can possibly do about it.

Finally remembered the last thing!

     After I failed to remember my last MDZS thing to add it to the previous "oh I forgot some stuff" post, I finally remembered it.

    It's that I was stunned to see that Crunchyroll has added the animated version of MDZS to streaming.  They didn't exactly put any effort into its presentation on the page for the series, though:  there's literally no description of the story (I can only think of one other show I've ever clicked on that left that space entirely blank, and that was something that was simulcasting so I had assumed they had no idea how to describe its story) and for the first two seasons the episodes have thumbnails and titles but no episode summaries.  Then for the final season and the quasi-fourth season (made up of mini episodes of things that happened during the earlier seasons that apparently they just left out) they have episode summaries but no thumbnails.  Everything about the show's page on Crunchyroll is just sort of "wtf." 😰  (Okay, actually, it seems like episode summaries are only available on the console version of Crunchyroll, as I just went to the version on my computer to double-check something and found no access to episode summaries at all.  Which is particularly weird all around, but maybe I'm just failing to navigate the PC version correctly.)

    The second time I clicked on it to have a look at the wtf-ness of it all (several days later than the initial time), I noticed something appalling in the descriptions of the episodes in that final season:

IWSG - I should probably come up with a title for this post but I'm bad at that

 

    So.

    Today's suggested question was about if we've ever wanted to go back and rewrite something, right?

    For me that's kind of a "yes and no" thing.

    Like anyone, I look back at my oldest writing and cringe.  But I tend to write exclusively for myself in the sense that most of the things I've ever written have never been put before other people in any context.  That being the case, if I ever want to rewrite something, there's nothing stopping me from doing so.

    However, for the most part I wouldn't want to because the really old things I've written are things I now don't particularly want to interact with in terms of their story material.

    Before I figured out I was asexual and aromantic, I often included heterosexual romance in my writing.  Actually, that even continued on for a few years after I figured it out, in fact.  But now I prefer to write about same-sex romance, if I include romance at all, so most of my old stuff is something I don't even want to interact with in any way.  And since it's not out there being interacted with by anyone else, that's fine.  It can continue to rot in digital oblivion.  (Or something.)

    On the other hand, I have been rewriting--and releasing!--a series of novels I wrote in 2014, so sometimes I do want to go back and rewrite older works.  (Okay, if I really wanted to go to older works, I started writing back in the 1990s, so if any of those even still exist on any accessible hard drive, I could dive back into the ultra-cringe of things I wrote when I was still a teenager.)  I need to finally get around to finishing up the research for the next rewrite in the series, though.  It's hard to find books talking in sufficient detail about Late Bronze Age Mesopotamia...

Forgot a few things!

     I forgot a couple things on my previous MDZS-related post.

    First, I wanted to mention that I not too long ago watched the anime Raven of the Inner Court.  Like The Apothecary Diaries, it originates in Japan but its setting is inspired by ancient China.  Unlike the other, though, I was pretty disappointed by Raven of the Inner Court.  The body count of bystanders was pretty high, the romantic elements were far too highlighted and far too shallow (at least in Apothecary Diaries Jinshi is trying to pretend he's not head-over-heels for Maomao, plus he actually has a personality and is extremely entertaining to watch), but I think my biggest problem with Raven of the Inner Court is that the anime's pacing is terrible.  They were clearly rushing to get through as much of the plot from the light novels as possible; if they'd spent twice as many episodes on the same amount of story, it would have surely been better, or at least had a lot less of "wait, who's that again?" syndrome.  (Having better character designs with more distinction between characters and a higher animation budget would definitely have helped, too, of course.)  However, as some of my problems with the story were definitely built-in to the original work, I'm not going to bother reading the light novels to get the original version, since I plainly wouldn't be satisfied with it, either.  And I'm obviously not its primary audience (since I prefer queer romance), so that's fine.

    So why do I mention it?  (And especially in a MDZS context?)  Because two of the male characters in it had names that made me sit up and take notice, especially in connection with each other.  Now, keep in mind that this is their names as written in the subtitles.  Unlike Apothecary Diaries, which gives its characters Chinese (or possibly just Chinese-like) names that can be pronounced in Japanese, Raven of the Inner Court gave its characters...how do I put this?  The Japanese versions of actual Chinese names.  If you ever do something like look for MDZS merch on a Japanese storefront like Mandarake, you sometimes find the names transliterated as they're said in Japanese, which gives really weird different names for some of the characters.  (I think "Lan" becomes like "Aoi" or something, going on the meaning of the character used (blue), instead of matching the sound.)  So, there is some uncertainty in my mind as to whether the names in the subtitles on Raven of the Inner Court should be viewed as the names intended by the author of the light novel or not.  (And since I don't actually care, I haven't bothered to look into that.  I would expect that it's either easily found out just on Wikipedia or something...or it's basically impossible to find out because nothing's ever been said in print.)  But either way, whether it's just the subtitles or the author's intent...

    ...two of the male characters are named Wei Qing and Wen Ying.

    Given that the lead of MDZS has the birth name of Wei Ying and one of the major female characters is Wen Qing, it feels like that cannot be a coincidence.

    It still could be a coincidence, of course.  (Or it could be someone in the translation-to-English pipeline deciding to throw in some MDZS references.)  But it's just so weirdly overlapping that it's hard to look at it as coincidental.  (And I did at least look up when the light novels started being published, and it was definitely after MDZS was published, so it's not impossible.)

    Then the other thing was....

    The other thing was...

    ...

    ...I've forgotten it.

    😭

Various MDZS-related thoughts

     So...a week ago Monday, I started rereading MDZS.

    Like, I actually did nothing else on that Monday except read MDZS; no internet, no TV, no games, nothing but reading.  I thought reading a gay romance novel from China in which two tyrannical dictators and a couple more would-be tyrants were thoroughly defeated was a good way to show my spite and disgust at something else that was happening in the real world that day.

    I ended up getting partway into volume three of the official translation in that first day.  (They had just defeated the Xuanwu of Slaughter when I finally stopped reading and went to bed.)  So, in one day I got through about 2 and 1/3 volumes.  The remaining 2 and 2/3 volumes took me six more days to get through.  😅  (I.E., I finished on the following Monday.  Well, except some of the bonus chapters.  Those were still pending and didn't end up finished until yesterday.)  Admittedly, I barely even opened the book at all on Saturday because I ended up having to spend most of the day out of the house actually doing things.

    Anyway.

    Rereading the novel really jammed my face down into the reality that I have been doing a very bad job in trying to recreate the characters in my fanfiction.  (It also really forced me to notice how sloppy my memory was of various things about the novel, including that I had been convinced the Yi City arc ended in volume one when it was actually entirely in volume two.)

IWSG - postless post

 

    Not sure what to write here today.  I'm not really feeling the monthly suggested question, either.

    I'm having trouble writing lately.  Not writer's block, per se, just...I don't know.  Lack of motivation, inability to concentrate, inability to pick a new project, lack of inspiration...I don't know what it is.

    I do have a new project that I'm planning--the script for a game, rather than standard fiction--but I'm still just muddling along in the planning stages, not finished defining who the characters are or even exactly what the place is where it's set.

    Today it's also not helping that it sorta feels like time was shut off a few days ago:  it started snowing late Saturday night and finished in the wee hours of Monday morning.  Who knows when I'll next leave my house.  😰  (Thankfully, I do have plenty of food.  And if I run out, it's not that far to the grocery store, like half a mile at most.  I could walk it if I wasn't so badly out of shape.)  As of right now (early Tuesday), the street still isn't properly cleared, and my driveway is not likely to show itself for a very long time.  I have heard very few cars leaving the other houses in the subdivision, and no mail was delivered yesterday; it really feels like time has simply stopped because of the storm.  That makes it even harder to focus on writing.

    But the lack of a project grabbing me and saying "write me!" is the biggest problem.

    And that's a hard one to conquer.