Blind Go aftermath
Oct. 12th, 2007 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirHaste Street, on the Feast of St. Firminus
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tokyofish said I should probably post to reassure everyone that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Mostly I've been swallowed up by labwork, which is kind of all-consuming in a way that would make me happy if I weren't also obligated to also think about eating and sleeping. >_> This week was a little overwhelming because I was trying to recuperate from the retreats at Tahoe while also making up for all the time spent away from lab. I'm starting to feel rather possessive about my project: I know that I'll have to put it aside once this rotation ends, but I really want to see it through to the end.
In other news, the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
blind_go reveal is up, as most of you know. I wrote Real, also known as "that cyberpunk!AU" in my head. I initially had two ideas for this round but ended up writing neither one. Basically, I wanted to write an AU where Shindou and Touya still play go, which was more difficult to pull off than I expected. The first idea was the bohemian!AU, where there would still be people who played go professionally, but no organization like the Nihon Kiin to pay them: in other words, the pros would be the equivalent of starving artists. Shindou and Touya would be attic roommates, struggling to pay the rent and fighting off consumption, while pursuing their calling against their parents' will. I liked this idea, which I thought up after I went to a concert performance of La Bohème over the summer, but I really couldn't get myself to write it.
My other idea had been to write a serious genderswitch AU, where Touya is a girl and has to deal with all the problems of being underestimated or not being taken seriously despite "her" obvious talent. In other words, a thorough exploration of gender issues, with the addition of Shindou (who would still be male) thrown in. But I didn't want to do that much research about female go professionals, and I kind of wanted to write something that was silly and fun forblind_go, so I pretty much dropped the idea, especially after it became clear that at least one person was already writing genderswitch for this round.
At this point, I consultedtryogeru, as I usually do when I get stuck for ideas, and she told me that the bohemian!AU sounded boring, but out of all the other random half-baked AU scenarios I threw at her, she wouldn't mind reading the cyberpunk!AU. I'd read Neuromancer and The Diamond Age over the summer as well, although I have to say that most of my inspiration probably came from a short book by Neal Stephenson on operating systems, called In the Beginning...There Was the Command Line. I thought about hackers and the sheer flexibility that came with a minimal Unix command prompt, and it occurred to me that Touya, who has a traditionalist streak, would be the type of person who would insist on that text-input command line.
I had a lot of trouble figuring out how go would be played online and how go players would fit into this computer-dominated future. I also realized I couldn't simply parallel the canon storyline, which is why it was difficult to come up with an actual plot. The chatlogs were, in fact, meant to be a tribute to Ender's Game, and I was pleased to notice that one of the commenters said that the fic reminded her of the book. (Of course,flonnebonne's the one who wrote the Hikaru no Go/Ender's Game crossover, so that became an inadvertent red herring.)
aiwritingfic was the only person to guess me correctly and even then, only on her second attempt. For the record, I never write crossovers (although I enjoy reading them). I don't know why I was so difficult to guess for this round; I thought the premise alone would give me away pretty quickly. Then again, most of the people who guessed aren't people on my friends list, so they probably weren't very familiar with my writing voice.
Some fun facts:
- eternal_summer comes from Yeongha's name. Isn't it girly? There are male names that end in "ha" but they usually don't use the character for "summer" (which, by the way, is one of the characters in my real name).
- I based Waya's chatspeak on wall conversations between certain real-life friends on facebook.
- yon-me is supposed to be Tsutsui: yon for "four" and me being another term for "eye" (as in point of territory on a go board, according to Sensei's Library). "Two eyes" being what you need for a group of stones to stay alive, plus Tsutsui's glasses, hence "four-eyes". I have no idea if that even works in Japanese since I don't know the language, but allow me my sad attempts at puns.
- I have no idea who tesuji_guru is. Nor <mikhail_bessel>.
- Touya and Waya type very fast; Tsutsui types a little more slowly. Those seconds in the timestamps aren't random.
- The worldbuilding for this fic is incredibly shoddy. In fact, there's a fairly obvious inconsistency in the fic as it stands, and I'm going to need to figure out how toexplain it away resolve it. Kudos to anyone who can propose a good solution.
- I haven't watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex or Serial Experiments Lain, although I've watched all of .hack//SIGN.
Thanks to everyone who read and commented on my fic! Yes, there is more to the story, and I'll write it as soon as I, uh, figure it out. >_> Which reminds me,aiwritingfic, you can request that I finish a work-in-progress of your choice. Let me know what you want.
As for fics I liked, of coursecorbeaun's A Season for Black Chrysanthemums blew me away (yakuza!AU always wins points with me), and I also loved the idea behind issen4's Mistaken, despite not realizing at all that it was her fic until the reveal was posted. Plus the vampire!AUs, the Star Wars fusion, the kaitou!AU, the Death Note crossovers, all the permutations of the band!AU, oh and how can I forget ladyseishou's "dark urban fairy tale" that won the theme challenge hands down. ^_^ All I can say is, never underestimate the inventiveness of this fandom (not to mention its capacity for crack).
Yours &c.
Post-script: An appropriate meme fromissen4 and aishuu: What do you think are the "trademarks" of the fiction that I write? What type of themes or characterization notes or quirks keep on manifesting in my writing? Essentially, what do you think is a stereotypically Me-way of writing fic?
tokyofish said I should probably post to reassure everyone that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Mostly I've been swallowed up by labwork, which is kind of all-consuming in a way that would make me happy if I weren't also obligated to also think about eating and sleeping. >_> This week was a little overwhelming because I was trying to recuperate from the retreats at Tahoe while also making up for all the time spent away from lab. I'm starting to feel rather possessive about my project: I know that I'll have to put it aside once this rotation ends, but I really want to see it through to the end.In other news, the
blind_go reveal is up, as most of you know. I wrote Real, also known as "that cyberpunk!AU" in my head. I initially had two ideas for this round but ended up writing neither one. Basically, I wanted to write an AU where Shindou and Touya still play go, which was more difficult to pull off than I expected. The first idea was the bohemian!AU, where there would still be people who played go professionally, but no organization like the Nihon Kiin to pay them: in other words, the pros would be the equivalent of starving artists. Shindou and Touya would be attic roommates, struggling to pay the rent and fighting off consumption, while pursuing their calling against their parents' will. I liked this idea, which I thought up after I went to a concert performance of La Bohème over the summer, but I really couldn't get myself to write it. My other idea had been to write a serious genderswitch AU, where Touya is a girl and has to deal with all the problems of being underestimated or not being taken seriously despite "her" obvious talent. In other words, a thorough exploration of gender issues, with the addition of Shindou (who would still be male) thrown in. But I didn't want to do that much research about female go professionals, and I kind of wanted to write something that was silly and fun for
blind_go, so I pretty much dropped the idea, especially after it became clear that at least one person was already writing genderswitch for this round.At this point, I consulted
tryogeru, as I usually do when I get stuck for ideas, and she told me that the bohemian!AU sounded boring, but out of all the other random half-baked AU scenarios I threw at her, she wouldn't mind reading the cyberpunk!AU. I'd read Neuromancer and The Diamond Age over the summer as well, although I have to say that most of my inspiration probably came from a short book by Neal Stephenson on operating systems, called In the Beginning...There Was the Command Line. I thought about hackers and the sheer flexibility that came with a minimal Unix command prompt, and it occurred to me that Touya, who has a traditionalist streak, would be the type of person who would insist on that text-input command line.I had a lot of trouble figuring out how go would be played online and how go players would fit into this computer-dominated future. I also realized I couldn't simply parallel the canon storyline, which is why it was difficult to come up with an actual plot. The chatlogs were, in fact, meant to be a tribute to Ender's Game, and I was pleased to notice that one of the commenters said that the fic reminded her of the book. (Of course,
flonnebonne's the one who wrote the Hikaru no Go/Ender's Game crossover, so that became an inadvertent red herring.)aiwritingfic was the only person to guess me correctly and even then, only on her second attempt. For the record, I never write crossovers (although I enjoy reading them). I don't know why I was so difficult to guess for this round; I thought the premise alone would give me away pretty quickly. Then again, most of the people who guessed aren't people on my friends list, so they probably weren't very familiar with my writing voice.Some fun facts:
- eternal_summer comes from Yeongha's name. Isn't it girly? There are male names that end in "ha" but they usually don't use the character for "summer" (which, by the way, is one of the characters in my real name).
- I based Waya's chatspeak on wall conversations between certain real-life friends on facebook.
- yon-me is supposed to be Tsutsui: yon for "four" and me being another term for "eye" (as in point of territory on a go board, according to Sensei's Library). "Two eyes" being what you need for a group of stones to stay alive, plus Tsutsui's glasses, hence "four-eyes". I have no idea if that even works in Japanese since I don't know the language, but allow me my sad attempts at puns.
- I have no idea who tesuji_guru is. Nor <mikhail_bessel>.
- Touya and Waya type very fast; Tsutsui types a little more slowly. Those seconds in the timestamps aren't random.
- The worldbuilding for this fic is incredibly shoddy. In fact, there's a fairly obvious inconsistency in the fic as it stands, and I'm going to need to figure out how to
- I haven't watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex or Serial Experiments Lain, although I've watched all of .hack//SIGN.
Thanks to everyone who read and commented on my fic! Yes, there is more to the story, and I'll write it as soon as I, uh, figure it out. >_> Which reminds me,
aiwritingfic, you can request that I finish a work-in-progress of your choice. Let me know what you want.As for fics I liked, of course
corbeaun's A Season for Black Chrysanthemums blew me away (yakuza!AU always wins points with me), and I also loved the idea behind issen4's Mistaken, despite not realizing at all that it was her fic until the reveal was posted. Plus the vampire!AUs, the Star Wars fusion, the kaitou!AU, the Death Note crossovers, all the permutations of the band!AU, oh and how can I forget ladyseishou's "dark urban fairy tale" that won the theme challenge hands down. ^_^ All I can say is, never underestimate the inventiveness of this fandom (not to mention its capacity for crack).Yours &c.
Post-script: An appropriate meme from
issen4 and aishuu: What do you think are the "trademarks" of the fiction that I write? What type of themes or characterization notes or quirks keep on manifesting in my writing? Essentially, what do you think is a stereotypically Me-way of writing fic?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-12 10:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-12 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-12 01:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-12 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-12 11:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-12 11:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-14 05:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-12 03:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-14 05:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-12 04:57 pm (UTC)The way you strike at the heart of a character's struggles makes me envious. Really good, focused settings.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-14 05:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-14 05:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-14 05:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-15 04:00 am (UTC)And the main thing I associate your writing with is, hum, a sense of precision? That everything has been carefully thought out, everything is in its place. And the others mentioned the sense of a still moment - you're very, very good at that (jeerus omg *_*) Though you don't always use it, so uh, it doesn't mean you're always static or anything? XD;;