flemmings | (no subject)

Hm well. I am considering this while in the midst of apocalyptic despair/ allergy season asthma (I know I'm fated to die by, as Sabina has said, basically drowning in my bed, a prospect that leads among other things to me bicycling without a helmet. Helmets are over-rated anyway.) The exercise produces certain thoughts.

I know there's an argument that if your stuff no longer inspires you, if the act of writing becomes weary stale flat and unprofitable, if every line you write says Bad bad bad why do you even bother???- then you must write more, and constantly, until you get over it. Keep swinging at those balls, as the metaphor has it, and eventually you may hit one again. I'm just not sure it works. To churn out one uninspired piece after the other produces, in me, nothing but depression. When you reach your limits in one direction, why go on trying to advance? You may not have hit a temporary obstruction: you may have hit twenty-mile thick rockface.

It's a balance of miseries. Which is worse, not writing or writing badly? For me it's writing badly. And at that point I think it time to stop and do something else- in my case read or translate or study the primitive forms of Chinese characters. Quod uides perisse perditum ducas- cut your losses. And- ahhh! go read the new chapter of Phantom Moon Tower that

kickinpants has just sent me. See? There is life after fic.

ETA: you know that one about the good being the enemy of the best? I think something like that's partly behind my uneasiness with 'the next one will knock them dead.' If you're reader-focussed, and focussed on pleasing or wowing your readers-- well, you're not aiming at anyone who'll give you a hard time if you fail to produce the best, are you? If people like your work what they want of you is more. They may well be unhappy with anything new and different, or to see you fumbling with a new genre or new techniques that you may not have mastered yet. You see it happen all the time with singers. Most fans want the old standbys and don't want to hear the new tunes the artist is working out or on. Same with 'I love your stuff!' IME it often means 'I like this kind of story- even, this fandom or this pairing- so don't write any other kind.' In the end, who's going to keep you honest about the quality of your work if not you?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So, what's the new developement in Phantom Moon Tower? I wish I could read it in Japanese, since who knows if the second volume will be picked up in Chinese, but alas. ;_;

You've seen the ep at least?

Glanced through it at the bookstore. But otherwise no. Sob sob. *big weepy eyes* have pity, just a short summary, please. ;_; (Btw, like your new icon)

Happy Jiip? Yes, so do I. (It's been turned on its side for the icon. In the original it's eying Gokuu's crotch.)

Short summary, aagh. OK. Nakamura, the elderly owner of a Japanese sweets store, and his large young companion approach young master about arranging a hanami with one of the top geisha of Tokyo. YM naturally asks Yosaburou to see to it. Top geisha shows up plus diffident samisen player, but Yosaburou does not, oddly enough. (Samisen player calls Yosaburou nii-san, and is assumed to be his pupil.)

Guests drift off viewing blossoms, YM and samisen player find themselves in a close-by gazebo-like place where drunken guests can sleep off the effects, samisen player says Please sleep with me and starts getting undressed. He has a large burn all over his back. YM says no no no, really this isn't my thing, they go back to the party- and find the geisha has been murdered.

YM is taken in by the police but released because samisen player gives him an alibi. Nakamura himself has disappeared. Large young man reveals he's Nakamura's son by a servant, recently returned to Tokyo from the village where he was raised. It was for him that Nakamura engaged the geisha. He thinks Yosaburou's absence the night before is connected to his father's disappearance and beats him up, but in fact Y hadn't even heard the news. Y gets him to go back home ('If your father disappeared of his own volition he may have come back'), sends samisen player off to inform Yosaburou's 'master' about the geisha's detah, and has a tete-a tete with YM. He was the one sicced samisen player on YM, assuming that YM likes scarred men. 'Poor boy, he had an accident as a child and now no one wants him.' Boy's not his pupil either: 'Someone asked me to look after him but he's a bit of a handful.'

Interlude with YM's mother come for a brief visit and seeing all the changes in the neighbourhood. The tofu shop at the corner's gone-- Oh yes, says the servant, burnt down, now a neighbourhood organization is opening a restaurant there- no, the son had too many debts, couldn't take the place over.

At the Moon T/Bower YM is told that the dead geisha left a message for him. She heard that the tofu-ya's son wasn't bankrupt and wanted YM to know- though YM can't figure out why she would. He goes to Yosaburou's where he meets the samisen player again. Yosaburou's 'master' is the young man's mother and also Y's samisen instructor. Cut to Yosaburou having a lesson with her. 'That's my part. Now yours.'

At the sweet store Nakamura is still missing. His wife tells YM that large young man isn't Nakamura's son at all, just a servant's child, and anyway he's going back to the country next day. YM sees him giving clothes and money to an errand boy and realizes he knows where Nakamura is, but man won't say. Nakamura is in hiding because he saw the murderers and knows who they are.

Yosaburou is telling another ghost story to samisen player, YM and Nakamura's un-son. It's about a farmer's wife whose husband's mistress suddenly appears and leaves her with the man's child. Farmer is away, wife kills child by shoving him into the furnace and burying the burned body under the cherry tree. Next year she finds the hand sticking out of the ground. She buries it deeper but three days later there it is again. She cuts it off and throws it in the river- and next day wakes with her own hand turned black. YM has fits but Yousaburou says it's just a made-up story. YM responds by asking to meet samisen player's mother, who had also taught the geisha. YM and un-Nakamura are on their way there when they're attacked and knocked unconscious.
(continued in next)

Meanwhile samisen player says to Yosaburou as they're following behind, 'You heard that last story from my mother?' 'Yes, but I couldn't use it. I wanted a really terrifying story that would show the hell in the depths of men's hearts.' They come upon the attackers and Yosaburou screams blue murder, sending the men flying, but then says 'My master's in danger!' Yosaburou and the woman's son run to her house where someone grabs the son and demands to know where Nakamura is. Another thug has a knife at her throat as well. She yells 'You do anything to him and *this* is what will happen'- and thrusts out her right hand, which has always been hidden in her sleeve. It's burned black and missing fingers. Son brains shocked thug with a pot, groggy YM and unNakamura come up after. We get Yosaburou's thoughts- a geisha gave birth to a child and was told by everyone to get rid of it. She threw it into the furnace but as the clothes caught fire thrust her hand in and pulled him out and beat the flames out with her hand. 'She was a famous samisen player and became just a mother who lost her hand for her son. That wasn't the story I wanted to hear at all.'

And of course, the three men who ran the neighbourhood organization had planned to get the good corner area for their restaurant and set the fire at the tofu store. The geisha herad them talking about it at the tower and they killed her to shut her up. Nakamura and unson go back to the country together. Yosaburou tells YM Actually Nakamura has no use for women. I always thought he rather fancied *you*. The end.

Thank you thank you thank you. At this point I wish she'd write this series and nothing else. Or on the second thought alternate between this and hundred ghosts. *sigh* What is she writing anyways? Haven't seen a new vol of hundred ghost for ages.