flemmings: (Default)
flemmings ([personal profile] flemmings) wrote2007-07-12 07:29 pm

The Flow be' very very good to me

I'm writing a 100 Demons AU. This was a happy little idea I got three weeks or so ago and scribbled away at until the last week in June when I was scheduled to work full-time. And when my full-time week was over, the sense of a perfect story-line I'd had in my mind had vanished too, so there I was without a convincing ending. This is why writers shouldn't work, or at least not full-time.

But I was beavering away at it today and got to the point where AU Aoarashi is talking to AU Ritsu, who in spite of my best efforts keeps getting conflated with the wet love interest of Yasha Kisoden, the Asuka version, who really is a Heian female of the put-upon Murasaki school. This is what happens when one tries to write sensually sensuous Ritsu from the illustration books and not the tough-minded manga character. AU Aoarashi is saying, no surprise, that what AU Ritsu needs is a lot more yang in his diet and/or lifestyle, which he'll be happy to provide, and AU Ritsu rouses himself to say Give me a break, where you gettin' your yang from, yin-by-definition night and moonlight youkai, huh? Aorashi gets all huffy about being a *dragon* for heaven's sake, proud and brave and yang and not a mere Device creature of yin pooh-pooh. At which point I stopped, wondering if that would fly at all, or if it was even correct, and went off to feed my sister's cats.

Returned home, and because I put my knee out Monday night (rolling over in bed- growing older sucks, do not tell me different) lay down on the sofa for a bit to ice it. And because I'd been reading Rainywillow 11 with its return of that master forger who AFAICR died in a fire at the end of vol 10, I went back to reading vol 10, all of it, including the story of the faux decadent amateur writer, with his exquisite tastes and his long hair and his fondness for exotic bibelots. And here he is, batting his eyelashes and making up to bishounen Ren: 'I'm of the 'dragon yang' persuasion myself.' Hatsu's footnote: 龍陽 (dragon yang) = nanshoku.

Wait, wait. *What*??? Dragons are yang energy are gay???

Plug 龍陽 into Japanese google, find too many wps about Shanghai subways and a story about some courtier fishing with a king, plug the english name from that url- longyan- into English google and come up with Lord Longyang and the King of Wei. Blinkety blink. "The phrase longyang became one of the standard allusions to male love as early as the third century C. E." Blinkety blink. Do I dare to eat a peach? I mean, do I dare to have AU Aoarashi make a truly awful pun?

You know me and puns. You betcha.

[identity profile] paleaswater.livejournal.com 2007-07-13 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
wahahahah... that's brillant. It took me a minute to turn my mind around too. half a peach, half a peach. Have to remember that.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-07-13 02:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Why are these charming anecdotes from one's storied cultural past not more widely known? No, I know the answer to that. But still, a pity. Now let me tell you about Henri III's mignons...
incandescens: (Default)

[personal profile] incandescens 2007-07-13 01:58 am (UTC)(link)
Gah. You should not give me such interesting links when I am about to turn the computer off and call it a night. :)

Oh, and -- split that peach, baby.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-07-13 02:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, and -- split that peach, baby.

We may hope the ensuing sex scene isn't quite *that* painful-- oh, you mean Mi Zixia's peaches. ^_^ Yes, and now I'll have to stop myself from having characters ask 'May I share your peaches?' as a come-on line.
incandescens: (Default)

[personal profile] incandescens 2007-07-13 08:51 pm (UTC)(link)
But such a good come-on line.

[identity profile] i-am-zan.livejournal.com 2007-07-13 02:25 am (UTC)(link)
*is gleeful* - hmmm now I want some peaches! Have a half of one! ^_~

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-07-13 02:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Etchi!

[identity profile] rasetsunyo.livejournal.com 2007-07-13 01:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Interesting stuff, thanks for the link! It all sounds very foreign and exotic to me, since Chinese education here by default hail from the puritanical bourgeois Nanyang tradition. Shared peach, yum.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-07-13 02:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I always take the information on these gay webpages with a bit of salt, since IME the goal is less scholarly accuracy and more enthusiastic propagandizing for Our Side: 'And *he* was gay too! And him! And him!' (Tried to track down Plato's epitaph for Dion of Syracuse once. Everyone quoted the last line- 'O Dion who made me tremble with love for you'- and no one bothered with the first three lines. *Lousy* scholarship.) But this one seems to know what it's talking about and, well, 'even if it's not true it makes a good story.'