Off the Cliff

One oddity of this round of weight loss is that my feet have shrunk. Right foot sloshes about in its boot, birks fall off even with socks. I keep buying new socks that are never thick enough to keep things on. This is gratifying, yes, even if it's water weight, because I have chronic edema and water loss is just fine by me. Shall use the full_length orthotic until feet start sweĺing again in the spring.

New chuffedness re tablet is youtube, which delivers me Woxin Changdan in, supposedly, fansubs. Not sure if they really are because it took me a while to figure how to turn subtitles on, but it makes an amazing difference having the action six inches from one's nose rather than six feet.

Wonder if I can meme with this? No, actually, because this keyboard has no angle brackets. No matter, because I've finished nothing but *Jhegaala* in the last two weeks, dropped *Athyra*, and may be about to drop *Dzur* or possibly just skip all the food bits. Reading this year is a bust.

No one commenting on this post about the trick ending ('it was all a dream' 'the protagonist was dead all along' 'it's an artificial reality') mentions the locus classicus, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, which may be because it's so classic it set the paradigm. Nor are they likely to mention Rainbow (我心飞翔.) What I like about that one is that The Ending *isn't* explained. It's just there, presented as fact, and you get to figure out what it means for the action of the film as a whole.

Here's a taste of Rainbow, with unrecognizable quondem Bo Pi as the greasy school master. And heavens. Is this the whole film, or just a few minutes of it?

This started as a 31_days fic for a prompt now long past. Might still do for last Friday's: 'error and truth are uncertainly blended.' Otherwise, is a Woxin fic. Series gen, more or less, and not the A/U. Inspired by looking back at January '08 posts and those 38 comment squee-fests over ep 16.
( Crucibles )

Mhh. Picking up the Woxin fic. When we last saw our heroes Gou Jian's fortunes had changed for the better-- maybe-- and Fu Chai was preparing to debate politics with him-- maybe.

And debate politics they did until I finally arrived at something that remotely resembled action.

31_days Woxin AU
Title: Mexican standoff
Day/Theme: August 21: when you open up your wings to speak
Series: Woxinchangdan
Character/Pairing: Gou Jian, Fu Chai
( Now read on )

Also the 3K ragamuffins keep killing the messenger. This annoyed me when Fu Chai did it in Woxin. The practice is no more agreeable in the Three Kingdoms. And they *all* do it. Never expected my cultural sticking point to be the proper treatment of ambassadors, or rather, hapless underlings, but it is.

My hanzi learner's books tells me that the chai hanzi's base meaning is 'fall short', though mandarintools would have it as 'error, to err.' Fu Chai then means 'the man is wrong.' Gou Jian, par contre, is 'entice and trample on.' I'd ask if no one ever thought when naming people in Spring Autumn, if the names weren't so apropos one suspects them of having been bestowed after the event.

Because limelight-shunning qwerty never makes new posts to showcase the awesome drabbles and ficlets and artwork she does on request, one must make posts for her.

So here she was asking for icons to fic about, and I responded with the one up there, and she responded with: ( what's under the cut )

Ahh, this thing goes slowly. This was supposed to be merely the first part of the next chapter. Maybe tomorrow.

Title: Catch the Wind
Day/Theme: April 14. 'you were born to be betrayed'
Series: Woxinchangdan
Character/Pairing: Gou Jian, Ya Yu
( Read more... )

Title: By a knight of ghosts and shadows I summoned am to tourney
Day/Theme: April 5. 'trying to build a tower out of custard'
Series: Woxinchangdan
Character/Pairing: Fu Chai, Fan Li, various ministers
( Read more... )

Interrupting Later Ch3, 1990s Taiwanese Versions of Gou Jian Most of Which Come From PRC In The First Place, we have ( the following )

The foreword, the introduction, and the first chapter which summarizes the Gou Jian story as told by the historical sources. This qualifies as speed reading for me.
( So why am I talking about Dream of Red Chambers instead? )

Title: Lips that would kiss
Day/Theme: March 22. 'lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone'
Series: Woxinchangdan
Character/Pairing: Fu Chai, Gou Jian

( In which Fu Chai grows marginally in Clue )

Even though this computer makes noises like a 747 taking off when I run Word (and only Word.)

Title: Under/cover
Day/Theme: March 16. I’ll keep the lights out, I’ll tell you fairy tales
Series: Woxinchangdan
Character/Pairing: Fan Li, Fu Chai

( A different game of chess )

Yesterday I was hanging around on the work computer waiting for my shift to start and somehow followed tags and such back to this post of paleaswater's with the link to Tudou's Best of Uncle Ming in 江山风雨情. Ran it on work's XP Pro, and ohh how much faster it is than on Win98. Jerky, like stop animation, but not the pause for five seconds every three seconds I'm used to. Came home and for interest's sake tried it on aniki's Vista. Like the wind, I tell you. And so I got to watch as Uncle Ming quivers and gasps and meets a most beautiful and dramatic end. Pity the screen's so small, is all, which is the advantage of a low resolution.

Like the wind on a laptop means the subtitles go too fast, but at work they were quite readable. And, lord, what a difference ten days of plugging away at simplified hanzi (instead of playing Yukon solitaire) has made in my reading comprehension. Then I went and viewed some Woxin against the day when I have a wp program again, on the old compy or the new. (Am currently wondering what happened to the case and motherboard of my old system, because it's not down at BB. Wibble wibble again.) Had sudden satori in middle of Gou Jian's address to the ancestors. All those courtiers who preface their remarks with 'chen yiwei' are actually saying 臣以為, y/n? So when did 以為 start to mean 'believe wrongly'? which is the sense Gou Jian uses it in there. And not 'the minister humbly and mistakenly believes you shouldn't wage war on Wu'?

Was going to stop using prompts for this series, but today's was too apropos of the thing I've been writing all week.

Prompt: Feb 20 The gravitational constant
Characters: Fu Chai and his several ministers
( What keeps the world steady )

Title: Jesting Pilate
Day/Theme: Tues Feb.10 - I know it well, the nakedness of truth
Series: Woxin Changdan AU cont'd
Character/Pairing: Fu Chai, Fan Li

'What is truth, asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer'

Title: What each man harbours in his heart
Day/Theme: Mon Feb.9 - Scalded by the fire of the great moon
Series: Woxin Changdan AU cont'd
Character/Pairing: Fu Chai, Gou Jian

I grow old, I grow old-- or the double entendres in the prompt line would never have escaped my notice until this moment. My only excuse is that Fu Chai isn't yet allowing himself to think consciously about the attractions of Gou Jian's mhh full-of-the-moon.

( In which Fu Chai and Gou Jian are at the crossest of cross purposes )

Title: What sound of water in the dry lands?
Day/Theme: Thurs Feb.5 - I will be the water for your thirst
Series: Woxin Changdan AU cont'd
Character/Pairing: Fu Chai, Fan Li, Gou Jian

Deserts of the heart

And since this is National Poetry Month or something, another of my faves-- ( T.S. Eliot's Marina )

Wanted to do a February prompt but the theme was still last December's. This, BTW, is what happens when people who don't read Chinese read Chinese stories.
( Dec 30 prompt: 'the universe plunging at last into its cold decline' )

Gacked from supacat

Had to go a waaaaays back for some of these. If I'm to trust my memory (which I probably shouldn't) I was, in fantasy at least, a block of ice all through my 30s. Which, not perhaps coincidentally, was when I was dating most.
( Cut for revelations )

Suckitude, suckitude, and all is suckitude, except for a lovely comment on this entry about differing social customs:

A bit like when I used to wander around looking for stuff and murmuring, "Wo? Wo? Wo ist der neugeborne König der Juden?"

Doesn't have the same ring in English, but made me laugh.
( Woxin natter )

Ah. Hm. An interesting point. Here it is (almost) the year of the ox (go me) and I'm not sure what an ox is. Wikipedia says it's a castrated bull. (Wikipedia also tells me what a freemartin is, which is something I'd never heard of. It also says that an aurochs is an extinct kind of cattle, when I'd always assumed it was some sort of deer. Live and learn.)
( Cut for 'satiable curiosity )

Ha! Top Ten Chefs of Ancient China.

Seven of the ten were women. France, I spit in your general direction.
( However )

(Ah! It's back. lj's back! I breathe again.)

Happy birthday to my clutch of end-of-Decembrists: luxetumbra, joasakura, and stanking.

Otherwise, I'm terribly sorry but I shall be unreachable for the next month or so, on account of paleaswater just sent me 大汉天子 and 女巡按, those Uncle Ming omnibuses, both without English subtitles. I intend to drive the cold winter away by sitting in front of the TV squinting ferociously at the Chinese ones. At the end of which I shall be either blind or semi-literate. (There's what looks like a laptop DVD player in the Bloor stores. I'm... tempted, if that's what they are, because these DVDs will play on a region 1 player, and it'd be nice to have mandarintools handy when I'm, um, reading my TV series.)