extrapenguin: Northern lights in blue and purple above black horizon. (Default)
Because as I said, I write in two arcs, mostly, and dealing with a whole year's crop is too much. An even more pared-down version of [personal profile] isis's 2016 in review post, this time with just the fave lines/titles, plus the questions at the end. Also some misc blathering about all the fics I've written so far!

Current word count: 64838 words this half-year, which is way way more than in any of the full years prior to this, wtf. Spread over 8 fics. (Average ~8105 words per fic. Longest 31006, shortest 655, not gonna do a stats analysis of the distribution with only 8 items, sorry.)

the stuff I wrote, thoughts on )

questions! )
extrapenguin: Northern lights in blue and purple above black horizon. (Default)
Babbling Brook, Silent Sea (18861 words) by ExtraPenguin
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian,   Lan Qiren & Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji,   Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji & Qingheng-jun
Characters: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Lan Xichen, Lan Qiren, Qingheng-jun
Additional Tags: Coming of Age, Family, Grief/Mourning, Alternate Universe - Memory of Water (Emmi Itäranta) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalyptic
Summary:
In a world with a dire lack of potable water and where winter is but a memory, Lan Wangji is the tea master's younger brother, living far in the western reaches of New Qian where the locals don't speak his language or look like him. One day, Wei Wuxian comes to him and asks for his company on a trip to replicate a prior expedition that found drinkable water – in the Lost Lands of Scandinavia, outside New Qian's borders and forbidden to enter.

Or, Area repairman takes local shut-in on an illegal journey out of the country.

Okay, it's not quite the 19k I promised – apparently I used a lot more stuff that makes gedit's word counter differ from AO3's one than with Heaven and Earth – but it rounds up to 19k still. I tried to find a nice chapter break but couldn't. Sorry about the lack of rest points.

Now that this is done, I'll probably do a retrospective on my writing from January to June; I don't expect I'll start my next project (also Modao Zushi!) until July, lol. With these two longer projects (Heaven and Earth, 30k; Babbling Brook, Silent Sea, 19k) I have wip scenes and changelogs of sorts I can navel-gaze over, and perhaps you can laugh at me or boggle at my first drafts. (Mostly, final draft -worthy prose, but the characterization might be off in places.) Anyway. Have fun reading!
extrapenguin: Northern lights in blue and purple above black horizon. (Default)
So, that fic I've been mentioning? It's now 19k and done as of the 19th. Looking through my logs, I penned the first scene on 3rd of May and started writing it in truth a week later, on the 10th. Average word count per day: ~475, including the over two weeks I spent AFK due to travel. Subtracting those gives over 700 words per day. Similar math yielded ~640 words per day for Heaven and Earth. It's probably accurate enough, though my writing style tends to be more "1.5k one day, nothing the next" depending on how my real life is going. Anyway, this one is T-rated and has a much less boring draft title. Currently at the beta's, as I have yet more travel to do. This post's title is from the summary:

In a world with a dire lack of potable water and where winter is but a memory, Lan Wangji is the tea master's younger brother, living far in the western reaches of New Qian where the locals don't speak his language or look like him. One day, Wei Wuxian comes to him and asks for his company on a trip to replicate a prior expedition that found drinkable water – in the Lost Lands of Scandinavia, outside New Qian's borders and forbidden to enter.

Or, Area repairman takes local shut-in on an illegal journey out of the country.



On getting beta'd, I'm trying out some new things! I've tacked on a modified version of 10 questions to ask a friend who just read your manuscript (since, well, this has two characters who actually show up onpage, and this is not a novel), but I'm also asking about pacing and information release – when did I start a scene too late or too early, are all the scenes at the right places in the narrative, am I releasing information at the right places or do things come out of the left field, that sort of thing. List of questions I'm asking for this specific fic beneath the cut:

questions )

I've previously mentioned that my creative year tends to come in two arcs of six months each, so I'll do a retrospective in July after I've posted this one! Introducing a tag for such things, since now that I've got chatlogs of the snippets I've sent to my dear beta armadda, I can do a changelog of sorts and show you what stupid choices she convinced me to drop. :P (No, I am not going to set up a git repository on Github for fanfic progress documentation purposes, that would be a terrible idea, self. Really.) Also a proof that my "first drafts" tend to be nigh-identical to the finished product; unless I do rewrites for another reason, the greatest changes are punctuation and word choice. That said, there are a lot of [insert witty conversation here]s and other stuff, and the scathing wit tends to come only in later edits after I've digested the scene some more.

On the side of the fandom this is for, [tumblr.com profile] callanthea has engsubbed the first three audio drama eps! Episode 1, Episode 2 & Episode 3. Chromemuffin has written a liveblog reaction post for the first ep under [tumblr.com profile] mihanada, to go with the liveblogging of the chapters from the book. The animation will come out on the 9th of July, and we'll get 15 20-min eps, if my sources are correct, and three seasons to tell the story. (S2 and S3 will apparently have 15 30-min eps each, so in total this'll be 1200 minutes or 20 hours of animation. Wow.) Based on trailers and such, I already have things I'm meh about, but I shall talk about that when it actually comes out. The live-action adaptation, Chenqing Commands AKA The Untamed, is filming. Last I heard, the projected air date was 2020. I may or may not make a liveblog/reaction post of any of the items when the next instance of it becomes available with engsubs.

Regardless of Modao Zushi/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/Founder of Diabolism becoming a franchise, I shall sit in my corner with the novel. The translation into English can be found for free here.
extrapenguin: Northern lights in blue and purple above black horizon. (Default)
Tumblr user [tumblr.com profile] callanthea has expressed intent to engsub the audio drama, three eps of which have been released. They've already subbed the theme song! I'm adding it to the fanvid recs post.

In other news, there is a Modao Zushi wiki that I'm helping to fill up.

In yet other news, this AU is now at 12k and needs only 9 more scenes plus scene-level touchup to dialogue and word choice before I can send it to the beta's. Writing about the darkness of the polar night is very appealing here in the nightless night. It also has a draft title. As planned, it is so far about language, isolation, and a potentially hot take on colonialism; it has also decided to be about grief. Let's see what more it decides to be or not be. It will definitely pass 15k but will hopefully be less than 20k.

In news unrelated to Modao Zushi (shocking, I know), I have now fully transitioned from student mode to employee mode for the summer. While I was revising for today's exam (an attempt to gain a higher grade), I came across an endearing extension of the forest and trees metaphor: the forest (or at least the arboretum) was that the things we measure are the expectation values of the weird shit that happens at the quantum level, while the trees were the mathemathical tricks etc, and we went deeper into the forest, looked at the trees of the arboretum, and gave a glance to leaves and branches. 'Twas a nice extension of the metaphor. I also came across the trees and forest metaphor in Finnish in Eino Koponen's Itämerensuomalaisten kielten meteorologisen sanaston etymologiaa ("On the etymology of the meteorological vocabulary of Baltic Finnic languages"). I plan to read it, if only because I should probably read more in Finnish, and I like linguistics. As for how I came across it, I needed to find the reason why aurorae in Finnish are called fox-fires, and Google spat this out, in addition to more immediately useful resources. (And as for why I was asking Google the origin of the term revontuli, well, see the fic mentioned in paragraph #3.)
extrapenguin: Northern lights in blue and purple above black horizon. (Default)
Okay, so, here's a bunch of fanvid/-song recs for Modao Zushi English translation, Chinese original) (also known as Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation or as Founder of Diabolism). The translators' summary:
As the grandmaster who founded the Demonic Sect, Wei Wuxian roamed the world in his wanton ways, hated by millions for the chaos he created. In the end, he was backstabbed by his dearest shidi and killed by powerful clans that combined to overpower him. He incarnates into the body of a lunatic who was abandoned by his clan and is later, unwillingly, taken away by a famous cultivator among the clans – Lan Wangji, his archenemy. This marks the start of a thrilling yet hilarious journey of attacking monsters, solving mysteries, and raising children. From the mutual flirtation along the way, Wei Wuxian slowly realizes that Lan Wangji, a seemingly haughty and indifferent poker-face, holds more feelings for Wei Wuxian than he is letting on.

Anyway, for those who haven't read it, I rec it. Wei Wuxian is hilarious. Beneath the cut, fanvid recs, mostly found via the Baidu page. See also the Cloud Recesses, a Google Docs of Recs with tabs for fics and comics etc as well.

ETA: This is a resource that I will update as more stuff gets discovered or subbed.
Latest update: 25.8.2018

Read more... )
extrapenguin: Northern lights in blue and purple above black horizon. (Default)
I have exams to study for but whatever, have five science fiction (three space) fusion AUs for Modao Zushi (aka Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation aka Founder of Diabolism aka 魔道祖师). They likely make no sense and are OOC, as the translation hasn't quite gotten to what makes Wei Wuxian tick, but whatever. Also unbeta'd. If you want a fic for this fandom that has seen a beta, I wrote my very first novella, Heaven and Earth, and put it on AO3. None of the characters therein appear here and vice versa.

There'll be a recpost of various translated cnovels I've looked at recently once I'm done with exams. Last few weeks of May? Anyway, here's Modao Zushi meets various novels off my shelf:

1. Machineries of EmpireRead more... )

2. DichronautsRead more... )

3. UpliftRead more... )

4. Pushing IceRead more... )

5. Memory of WaterRead more... )

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