careful of falls

・The weather forecast says that as of tomorrow the temperature is supposed to fall ten degrees (Celsius) clunk and stay that way. Here's hoping. Certainly the barometer is dropping like a stone today, my neck and shoulders are killing me.

・A little in advance of the weather, I made my annual batch of 栗の渋皮煮 (chestnuts stewed in syrup). It takes a full half a day, peeling and boiling and simmering and repeating, there's a good reason why I only ever do it once a year but the end result is tasty. As it well should be, given the ungodly amount of brown sugar involved (see photo below). (Also the process is made bearable every year by finding a nice angsty longfic to read throughout.)

・Best AO3 username I've encountered lately: hathawaysendabus.

・Chinese uses 借 for both "borrow" and "lend," which is confusing (reminds me of an Alaskan college friend who used to say "Could you borrow me a pencil?"). You have to look at clues like 给 or 向 to figure out who's lending to whom, especially confusing when 向 is toward something in Japanese and from something in Chinese.

・Writing grumbles: so I have three protagonists, R, K and A. All three books (okay, book 1 written, book 2 outlined and making slow progress, book 3 still a gleam in my mind’s eye) use the points of view of all three of them in turn, but in terms of a) quantity of POV and b) forefronting of character arc, the books belong respectively to R, K, and A in that order. One of the reasons I’m struggling with book 2 is that I find K more difficult as a main protagonist than R. He has less angst—or at least, his angst is a lot quieter, calmer, and way further under the surface—and much less hurt/comfort, which means I have to look elsewhere for things to enjoy about writing him, and I’m not as comfortable inside his head in general. I do have an idea about the main (character-related) thing driving his arc, and I'm looking forward to working with it, but it's hard. (Thank you 龙哥, parallel musings on the intersection between professionalism and risks to self are genuinely useful here.)

・Reading the latest 大振り manga volume, high school baseball slice-of-life, which I love so much for its combination of down-to-earth realism and genuine, subtle emotion. (Also FUNNY: the instant silent concurrence that Abe and Mihashi can't be sent off alone to visit other schools, and Izumi taking one for the team.)

・Photos: a temple cat, two kinds of fruit, two kinds of flowers.
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Be safe and well.