电鸟 chirp chirp beep
May. 28th, 2022 09:47 am・I have become someone who can't pass the home-and-garden center without buying a plant? This time it was a couple of morning glories, intended to twine around the veranda railings; we'll see if they actually do their thing. Everything else is flourishing, cherry tomatoes starting to ripen, chili peppers fruiting and strawberries changing color.
・I gave a-Pei a laugh the other day by mistyping "Sorry, I was away from my electric bird"--电鸟 instead of 电脑... . (Imagine a computer that would perch on your shoulder when not in use?)
・First trip to the local pool, knock wood it continues to be possible, nice and soothing and good exercise. (Y, not usually especially prudish, was shocked at my selection of a normal leotard-style bathing suit--"that's for schoolgirls!"--and made me buy a super-modest one, more than a bit of culture shock on my part.)
・Rewatching bits of Guardian ep. 12 for the script project and thinking about a canon-divergence AU in which Tan Xiao did get taken to Dixing--how did he get by there? Who did he meet? And what happened to Zheng Yi on her own in Haixing? (informally adopted by the SID? where Sang Zan would sympathize with someone else with trouble talking, and Lin Jing would appreciate having an audience to run off at the mouth about his experiments to? Until he said something he shouldn't about his real reasons for being there...)
Also in the actual episode, there's a long conversation between Tan Xiao and Zhao Yunlan--both light-voiced--followed by the Envoy's dramatic entrance and voice naturally pitched half an octave lower, to very striking effect.
・Reading mostly fic, as in my last post (thanks all for playing the rec game with me! Offer remains open), but I also picked up a Japanese book composed of three writers sending each other travelogue letters from imaginary countries--this should be absolutely my jam, but it turned out a bit too satirical? absurdist? for me and I didn't get very far, although I may try again. It did put me in mind to make a post here sometime soon about, hm, realist imaginary countries? Peter Dickinson has quite a few, from Varina to Matteo, and there's Ursula LeGuin's Orsinia. Gondal and its Marlow echo are the ur-versions, I guess. Others?
・I've been eking out just a few sentences a day on Book 2 of my original thing, but yesterday I was very motivated and finished a scene with considerable satisfaction at the character voices. About 21K so far, suggesting that it's going to run to 100K or so if I ever get it finished. (My notes for this scene included "Z1L eyelashes" and I was a little disappointed that for various obvious reasons I had to substitute this expression with something like "fluttering vampy long eyelashes," a) it's an alternate universe b) it's the wrong country c) he wouldn't be born yet anyway d) the character in question wouldn't have noticed...)
・Photos: My veranda pansies with bonus strawberries, other random flowers, several from a trip up a local mountain by cable car (maybe avoid if acrophobic). Also the grocery store cat annoyed with me for waking it up, and the obvious complement (sourced from lurking on tumblr somewhere? who to credit?).
( Read more... )
Be safe and well.
・I gave a-Pei a laugh the other day by mistyping "Sorry, I was away from my electric bird"--电鸟 instead of 电脑... . (Imagine a computer that would perch on your shoulder when not in use?)
・First trip to the local pool, knock wood it continues to be possible, nice and soothing and good exercise. (Y, not usually especially prudish, was shocked at my selection of a normal leotard-style bathing suit--"that's for schoolgirls!"--and made me buy a super-modest one, more than a bit of culture shock on my part.)
・Rewatching bits of Guardian ep. 12 for the script project and thinking about a canon-divergence AU in which Tan Xiao did get taken to Dixing--how did he get by there? Who did he meet? And what happened to Zheng Yi on her own in Haixing? (informally adopted by the SID? where Sang Zan would sympathize with someone else with trouble talking, and Lin Jing would appreciate having an audience to run off at the mouth about his experiments to? Until he said something he shouldn't about his real reasons for being there...)
Also in the actual episode, there's a long conversation between Tan Xiao and Zhao Yunlan--both light-voiced--followed by the Envoy's dramatic entrance and voice naturally pitched half an octave lower, to very striking effect.
・Reading mostly fic, as in my last post (thanks all for playing the rec game with me! Offer remains open), but I also picked up a Japanese book composed of three writers sending each other travelogue letters from imaginary countries--this should be absolutely my jam, but it turned out a bit too satirical? absurdist? for me and I didn't get very far, although I may try again. It did put me in mind to make a post here sometime soon about, hm, realist imaginary countries? Peter Dickinson has quite a few, from Varina to Matteo, and there's Ursula LeGuin's Orsinia. Gondal and its Marlow echo are the ur-versions, I guess. Others?
・I've been eking out just a few sentences a day on Book 2 of my original thing, but yesterday I was very motivated and finished a scene with considerable satisfaction at the character voices. About 21K so far, suggesting that it's going to run to 100K or so if I ever get it finished. (My notes for this scene included "Z1L eyelashes" and I was a little disappointed that for various obvious reasons I had to substitute this expression with something like "fluttering vampy long eyelashes," a) it's an alternate universe b) it's the wrong country c) he wouldn't be born yet anyway d) the character in question wouldn't have noticed...)
・Photos: My veranda pansies with bonus strawberries, other random flowers, several from a trip up a local mountain by cable car (maybe avoid if acrophobic). Also the grocery store cat annoyed with me for waking it up, and the obvious complement (sourced from lurking on tumblr somewhere? who to credit?).
( Read more... )
Be safe and well.