small boats
Sep. 4th, 2021 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomi・Second vaccination earlier this week (Moderna), leading to a couple of indifferent days and really bad nights, especially as I haven't been feeling that great anyway. I made the mistake of putting it into my desk calendar as "V2," making me feel like I should be expecting doodlebug attacks.
・Work: I picked up a rare book-length translation project, on a topic related to my interests, which is excellent; the problem is that the nature of my work means I can’t tell everyone else to back off and come back in November, so things are likely to be busy. Which is good, but in moderation.
・Books: Rereading Frances Partridge’s wartime and postwar diaries. Maybe because of her foursquare pacifism, treating the war as a terrible incomprehensible event rather than a thing to be fought and won, her diary feels closer to our pandemic times than most of the other wartime diaries I read. September 17th, 1941: “R. said later: “What animal lives we lead.” F.: “Yes, perhaps it’s time we tried to pull up our mental socks and do a little thinking.” R.: “That’s the worst of war. One doesn’t want to do any thinking.”” January 20th, 1944: “I know perfectly well that I can, and I even manage better than I used, but sometimes I think of our existence in terms of struggling across the Atlantic in an open boat, or lost in the desert in a small car with hardly any food. Don’t be ridiculous, I hear a voice say, you have a comfortable house, a productive kitchen garden, and your husband and child with you. Look at what most people have to put up with!”.
・Ep.32: ガリ版！(Mimeograph. I’ve played with one in real life. Oh Lin Nansheng, you have all these comrades in Japan you don’t even know about.) And the way he stops and winces for a moment when the weight of the paper cutter handle drags at his chest.
Ep.33: Touch of reverse character bleed? Lin Nansheng sweet, shy and awkward as he meets his co-workers, and turning down alcohol because he can’t drink. Unrelatedly, now I kind of want to write semi-RPF (gen) about Lin Nansheng running into Joseph Needham in wartime Chongqing. Needham would have been DELIGHTED to have a chance to help poor Lan Xinjie out, God knows, and would probably have come up with a half-cocked (but successful) scientific mission that let him drop her off in Shanghai on the way, flirting busily with her the whole time.
Ep. 34: aw, Lao Gu. Just leave out the stirring music and slow-motion and let Zhu Yilong cry; he’s more than capable of carrying a scene that way on his own. I think I would find the end-of-war montage genuinely moving if not for a) complex Japan feelings and b) the way it’s used. and, aargh, this show. All this terrible propaganda crammed into one episode, and it ends with this gorgeously restrained, almost totally subtextual, gripping exchange between Wang Shi’an and Chen Moqun...
Ep. 35: the reunion between Wang Shi’an and Lin Nansheng makes me sad, because it would be genuinely touching if it were real—“臭小子” from Wang Shi’an (“brat,” but I think you could legitimately translate it here as “here’s looking at you, kid”), and one of Lin Nansheng’s very rare smiles, the man smiles like once an episode if you’re really lucky and here his whole face lights up for a second. I wish it were different.
・Writing: Not much, mostly because I've been physically and/or mentally down. I have been playing around with a couple of fic things which may end up being for the wishlist event, knock wood, we'll see.
・Photos: Morning glories and a butterfly too busy drinking its fill to notice it was being photographed. Also I don't know why this factory is a ship.
Be safe and well.
・Work: I picked up a rare book-length translation project, on a topic related to my interests, which is excellent; the problem is that the nature of my work means I can’t tell everyone else to back off and come back in November, so things are likely to be busy. Which is good, but in moderation.
・Books: Rereading Frances Partridge’s wartime and postwar diaries. Maybe because of her foursquare pacifism, treating the war as a terrible incomprehensible event rather than a thing to be fought and won, her diary feels closer to our pandemic times than most of the other wartime diaries I read. September 17th, 1941: “R. said later: “What animal lives we lead.” F.: “Yes, perhaps it’s time we tried to pull up our mental socks and do a little thinking.” R.: “That’s the worst of war. One doesn’t want to do any thinking.”” January 20th, 1944: “I know perfectly well that I can, and I even manage better than I used, but sometimes I think of our existence in terms of struggling across the Atlantic in an open boat, or lost in the desert in a small car with hardly any food. Don’t be ridiculous, I hear a voice say, you have a comfortable house, a productive kitchen garden, and your husband and child with you. Look at what most people have to put up with!”.
・Ep.32: ガリ版！(Mimeograph. I’ve played with one in real life. Oh Lin Nansheng, you have all these comrades in Japan you don’t even know about.) And the way he stops and winces for a moment when the weight of the paper cutter handle drags at his chest.
Ep.33: Touch of reverse character bleed? Lin Nansheng sweet, shy and awkward as he meets his co-workers, and turning down alcohol because he can’t drink. Unrelatedly, now I kind of want to write semi-RPF (gen) about Lin Nansheng running into Joseph Needham in wartime Chongqing. Needham would have been DELIGHTED to have a chance to help poor Lan Xinjie out, God knows, and would probably have come up with a half-cocked (but successful) scientific mission that let him drop her off in Shanghai on the way, flirting busily with her the whole time.
Ep. 34: aw, Lao Gu. Just leave out the stirring music and slow-motion and let Zhu Yilong cry; he’s more than capable of carrying a scene that way on his own. I think I would find the end-of-war montage genuinely moving if not for a) complex Japan feelings and b) the way it’s used. and, aargh, this show. All this terrible propaganda crammed into one episode, and it ends with this gorgeously restrained, almost totally subtextual, gripping exchange between Wang Shi’an and Chen Moqun...
Ep. 35: the reunion between Wang Shi’an and Lin Nansheng makes me sad, because it would be genuinely touching if it were real—“臭小子” from Wang Shi’an (“brat,” but I think you could legitimately translate it here as “here’s looking at you, kid”), and one of Lin Nansheng’s very rare smiles, the man smiles like once an episode if you’re really lucky and here his whole face lights up for a second. I wish it were different.
・Writing: Not much, mostly because I've been physically and/or mentally down. I have been playing around with a couple of fic things which may end up being for the wishlist event, knock wood, we'll see.
・Photos: Morning glories and a butterfly too busy drinking its fill to notice it was being photographed. Also I don't know why this factory is a ship.
Be safe and well.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-04 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-04 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-04 02:03 pm (UTC)I can’t tell everyone else to back off and come back in November, so things are likely to be busy
Soooo much sympathy. ^^;
no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 09:44 am (UTC)Soooo much sympathy. ^^;
Yup, you know where I'm coming from...
no subject
Date: 2021-09-04 04:49 pm (UTC)Hey, I hope you feel better soon. ♥ (I hope I feel better soon, too--I'm having one of my occasional dizziness attacks, from experience I know it will last all day and be gone tomorrow.)
no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 09:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 10:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 12:01 pm (UTC)I'm glad you are feeling better! Hoping for better-behaved ear crystals (or whatever else causes these things, I think most of my current issues come from posture/neck/spine stuff).
no subject
Date: 2021-09-05 03:16 am (UTC)Photos: ♥ (So many caged flowers! ;-)
no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 09:47 am (UTC)The butterfly flowers are on someone's second-floor windowsills, so the cages are probably, as it were, for their own safety... ;)
no subject
Date: 2021-09-05 04:35 am (UTC)And the way he stops and winces for a moment when the weight of the paper cutter handle drags at his chest.
I loved the mimeograph and the paper cutter. And Lin Nansheng working through the night to make all those cards, because of course he would.
All this terrible propaganda crammed into one episode, and it ends with this gorgeously restrained, almost totally subtextual, gripping exchange between Wang Shi’an and Chen Moqun...
Seriously! The show is so frustrating when the propaganda elbows its way to the front, and I wasn't looking forward to rewatching episode 34 because I remembered the hugely clunky propaganda bits. But then there's that scene with Wang Shi'an and Chen Moqun, and both actors are so, so good. I love their scenes together.
the reunion between Wang Shi’an and Lin Nansheng makes me sad, because it would be genuinely touching if it were real
Ouch, so true. It's quite sad.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 09:48 am (UTC)I've seen a mimeograph at an exhibition a friend put on about wartime left-wing literature in Japan; clearly it was a left-wing Thing across countries.
But then there's that scene with Wang Shi'an and Chen Moqun, and both actors are so, so good. I love their scenes together.
Yes. I'm really looking forward to reading your new Chen Moqun/Lin Nansheng meta, but not until I finish watching the damn show, and I still have eight episodes to go! aargh.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-05 01:57 pm (UTC)I hope work will not be overwhelmingly busy. <3
Don’t be ridiculous, I hear a voice say, you have a comfortable house, a productive kitchen garden, and your husband and child with you. Look at what most people have to put up with
That strikes very close to home. (Maybe not surprisingly.)
The dark blue blossoms are amazing.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 09:51 am (UTC)Busy is better than bored and depressed, so I'll take what I can get!
That strikes very close to home. (Maybe not surprisingly.)
Oh honey, yes, absolutely. This is why I love reading diaries and letters so much; it's comforting for me to come across other people who felt these things in the past, and to understand how they coped (or didn't). *hugs*
The dark blue blossoms are amazing.
I love morning glory season!
no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 05:58 am (UTC)Lovely photos, as always.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 07:04 am (UTC)