and I said to myself, sit down
Sep. 11th, 2025 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiTo my relief, the stray cats didn’t forget me over my summer elsewhere; my morning run is now reliably interrupted by a belly-patting session with Miké-chan in the park, and one of the green-eyed cats near the nighttime junior high came immediately over to say hi when I went past, winding in and out of the fence and bonking its forehead into my hand.
How does everybody save (non-work-related) files as a rule? As with so many things I am old-school and inefficient; at the end of the month, the latest version of everything I want to save goes onto a couple of USBs, stored in different places. If it’s the middle of the month and I want to be sure to save something, I email it to myself. I never use GoogleDocs etc., everything is on my hard drive + memory sticks.
Work: Someone in a translation I was editing had come up with “adversary management,” which confused the hell out of me until I realized the intended meaning was “adversity management.” Presumably “adversary management” is a little more active…
I found a decent, simple recipe for limeade and have made it twice with very good results. Actually the first time, I couldn’t find limes in the supermarket and had to make sudachi-ade instead; even more of a pain to squeeze (it takes three or four sudachi to make up one lime), but just as good taste-wise. Lovely tart pale-green summer drink, and the kitchen smells deliciously limey as a bonus.
My mom reminded me of a piece of graffiti seen years and years ago which became a family joke: “I love grils. / [Different handwriting] You mean girls. / [Different handwriting again] Hey, what about us grils?”
Courtesy of the farmboys as usual, I learned the Chinese word for post-its (便利贴, convenient stickers) and duct tape (大力胶, really strong tape). Also 心急吃不了热豆腐, you can’t eat hot tofu when you’re fretting, roughly equivalent to “hold your horses, calm down.”
Earlier this year the actor Zhang Zixian was among the farmboys’ visitors; he’s the one whose nuanced performance as Wang Shi’an in The Rebel absolutely blew me away, and it was mind-blowing in another way to see him out of character: cheerful, comic, laid-back, with a bit of a stammer, obviously very likeable but coming off nothing like either poor screwed-up evil Wang Shi’an or one of the most gifted actors in the business, for all that’s what he is. Performers are something else.
Speaking of performance, Y and I went to Takarazuka a couple of weeks ago because they were reviving their production of Guys and Dolls, which has been one of my favorite musicals all my life. It was very disappointing on one front: the Japanese book and lyrics, dating from the 1980s, are limp and awkward and miss the point entirely more often than not, an extra shame because the original English ones are so sharp. (I know it’s a tall order to turn good English lyrics into good Japanese lyrics which are also singable and mean the same thing, but it has been done! The Japanese lyrics for the latter-day Gershwin musical Crazy For You are a masterpiece.) Also the audience was very subdued, hardly rippling with laughter even at the punchlines that survived into Japanese (“Tell him I never want to speak to him again! And tell him to call me here”), although Y figured this was just a cultural thing. Still, the dancing was very good (including the traditional Takarazuka Grand Staircase at the end), and the singing was a lot of fun: you get used very fast to the “men,” ie women playing otokoyaku, singing contralto instead of tenor/bass, and the second act in particular was riveting. This is from a much earlier production, but the staging doesn’t ever seem to change, and it gives you a good idea of what the otokoyaku sound like (Shibuki Jun as Sky Masterson singing Luck Be A Lady). Parenthetically, it amuses me that Takarazuka is obviously much stricter about policing YouTube than about B站. Also, we killed some time wandering through the theater shop looking at the vast quantity of performer headshots etc., reflecting that the gorgeously androgynous otokoyaku overlap interestingly with the occasional gorgeous androgyny of male C-pop (and J-pop and K-pop) singers, approaching from the opposite side as it were. I imagine there have already been papers written about this as a cultural/sexual/sociological phenomenon.
Music: I’ve probably posted it before, but Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 devolves (or rather sublimates) into jazz in the middle of the second movement, which I can never resist. I’ve linked it with a timestamp here (Mitsuko Uchida’s recording, with notes on YT by the astute Ashish Xiangyi Kumar), but listen to the whole thing if you have a chance.
Also, Jiang Dunhao song of the post (because I can): his own 铁皮火车不停开, sung live sometime last year, which I find very comforting.
In purely personal stuff, I’m depressed and annoyed with myself for taking no steps AT ALL toward ever getting anything I’ve written or translated published, in spite of helpful suggestions on all sides. I’m struggling with the pessimistic feeling that it’s all pointless: I’m terrible at promoting myself (either to agents/publishers or to would-be readers), I’m probably not writing anything that would suit the publishing zeitgeist, I don’t have connections who would do the promoting for me and nobody will take on a writer cold at this point in time, I don’t know the ins and outs of the process of getting translation rights etc., I can’t bring myself to try to get a novel published through what now seems to be the typical route of short stories*, and so on and so forth. Obviously the solution is to get off my ass and at least TRY, and if I fail disastrously in terms of original writing, then to look into self-publishing, but it’s very hard to get rid of the WHY BOTHER YOU WILL FAIL (and probably poison the waters by doing it wrong the first time around) dark cloud.
*Short stories. I think I’ve said so before, but my mind just seems to work in novel lengths? I never can think of anything I want to write as a short story. I have written lots of short story-length fics, but by virtue of being fanfic they’re all kind of…within novel-length [or drama-length, you know, long-form] continuities, not completely freestanding. I don’t know. Ideas for doing something to deal with this?
Photos: Very few, because it’s been too damn hot and humid to be motivated to photograph anything. My limeade and some flowers and the balcony with sudare at sunset, Koron-chan taking her ease, and also WARNING for people who don’t like creepy-crawlies, a very elegant centipede. I thought it was a lot like Oliver Melendy’s encounter …something which looked like a tiny, elaborate trolley car. It was perched on a leaf, standing firmly on ten blunt little round feet that could have been wheels… The whole creature was a rich cinnamon brown color, and along each of its velvety sides was arranged an ornamental row of creamy scrolls., but if you are more Mona than Oliver, maybe don’t click.
Be safe and well.
How does everybody save (non-work-related) files as a rule? As with so many things I am old-school and inefficient; at the end of the month, the latest version of everything I want to save goes onto a couple of USBs, stored in different places. If it’s the middle of the month and I want to be sure to save something, I email it to myself. I never use GoogleDocs etc., everything is on my hard drive + memory sticks.
Work: Someone in a translation I was editing had come up with “adversary management,” which confused the hell out of me until I realized the intended meaning was “adversity management.” Presumably “adversary management” is a little more active…
I found a decent, simple recipe for limeade and have made it twice with very good results. Actually the first time, I couldn’t find limes in the supermarket and had to make sudachi-ade instead; even more of a pain to squeeze (it takes three or four sudachi to make up one lime), but just as good taste-wise. Lovely tart pale-green summer drink, and the kitchen smells deliciously limey as a bonus.
My mom reminded me of a piece of graffiti seen years and years ago which became a family joke: “I love grils. / [Different handwriting] You mean girls. / [Different handwriting again] Hey, what about us grils?”
Courtesy of the farmboys as usual, I learned the Chinese word for post-its (便利贴, convenient stickers) and duct tape (大力胶, really strong tape). Also 心急吃不了热豆腐, you can’t eat hot tofu when you’re fretting, roughly equivalent to “hold your horses, calm down.”
Earlier this year the actor Zhang Zixian was among the farmboys’ visitors; he’s the one whose nuanced performance as Wang Shi’an in The Rebel absolutely blew me away, and it was mind-blowing in another way to see him out of character: cheerful, comic, laid-back, with a bit of a stammer, obviously very likeable but coming off nothing like either poor screwed-up evil Wang Shi’an or one of the most gifted actors in the business, for all that’s what he is. Performers are something else.
Speaking of performance, Y and I went to Takarazuka a couple of weeks ago because they were reviving their production of Guys and Dolls, which has been one of my favorite musicals all my life. It was very disappointing on one front: the Japanese book and lyrics, dating from the 1980s, are limp and awkward and miss the point entirely more often than not, an extra shame because the original English ones are so sharp. (I know it’s a tall order to turn good English lyrics into good Japanese lyrics which are also singable and mean the same thing, but it has been done! The Japanese lyrics for the latter-day Gershwin musical Crazy For You are a masterpiece.) Also the audience was very subdued, hardly rippling with laughter even at the punchlines that survived into Japanese (“Tell him I never want to speak to him again! And tell him to call me here”), although Y figured this was just a cultural thing. Still, the dancing was very good (including the traditional Takarazuka Grand Staircase at the end), and the singing was a lot of fun: you get used very fast to the “men,” ie women playing otokoyaku, singing contralto instead of tenor/bass, and the second act in particular was riveting. This is from a much earlier production, but the staging doesn’t ever seem to change, and it gives you a good idea of what the otokoyaku sound like (Shibuki Jun as Sky Masterson singing Luck Be A Lady). Parenthetically, it amuses me that Takarazuka is obviously much stricter about policing YouTube than about B站. Also, we killed some time wandering through the theater shop looking at the vast quantity of performer headshots etc., reflecting that the gorgeously androgynous otokoyaku overlap interestingly with the occasional gorgeous androgyny of male C-pop (and J-pop and K-pop) singers, approaching from the opposite side as it were. I imagine there have already been papers written about this as a cultural/sexual/sociological phenomenon.
Music: I’ve probably posted it before, but Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 devolves (or rather sublimates) into jazz in the middle of the second movement, which I can never resist. I’ve linked it with a timestamp here (Mitsuko Uchida’s recording, with notes on YT by the astute Ashish Xiangyi Kumar), but listen to the whole thing if you have a chance.
Also, Jiang Dunhao song of the post (because I can): his own 铁皮火车不停开, sung live sometime last year, which I find very comforting.
In purely personal stuff, I’m depressed and annoyed with myself for taking no steps AT ALL toward ever getting anything I’ve written or translated published, in spite of helpful suggestions on all sides. I’m struggling with the pessimistic feeling that it’s all pointless: I’m terrible at promoting myself (either to agents/publishers or to would-be readers), I’m probably not writing anything that would suit the publishing zeitgeist, I don’t have connections who would do the promoting for me and nobody will take on a writer cold at this point in time, I don’t know the ins and outs of the process of getting translation rights etc., I can’t bring myself to try to get a novel published through what now seems to be the typical route of short stories*, and so on and so forth. Obviously the solution is to get off my ass and at least TRY, and if I fail disastrously in terms of original writing, then to look into self-publishing, but it’s very hard to get rid of the WHY BOTHER YOU WILL FAIL (and probably poison the waters by doing it wrong the first time around) dark cloud.
*Short stories. I think I’ve said so before, but my mind just seems to work in novel lengths? I never can think of anything I want to write as a short story. I have written lots of short story-length fics, but by virtue of being fanfic they’re all kind of…within novel-length [or drama-length, you know, long-form] continuities, not completely freestanding. I don’t know. Ideas for doing something to deal with this?
Photos: Very few, because it’s been too damn hot and humid to be motivated to photograph anything. My limeade and some flowers and the balcony with sudare at sunset, Koron-chan taking her ease, and also WARNING for people who don’t like creepy-crawlies, a very elegant centipede. I thought it was a lot like Oliver Melendy’s encounter …something which looked like a tiny, elaborate trolley car. It was perched on a leaf, standing firmly on ten blunt little round feet that could have been wheels… The whole creature was a rich cinnamon brown color, and along each of its velvety sides was arranged an ornamental row of creamy scrolls., but if you are more Mona than Oliver, maybe don’t click.
Be safe and well.
Tags:
no subject
Date: 2025-09-11 11:45 am (UTC)Everything lives on my hard drive, and is automatically backed up once a week to an external drive. If I want to make sure of something in between, I just attach the files to an email draft. I don't want my data in the cloud, either.
adversary management
Hee! I can't decide if I want to read that as an adjective or a noun. *g*
I found a decent, simple recipe for limeade and have made it twice with very good results.
Oh, that sounds nice! I'd love that recipe.
I’m terrible at promoting myself (either to agents/publishers or to would-be readers), I’m probably not writing anything that would suit the publishing zeitgeist, I don’t have connections who would do the promoting for me and nobody will take on a writer cold at this point in time, I don’t know the ins and outs of the process of getting translation rights etc.
Oof, yeah, I feel you on all of that SO MUCH. *hugs*
I have written lots of short story-length fics, but by virtue of being fanfic they’re all kind of…within novel-length [or drama-length, you know, long-form] continuities, not completely freestanding. I don’t know. Ideas for doing something to deal with this?
Write short stories that are set within a larger (imaginary/unwritten) continuity! It sometimes works for me. *g*
Lovely photos as always! ♥
no subject
Date: 2025-09-13 12:33 pm (UTC)I didn't even think of it as an adjective! Not sure if that's (even) worse or better...
This is the limeade recipe I used: https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/limeade_with_a_touch_of_mint/ I wish it would be a little more specific about the syrup ("use a cup for sweet, half a cup for very tart" etc.), but I've done okay winging it so far, also making fractional versions.
Write short stories that are set within a larger (imaginary/unwritten) continuity!
That is a very interesting idea! I'm thinking about it now...
*hugs hugs*
no subject
Date: 2025-09-13 06:54 pm (UTC)And I hope that idea works for you if you try it! ♥
no subject
Date: 2025-09-15 10:52 am (UTC)(sorry this is so long!)
Date: 2025-09-11 12:01 pm (UTC)Thanks for all the lovely links! Jazz ... by Beethoven is amazing. I watched a Takarazuka show once, many years ago; I didn't get all that much out of it as I was in a proper nosebleed seat, didn't know the show (I don't even remember what it was now) and obviously don't speak Japanese. But was still glad to have seen it!
Re trying to get published, it sounds like you've had plenty of practical input, but if you'd like to talk about trying to get an original novel published, let me know: I'm very happy to talk you through it (can't help very much with translations, as you know). I know the pessimistic feelings are feelings, so ignore the following pushback if it's all stuff you already know and your feelings are just talking over it, and/or if you don't feel like a bracing pep talk. But just in case you don't know -- also bear in mind everything I'm going to say is about the tradpub model, which I know best, rather than indie/self-pub --
I’m terrible at promoting myself (either to agents/publishers or to would-be readers)
You don't need to promote yourself to agents or publishers. You just need to send your writing to agents, explain what you think is interesting about it, hang on through the inevitable rejection, and if you get an agent, they will do all the promotion to publishers necessary. I wouldn't worry about promoting to readers until much later down the line, but in summary, people make it out to be more than it has to be. You don't really need to do anything as the author except what your publisher asks you to, and that's more about maintaining a good relationship with your publisher than anything else; they are the ones who have the power to move the needle in terms of sales.
I’m probably not writing anything that would suit the publishing zeitgeist
You don't know this until you've tested the market by sending stuff out!
I don’t have connections who would do the promoting for me
You don't need connections. Even if you did, I am a connection!
and nobody will take on a writer cold at this point in time
This is not true. My friend Renowned Literary Agent is possibly the biggest agent of her generation in the UK -- they use her face in London Book Fair deal reports to indicate how big the deal it is (like, a big deal is five pictures of her face) -- and she just signed a debut romantasy author (unpublished) from her slush pile, a complete stranger to her. That is how most agents work in SFF and other commercial fiction genres, though I understand US agents and literary fiction agents operate more off referrals.
I can’t bring myself to try to get a novel published through what now seems to be the typical route of short stories
Short stories to novels is a route, but it's not really a typical route anymore, and definitely not mandatory -- loads of people debut with a novel straight out of the gate.
it’s very hard to get rid of the WHY BOTHER YOU WILL FAIL (and probably poison the waters by doing it wrong the first time around) dark cloud.
You won't poison the waters by doing it wrong. The only way to poison the waters is by being an entitled dick to publishing professionals who will subsequently not want to work with you, but you will not do that so we can dismiss it as a possibility. Submitting a book that people don't want to publish isn't poisoning waters -- it is a fact of the writing life.
What I will say about this is that the WHY BOTHER YOU WILL FAIL feeling will stay with you forever, probably, until you've been inoculated by sufficient experiences of not failing (and even then, there is so much failure inherent to the enterprise it's very hard for even the most ecstatic successes to rid you of the feeling/fear of failure). And for someone like you, who can write and likes writing, it will probably be the #1 obstacle to getting your work published. If you try and keep trying, something will happen, but it's figuring out how you get the energy and motivation and thick skin to keep trying -- that's the core battle of trying to make a creative career.
Re: (sorry this is so long!)
Date: 2025-09-13 12:47 pm (UTC)(Delighted by your friend the Renowned Agent as an official unit of big-deal-ness!)
For the record, I think my fear of poisoning the waters is not "I will be a jerk and people will rightly resent it" but "I will be somehow unprofessional, probably by sounding too hopeful and having the wrong things prepared, in the wrong format to the wrong person and be written off as beyond the pale," which is not really limited to publishing hopes. Your comments were very comforting.
I should know "if you try and keep trying, something will happen" already, since it sounds like another version of one of my favorite mantras, "be careful what you don't ask for, you may not get it." Time to pin one or both up above my desk...
anyway, much appreciated <3 <3 <3 I will see what I can do.
I want to try sudachi some day, I wonder how different/like calamansi it is in flavour?
ooh, good question! My impression has been that sudachi are quite limelike, but I've only had calamansi once, as a drink, and I don't know how much sugar etc. was added--maybe more like yuzu?
My impression re Takarazuka is definitely that the language comes way second to the spectacle! Glad you got there once, and that you liked the other music links. <3
Re: (sorry this is so long!)
Date: 2025-09-13 10:13 pm (UTC)You don't sound stupid at all. I should've said, part of the reason I responded at such length (I'm glad not tiresome length!) was because the panic soup is so familiar to me. I feel like every writer feels like this at one time or another! I once read a blog/social media post by some writer that said that when your brain trots out all the reasons why it's not worth trying, it's because it's trying to protect you from rejection/failure. There's a certain logic to it. But of course if you never try then you definitely fail.
For the record, I think my fear of poisoning the waters is not "I will be a jerk and people will rightly resent it" but "I will be somehow unprofessional, probably by sounding too hopeful and having the wrong things prepared, in the wrong format to the wrong person and be written off as beyond the pale," which is not really limited to publishing hopes.
Yes, but you won't poison the waters by sounding too hopeful etc, and it's quite easy to look up people's submission guidelines and follow them. As long as you're not following agents to the bathroom and trying to shove MSes under the stall door (only a slight exaggeration of a real-life incident ... ) you're golden! If you'd like details about specific SFF agents, drop me your email address in my DMs and I can send you some thoughts on the ones I know/know of -- I've dished a couple of times for other people so already have the write-up somewhere.
My impression has been that sudachi are quite limelike, but I've only had calamansi once, as a drink, and I don't know how much sugar etc. was added--maybe more like yuzu?
Calamansi is like a lime, but it has a particular fragrance ... I like yuzu too. Hopefully some day I will get to try sudachi!
Re: (sorry this is so long!)
Date: 2025-09-15 11:05 am (UTC)Today is a holiday so I've been trying to live up to your advice by researching agents and making myself a spreadsheet. I would be grateful for your list sometime when you're not busy, I'll see how far I can get on my own and then consult you for cross-referencing, if that's okay. Much appreciated <3 <3 <3
As long as you're not following agents to the bathroom and trying to shove MSes under the stall door (only a slight exaggeration of a real-life incident ... )
I feel that any agent to whom this happened should have no hesitation about what use to put the MS to on the spot...
I will check in with an Indonesian friend who's lived in Japan for years, maybe he can provide an informed opinion on calamansi vs sudachi!
Re: (sorry this is so long!)
Date: 2025-09-15 01:45 pm (UTC)I will drop you a list in your DMs! If you come across other names and have got any specific questions about them, feel free to message.
Re: (sorry this is so long!)
Date: 2025-09-15 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-11 03:52 pm (UTC)The limeade recipe sounds awesome!!!
no subject
Date: 2025-09-13 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-12 12:42 am (UTC)going to a Takarazuka show is one of my bucketlist items; shame that the musical wasn't adapted well, but here's hoping other shows get put on.
you've gotten practical advice about publishing already but sending my commiserations.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-13 12:35 pm (UTC)No kidding? I only know of him as an interesting YouTube classical music channel (like me he thinks highly of the pianist Seong-Jin Cho).
shame that the musical wasn't adapted well,
Oh, it was still very much worth the visit! Not perfect, but lots of fun.
and commiserations much appreciated <3
no subject
Date: 2025-09-12 04:28 am (UTC)Hey, what about us grils?
XD That's hilarious! One of my family's in-jokes was a local restaurant that carefully stenciled and painted the names of their featured menu items on their windows... and spelled lasagna "lasange." (My sister and I always called it "lasange" after that.)
How does everybody save (non-work-related) files as a rule?
My documents and photos are on my laptop hard drive and two external hard drives, and most files are also on USB thumb drives as well. I store video files on the external hard drives. I have some documents in Google Drive for ease of sharing but that may change; I don't blame anyone for avoiding GDrive, especially now. I also have some things on Mediafire for sharing, but I wouldn't save anything there permanently.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-13 12:36 pm (UTC)lolol, that's great.
yeah, most of my refusal to use GDrive etc. is less for privacy reasons (short of a few things like address lists, etc., I don't have much that it would matter if anyone saw) and more that I have the unreasonable (?) fear that it might just vanish one day. Saving everything offline makes me feel safer!
no subject
Date: 2025-09-12 01:11 pm (UTC)Omg saving files has been suuuuuch a struggle, I'm increasingly lazy. I have all my fonts on the cloud now since they don't take out too much space. For mp3s, I keep meaning to retrieve my old MP3s from previous hard drives and putting them in one of my newer hard drives (I don't have enough space for them in my new computer)... I have a separate hard drive for Zhang Xincheng's stuff because I went through a phase of being insane and fansubbing his videos regularly, a phase that took up so much space. Documents I still have no idea how to deal with.
Oh nooooo re: Guys and Dolls x Takarazuka lyrics!
Also the audience was very subdued, hardly rippling with laughter even at the punchlines that survived into Japanese, although Y figured this was just a cultural thing.
I hope it's a cultural thing and the actors expect it!
I’m terrible at promoting myself (either to agents/publishers or to would-be readers)
It does suck that this feels like the expectation, but I hope you can find an agent!
no subject
Date: 2025-09-13 12:39 pm (UTC)I hope it's a cultural thing and the actors expect it!
My impression is that while people may not treat them as comedians, the Takarazuka actresses are generally adored, with passionate fan clubs, so I think they're all right!
and thank you for good wishes <3
no subject
Date: 2025-09-12 05:30 pm (UTC)I am glad the kitties remember you!
no subject
Date: 2025-09-13 12:39 pm (UTC)<3
no subject
Date: 2025-09-14 08:55 am (UTC)I do it the same as you, locally and on external drives.
For documents I want a history for (*cough*), I absolutely recommend using git. I just run that locally, so no cloud storage or anything, but it's the versioning I want, not the backup, in this case anyway. But obviously if you wanted, you could use github as a cloud backup, too.
I'd been meaning to write up a tutorial on how to use git for writers/ non-IT people *for literal years*. Maybe I should put this on a snowflake list or something, so I finally manage to do it.
It was very disappointing on one front: the Japanese book and lyrics, dating from the 1980s, are limp and awkward and miss the point entirely more often than not
Oh nooooes bad translation. ;((((
But! I knew nothing about otokoyaku before, that's fascinating! If you find any analyses/papers on the topic, I'd be interested in reading them. I have no access to academic journals, myself.
Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 devolves (or rather sublimates) into jazz in the middle of the second movement
Ooooh. Wow. I've always loved Beethoven, but I didn't know this. Wow.
Obviously the solution is to get off my ass and at least TRY
It is, and you know this. <3<3<3<3 The time will come when you will tackle it. You will. <3
photos
Yay limeade, love the blue flowers and the sunny window and the cat in the garage. The critter looks like a butterfly or moth caterpillar to me, not a centipede? I can't really tell how large it is from the pictures, but the large ones tend to turn into gorgeous butterflies.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-15 10:57 am (UTC)I'd be curious, if you felt like doing this (although I don't know even so if I'd bring myself to use it, but more information is always useful!)
If you find any analyses/papers on the topic, I'd be interested in reading them. I have no access to academic journals, myself.
Same, unfortunately. I know there's a book about Takarazuka and gender by Jennifer Robertson, but it must be twenty years old by now, and I don't know if anyone's specifically compared it with K-pop etc. You'd think somebody would!
Wow. I've always loved Beethoven, but I didn't know this. Wow.
I know!!!! <3
<3<3<3<3 The time will come when you will tackle it. You will. <3
<3 <3 <3 I'm trying! Much appreciated.
Oh, of course, a caterpillar! How did I forget that word. It was quite large!
no subject
Date: 2025-09-14 06:36 pm (UTC):hugs: and also congratulations, you are a writer. The struggle is unfortunately part of the job, imo, and I sympathize but also yes you should do the thing that scares you. (I might as well be talking to myself here). The only tip I have to add on to
You got to see Takarazuka, I'm so jealous! And wow, Guys and Dolls, that is...a choice. I just watched the film version of the musical a couple weeks ago, only one I've seen, and I enjoyed how the dialogue came pretty close to the peculiar omni-present-tense style of the Damon Runyon stories. But that whole vibe seems especially tough to translate.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-15 10:59 am (UTC)I agree that Guys and Dolls is probably a hard one to translate! Still, I feel like they could do better, especially since they have money to burn (the spectacle is amazing!) and could hire good people to redo it. (Come visit Japan and go to Takarazuka yourself!)
no subject
Date: 2025-09-17 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-17 11:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-18 06:02 pm (UTC)(also many apologies if i have missed the mark anywhere, my brain is attacking me with glee)
no subject
Date: 2025-09-21 02:48 pm (UTC)regardless, many thanks for the encouragement; we'll see what happens! also I hope your brain is behaving itself better by now. <3
no subject
Date: 2025-09-23 08:11 am (UTC)I auto-backup the important stuff in OneDrive (Microsoft cloud) and let the rest of it fend for itself. I do have a ton of external hard drives, but mostly those are for video. I should probably be more exercised about the security of MS cloud stuff, but it's pretty much all fanfic, and I don't really care that much so long as I don't lose it. (Also, it's still 100% magic to me that I can download things to my phone, when I'm out and about, and then send them to people. Super handy when I get an email from someone agreeing to beta when I'm not at my keyboard!)
I hope the heat breaks soon! And that you can cosplay someone motivated to query agents until it either becomes true or works out anyway. <3
no subject
Date: 2025-09-25 03:43 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm not worried about privacy in terms of saving things to the cloud so much as that one day they'll just softly and silently vanish away, as it were. Although I agree that the phone thing sounds very convenient!
and thank you for good wishes! cosplay, indeed.