Spring Green

Er, better late than never, one hopes?

Fandoms: Effluent Engine, Journey to the West, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Coffee Prince, Sultana's Dream, Pacifics, Chak De! India, Saving Face, Capital Scandal, Half World, Detective Di, Red Cliff, 20th Century Boys

( Read more... )

Eeeeeee!!!!! Sign ups for Kaleidoscope are now open!!!!!!

Now I much obsessively mull over all the fandoms and whittle them down to three and then think of prompts.....

Two more podfic I recorded! This is actually really fun and much less stressful than writing, ha!

Text: Houses and Rain
Author: thuviaptarth
Reader: springgreen
Fandom: xxxHolic
Characters/Pairings: Ame-warashi, Zashiki-warashi, Ame-warashi/Zashiki-warashi
Dialect/Language: English
Length: 9:57
Size: 9.1 MB
Summary:House spirits don't go anywhere, but rain spirits go everywhere.
Download page: here

Text: The Work of Chemists
Author: anenko
Reader: springgreen
Fandom: Skip Beat
Characters/Pairings: Mogami Kyoko, Kotonami Kanae, Tsuruga Ren, Kyoko/Ren
Dialect/Language: English
Length: 27:10
Size: 23.3 MB
Summary: Avoiding Mr. Tsuruga would become her life's mission, right behind destroying Sho.
Download page: here

Spoilers: For the premise of the series
Summary: Five roles we haven't seen Jaden play.
Notes: Written for labellementeuse for Yuletide 2010

Read Roleplay

Source information

Nikita is another version of La Femme Nikita, in which Nikita used to be an agent for Division, a shady black ops group that ostensibly helps out the government but really hires itself out to the highest bidder. She's currently trying to bring down Division. Jaden is the black girl who's the rival of Alex, a recruit in Division, and I keep waiting and waiting and waiting for them to get awesome frenemy stuff or for Jaden to get more character development, but so far, no such luck.

( Commentary )

I sadly have almost no recs this Yuletide, largely because I've only spent a few hours browsing around the archive. Mostly I tried to go through the Chromatic Yuletide 2010 collection first, but given that I spent all of the first half of my sister's visit writing (and rewriting, and researching, and despairing of, and occasionally giving up on) my story, I felt kind of guilty abandoning her to Yuletide for the second half as well.

That said, OMG people!! My gift fics!!!! I have not one, not two, but THREE stories for my random wuxia reincarnation Jay Chou music video request (link goes to my pimping post with the music video itself, lyrics, and translation). And another bittersweet and food-full fic for xxxHolic!

In the order they show up on my gifts page:

The Summer Triangle (Qing Hua Ci (Music Video)) - OMG BEST THING EVER! I want everyone to read this because you really don't need to know much about the source (reincarnation!), and if you do want to know the source, here you go! It's only four minutes long! Vase ex machina!

I love love love how the story takes the over-the-top ridiculousness of the music video and makes fun of it, that even though the vase snarks, it still wants the lovers to get together, that the vase has its own tragic backstory. I love the references to cdramas and ubiquitous pop music and the hair and wind machines and giant training sequences of wuxia movies and Macross and Jay Chou's totally over-the-top emotastic music that is everywhere, I love the interstellar war (I so want more of that story too!), I love that the fic gives so much agency and coolness to Yan Yu, who mostly just lounges about prettily in the original vid! I cannot wait to see who wrote this, and I'm dying to see what the writing process was behind this (I am sure it is hilarious!) and to see all the references I got or missed! I keep wanting to point out all the little things in here and how I appreciate all that thought and effort going into what feels like an effortless piece, but then I get distracted and flail and squee and exclamation point! SO AWESOME! INCOHERENT SQUEE!

Here, I'm going to skip ahead a little. Yes, there's a pretty great story about how he battled his way through mountains and forests, nearly died at the hands of bandits before meeting an Immortal who nursed him back to health, and finally, his tests of courage at the temple in order to obtain me, but this is the thing. It's a really long story and you don't have the time right now. You'll just have to wait for the 40-episode drama to come out next year.

I Wait for You (Qing Hua Ci/Bride with White Hair) - OMG people I saw the one-line description for this ("In a post-apocalyptic future, a boy with an illness that forces him to live as a virtual bubble boy meets a feral mutant girl living in the forbidden woods.") and the two fandoms and started flailing incoherently! This is more Bride with White Hair than "Qing Hua Ci," though again, I want everyone to read this because you don't need to know much about the source (reincarnation!) except that in the original, she can kill with her hair and was raised by wolves, and that theirs is a tragic forbidden love.

There is so much in here to squee about! The cracktastic and yet absolutely awesome worldbuilding! Exiled mutants! Piles of baby bones! A giant dome that keeps everyone trappedsafe inside! But what I actually love best is how despite the cracktasticness of both original sources and the fic's world, the interaction between the boy and the girl in the fic is just as real and touching as it was in the movie. I especially love the girl's many incidences of "You humans are strange and yet interesting" as she tells the boy his mutation sucks, offers him raw catfish, and then tells him to bring her more food! And I'm so glad that he doesn't break her heart the way he does in the movie, that he saves her by being vulnerable, the tiny mention of his life opening like a flower at the end instead of forever sitting in the snow guarding it.

The Dome wasn't entirely sealed off, of course: there were the pipes which brought captured rainwater to the filtration plant, the hundreds and thousands of tiny holes which allowed air to pass in and out, and the terrible Exile Gate through which mutant babies and children and even the occasional long-undiscovered adult were thrust out, never to return. The boys and girls whispered that the white piles of baby bones rose so high on either side of the Exile Gate that a tall man couldn't see over them.

In a Chinese Landscape (Shan Shui Hua Li) (Qing Hua Ci/Bujold's Cetaganda and Vorkosigan) - Again, one in which I don't think you need to know the canon to read! I actually haven't read the Bujold books, but the fic is lovely by itself. Also, even though the notes say the fic isn't wuxia and is only incidentally space opera, it feels like wuxia in space, especially the focus on forbidden love and honor. I love the prose in here, the way it manages to evoke Chinese brush paintings and Song ci and Ming porcelein while still being set in space, the way ancient China and another lifetime in the wuxia world fits with spaceships and the art of genetics and airlock doors.

I have seen it not only as it is, but as a memory of clay, mould, brush on unfired porcelain. Perhaps a child's story of our ancestors' artistry when the rest of the world was content with porous earthenware, as advanced then as our genetic is art now. Art will progress; the older things fall away. How few of our ladies' works will survive for three thousand years?

Living Memory (xxxHolic) - This is a lovely fic that is set post-series (I think? I haven't actually finished), and it's so nice to see Watanuki and Kohane again, especially cooking! I love how it goes into the process of cooking and the way it ties food with memory and remembering, both new friendships and old in the background.

Watanuki looked up from the sea bream he was cutting. "Then it's time to add the first ingredients, Kohane-chan. Do you remember which ones?"

"Mushrooms," she said, picking up the bowl of sliced shiitake. "And the clams ... and shrimp ... and scallions ... and cabbage. And that fish."

Recs of the few things I have managed to read!

Persuasion to Joy (Mulan 2009) - This is the fic I wanted after I watched the movie, and I am so glad that the Rouran princess gets her own story, and that it's a quiet and gentle and happy one, despite the intial culture shock and difficult adjustments.

She does not have a name. She will always be the barbarian princess who took away the youngest, most beloved prince. She climbs to the tallest reaches of the palace walls, watches the stars turn in their steady paths, and does not cry.

This story, she thinks, will have a happy ending.

The Opening of Coffee Princess (Coffee Prince) - So cute! It totally makes me want to rewatch the drama, and I love that even though it's about Eun-chan and Han-gyeol, it fits in so many of the other characters, including Eun-sae and Seon-gi, which is particularly appropriate given the shift from coffee princes to coffee princesses.

“For you, my Chan!” Ha-rim announced before looking around the café. “Wah, looks nice! Of course, it’s all due to my guidance. You should have seen this place before, Eun-chan, before I came onto the consulting team! It was all the wrong image! Now it has the proper feminine touch.”

( Yuletide guessing )

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First of all, YAY! I am sure I will love anything, since it means a) you have seen/read the fandom in question and b) I am pretty sure very little if anything at all exists in any of them! (Yes, I am that evil person who always tries to request the most obscure fandoms ever.)

( General and skippable details, duplicated prompts )

Again, thank you so much, and I hope you have a lot of fun writing the story!

First, dark_agenda has a master post collecting all sorts of pimping posts for chromatic fandoms!

青花瓷 is one of my favorite 周杰倫/Jay Chou songs, largely because of some of the traditional Chinese instruments in the background and the gorgeous lyrics. I actually can't read a lot of the lyrics because some of the characters are fairly obscure, and the lyrics are written in a style that resembles classical Chinese poetry. (ETA: Er, and on rereading the lyrics, I realize I actually know a fair amount of them, but it's really hard to figure out what they are when you are singing karaoke and trying to keep up!)

And then, there is the gorgeous music video! It has reincarnation! Wind machines! Tragic romance! Pretty wuxia clothes! And all in four minutes or so!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMHuRzqfmgg

( Lyrics )

Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: I didn't invent Chang E, and I seriously doubt anyone can copyright her...
Summary: They say I stole the elixir from my husband, but how could a dry pill from the Queen Mother of the West ever appeal to one who has had the ambrosia of mangoes and durian and lychee?
Notes: Written for bravecows for Yuletide 2009

Read Worlds Away

Source information

I don't know the exact details of the Chang E story; checking Wikipedia, there seem to be several variants. The one I always grew up with was the one in which she was married to the archer Hou Yi and ate the elixer meant for her and her husband out of greed and ended up floating to the moon. The versions I've heard usually make Chang E out to be the flawed one who ends up punished for her greed, albeit inadvertantly. And, as with many things I grew up with, I don't remember when I first heard it or even how.

( Commentary )

And Gladly Teach (Kristin Cashore - Graceling) - Graceling fic! I love getting more of Katsa/Po, particularly how the two of them are learning each other's Graces more. And politics! A believable look at what the future may hold for the two of them and how they're trying to negotiate the new world they've partially helped set up.

The next morning Katsa watched two children demonstrate how to stab each other, and had never been happier.

Thousand Voices, One Fight (Janelle Monae - Metropolis) - So far, one of my favorite stories from this Yuletide. I love the resistance and the fight and the struggle and how the author keeps tying it back to our own history, I love the reclamation of the color black, I love how the fight continues on and how it's about all these people speaking or staying silent and continually struggling. And oh, those last two paragraphs are absolutely perfect.

Your ancestors sang in the plantations. They danced after the sun went down. They would not be silenced.

Strange Language (Song of Ice and Fire) - I don't remember the character of Missandei from the books at all, but this is her story, from slave to translator, and Dany's as well. I love the two women together and the way it is about trying to make your way in a hostile world and having to make all the difficult choices simply to survive. And I love the understanding the two have at the end, former slave and queen both struggling, but now with another ally.

It was harder to learn to be free than it had been to learn to be a slave. The rules were less clear.

Revisionism (Princess Tutu) - I thought it would be hard to get more meta than the series itself, and yet, someone has! A new version of Drosselmeyer's "The Prince and the Raven" has been found, and the D. D. Dosselmeyer Literary Institute has a special article in their newsletter on what this new addition to the canon means, with quotes from some familiar characters.

Rejoice, aficionados, and gather 'round! -- it is with the utmost pleasure that we of the D.D. Drosselmeyer Literary Institute announce the discovery of a new manuscript.

The Loved Girl (A Portrait in Tabloids) (Skip Beat) - I so hope the manga takes this path! Sho, Ren, and Kyoko are all in the same drama, and Kyoko's having a bit of a hard time portraying her character. What follows is acting advice, Kyoko being clueless, and Ren and Yashiro both being long suffering, just like the canon.

It is Josei Seven's best selling issue of the year, and on the morning when it officially reaches the newsstands, LME's head offices receive an unprecedented amount of calls asking for verification or denial (or any comment at all) regarding Ren and Kyoko's suspected relationship.

Area Codes (Skip Beat) - I'm still so glad last year's Yuletide story made me start reading Skip Beat again. This has Kyoko's giant sparkly eyes, Moko being long suffering and annoyed, and a lot of phone calls. I love the friendship between the two girls so much.

Kanae gapes at her phone. "You're the heroine of a manga, aren't you?"

Color All Days Blue, But Save One for Many Colors (Flowers in the Attic/Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling series) - Bwahahahaha! Another Flowers in the Attic crossover! Only this time with Nalini Singh of all things!

Once I thought hope was yellow, like the sunlight we never saw.

Bloom (Paradise Kiss) - Paradise Kiss fic! And starring Isabella too! This is quiet and lovely, and I'm so glad Isabella at last gets her own story.

Ten years and lots of bleeding in between (figuratively, except when they run out of thimbles); ten years, and still more to come, Isabella knows.

all your heart-melodies (Lilo & Stitch) - LOVE. Bittersweet and then just plain sweet, and I love grown-up Lilo. LOVE.

Stitch shows her how to build plasma guns (Nani puts them on a high shelf), how to rig up a can opener and a radio into a machine that will open a portal to an alternate universe (Nani says she can't do it in the house) and how to first swallow and then regurgitate useful objects, like handcuff keys or quarters (Nani, though disgusted, can't help but be impressed).

I Cannot Promise (Robin McKinley - Deerskin) - Quiet and gentle and a wonderful epilogue to the book.

And slowly, but surely, those raw edges healed, a little crookedly, like Ash's wound, inexpertly stitched and still painful to the touch, but healed nonetheless, and Lissar was more and more comfortable in her role in the castle.

First, I am up on AO3! Here. I have obsessively uploaded everything, though I want to tag lots more once I figure out good ones.

Also, OMG YULETIDE! edonohana and I basically stayed up till 1 in the morning China-time the night before to write Yuletide Madness stories! It was awesome, despite the terror that was writing my official fic (or not, as it were) during finals.

Also also, Yuletide guessing! I feel both stories I have written are so obviously me it is almost pointless to guess them, so please feel free to post all Yuletide author speculations here! Commenters, please don't confirm or deny until the reveal!

AND OMG MY STORY IS MADE OF AWESOME I LOVE IT SO MUCH!

YULETIDE! EXCLAMATION POINT!