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larryhammerAnd with the reveal of Yuletide authors, I can talk about my two stories.
My assignment was the other Journey to the West fic (in the sense that the first was the one I received), Mother of Wood Deludes the Monk into Binding the Mind-Ape / Guanyin Puts Her Face in Her Hand. The prompt was "Sun Wukong seeks recompense for Tang Sanzang's liberal uses of the limiter. What Tang Sanzang is willing to offer is up to you, dear writer." This was a lot of fun to write because, well, Monkey up to his usual monkeyshines is always entertaining, especially when this gets him into trouble, as often happens with Tricksters. Guanyin was especially fun to write. I was not able to articulate until later why she had to be anachronistic: if Monkey is pissed off enough to revolt against Sanzang as requested, the only way anyone, even a boddhisattva ex machina, would be able to talk him down again would be to upstage him, and contemporary snark seemed the best tool for that. This is an insight about how narratives can work that I need to think about.
Then as a treat, I partially requited the giftor of last year's Postcards of Kyoto with a story based on "Walls of Emerald" by Li Shang-Yin: Green. Li was the last great Tang-dynasty poet, noted today for his obscurity (he added more allusiveness to the style of his time) and for making romantic love a suitable topic for poetry (no, really -- there's a reason you won't find much love poetry by the previous Tang greats: it was declasé, or at least out of scope for Serious Verse, except in the formalized persona of a Lonely Lady). His best-known works are filled with beautiful, haunting images that, at over a millenium remove, don't quite connect into a coherent statement, even with extensive footnotes. "Walls of Emerald" is a three-poem sequence that's all that and more, as it's not clear it was intended to be understood by anyone at the time but the woman he wrote it for.
The prompt was for anything inspired by it. The obvious response was, of course, a science fiction romance set on a Chinese space station, following what we can of the progress of the affair and echoing the images. Even though this meant writing the sharpest, most poetic prose I can manage, and writing a story as open-ended as the original. I can only hope it has pleased the receipient as much as "Postcards" did me; if it pleases anyone else, that's a bonus. FWIW, I've tagged it "Don't Need to Know Canon" because the original text (a mashup of Graham's and Liu's; links include said extensive footnotes) is included as the italic bits. FWIW, the erotic scene, search for immortality, jealousy, pregnancy, and abortion are all in the original, and indeed are about the only story-bits that can be reasonably inferred from the allusions, and even then there are scholarly disagreements.
Also, I am unreasonably pleased of the line "She taps the screen and sends him a crane."
Anyway, that's how I spent my Yuletide this year. I've a handful of stories still to read, and in any case this is getting long, so I'll defer recs for another post.
---L.
My assignment was the other Journey to the West fic (in the sense that the first was the one I received), Mother of Wood Deludes the Monk into Binding the Mind-Ape / Guanyin Puts Her Face in Her Hand. The prompt was "Sun Wukong seeks recompense for Tang Sanzang's liberal uses of the limiter. What Tang Sanzang is willing to offer is up to you, dear writer." This was a lot of fun to write because, well, Monkey up to his usual monkeyshines is always entertaining, especially when this gets him into trouble, as often happens with Tricksters. Guanyin was especially fun to write. I was not able to articulate until later why she had to be anachronistic: if Monkey is pissed off enough to revolt against Sanzang as requested, the only way anyone, even a boddhisattva ex machina, would be able to talk him down again would be to upstage him, and contemporary snark seemed the best tool for that. This is an insight about how narratives can work that I need to think about.
Then as a treat, I partially requited the giftor of last year's Postcards of Kyoto with a story based on "Walls of Emerald" by Li Shang-Yin: Green. Li was the last great Tang-dynasty poet, noted today for his obscurity (he added more allusiveness to the style of his time) and for making romantic love a suitable topic for poetry (no, really -- there's a reason you won't find much love poetry by the previous Tang greats: it was declasé, or at least out of scope for Serious Verse, except in the formalized persona of a Lonely Lady). His best-known works are filled with beautiful, haunting images that, at over a millenium remove, don't quite connect into a coherent statement, even with extensive footnotes. "Walls of Emerald" is a three-poem sequence that's all that and more, as it's not clear it was intended to be understood by anyone at the time but the woman he wrote it for.
The prompt was for anything inspired by it. The obvious response was, of course, a science fiction romance set on a Chinese space station, following what we can of the progress of the affair and echoing the images. Even though this meant writing the sharpest, most poetic prose I can manage, and writing a story as open-ended as the original. I can only hope it has pleased the receipient as much as "Postcards" did me; if it pleases anyone else, that's a bonus. FWIW, I've tagged it "Don't Need to Know Canon" because the original text (a mashup of Graham's and Liu's; links include said extensive footnotes) is included as the italic bits. FWIW, the erotic scene, search for immortality, jealousy, pregnancy, and abortion are all in the original, and indeed are about the only story-bits that can be reasonably inferred from the allusions, and even then there are scholarly disagreements.
Also, I am unreasonably pleased of the line "She taps the screen and sends him a crane."
Anyway, that's how I spent my Yuletide this year. I've a handful of stories still to read, and in any case this is getting long, so I'll defer recs for another post.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2 January 2012 11:24 pm (UTC)I want to see it in print. Have you ever sent any of your Yuletide work anywhere?
no subject
Date: 3 January 2012 03:05 am (UTC)(There's also a Komachi x Tsurayuki story inspired by last year's Yuletide that's doing the rounds.)
---L.