Sarapen's Journal

I am writing

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:42:45 GMT

Seriously, I’m writing. This excerpt is the opening of a project I’ve had on the backburner for over a year now, tentatively titled The Year of the Dragon:

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that we used to be at war with the Fire Nation. I can still remember running for my life as the last of their raids ravaged my clan one final time; I can still remember how I screamed and screamed when I discovered what they’d done to my mother. I can remember the look on my father’s face as he and the other warriors left to join the fighting and I can remember the long days of waiting that followed immediately after, days where every now and then my chest would clench and I would think, This, now, is the sign that my father is dead.

But days turned into weeks, then months, and then years, and every now and then I could swear I felt a premonition of my father’s death, but every time I’d shake it off as nothing but love and worry mixed together. Finally, a ship from our Northern cousins came, its passengers bringing strange stories of the Avatar returning and defeating the Fire Nation. Our enemy was beaten, they said, and now the war was over.

To think that the battle for the fate of the world had come and gone without my tribe even knowing. How strange to have your universe turned topsy-turvy and not know about it until weeks later. But that’s pretty much the story of my life.

Right now I’m working on the last part of He Said, She Said, though. It’s probably going to take me a while to finish, but I’m slowly chipping away at it.

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How now, brown cow?

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:58:41 GMT

I thought that finishing off He Said, She Said would be fairly straightforward but I seem to have come up against a wall. The last two chapters have been going through the Stations of the Canon, as it were, by following the progression of the episodes of Books One and Two. However, Part 2 ended in a way that blasted that sequence apart, meaning that there is no way Part 3 will resemble Book Three in any realistic fashion. I could still force the story to follow Book Three but doing so would lessen the narrative as a whole since the plot would not flow naturally in that direction. Which means that I have to write more original stuff for the story.

Of course, I’m not averse to originality, but the bigger problem is that the ending of Part Two necessitates a change in tone from comedy to drama, at least in the beginning. However, drama is harder for me to write than comedy and thus it will take me much longer to finish the fic. Getting the whole thing back on track to a ridiculous adventure would mean slightly more work as well.

Really, there’s nothing for it but to do it. I find that when I’m stuck on a story that the simple act of writing gets the creative juices flowing and ideas start popping into my head.

Anyway, I have a hankering to add the next part of The Dog who was a Prince, which should probably help with my other projects. Immersing myself in Avatar fics should also help.

So there you go, folks, you heard it here first: A new chapter from moi will appear on the Etherweb soon-ish.

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Putting the cart before the horse

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 06:20:03 GMT

Well, I just finished writing the epilogue to He Said, She Said. This, despite the fact that I still haven't written the middle or the end of the story. Hey, I normally write sequentially, but not always. When your muse is upon you, you've got to just go with the flow.

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Bending and Chinese cosmology

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 21:17:13 GMT

According to Chinese cosmology, there are actually five elements, though they are apparently more of a mnemonic device and are more properly referred to as the five phases or the five movements. Anyway, the five elements are:

Fire (Chinese: 火, pinyin: huǒ)
Earth (Chinese: 土, pinyin: tǔ)
Metal (Chinese: 金, pinyin: jīn)
Water (Chinese: 水, pinyin: shuǐ)
Wood (Chinese: 木, pinyin: mù)

The number five figures into a lot of Chinese cosmology – the Five Cardinal Points (centre is included) for example, or the Five Relationships of Confucianism.

I thought of applying the Five Relations to Avatar’s bending philosophies. To wit:

Air - Friend to friend. Air is the bender's friend, it delights in helping its dear comrade.
Water - Parent and child. The bender's power flows from Tui and La, who bestow their power as a parent bestows gifts upon a child.
Earth - Elder brother to Younger brother. The bender is the younger brother who can only gain concessions from the elder brother of earth through standing up to him.
Fire - Ruler and ruled. Fire is the servant of the bender, to be ordered around and dominated.
Which leaves the fifth relation of husband and wife to be carefully ignored.

I’m still not certain if the one for Earth is entirely right. Perhaps the bender should be the Elder Brother, or perhaps husband and wife to Earth? I do like how appropriate the rest of it is.

I just can’t figure out how to put this into a fic. It should probably be a serious one. Maybe for The Quest I can have Katara encounter these philosophies while she travels through the Four Nations. It sure wouldn’t be appropriate for the two jokefics I’m writing.

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Notes toward a proposed fic, The Quest

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:19:10 GMT

This post is about the Avatar fanfic I am writing, tentatively titled The Quest. It’s shaping up to be my magnum opus, to be honest. I’ve been kicking it around for months and the amount of research I’ve done for it is far beyond what I’ve done for any other fic. I’ve been reading up about Chinese kinship systems, obscure martial arts, and attitudes on the Mandate of Heaven. To be fair, though, I wasn’t reading those things specifically for the fic but I did note interesting stuff down.

Anyway, The Quest is set three years after the war in a world where Aang’s iceberg was found by Suki at Kyoshi Island (it drifted north). Yeah, it’s majorly alternate universe. I was kind of worried that all of my stories would be retreads of the canon series with one or two points of departure, but this one is way different.

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The end of my Ranma fic

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 07:18:26 GMT

What follows is the ending I currently have in mind for Ranma Saotome’s Guide to Dating. It’s possible I’ll change it when the time comes to write the final scene, but for now this is what I’ve got. Enjoy!

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The future of It Never Happened

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 23:53:33 GMT

A snippet of a possible future for It Never Happened that I may or may not flesh out someday (originally posted here):

The ancient temple was massive, its inside cavernous. All around were statues of past Avatars, most of them broken and in disrepair. All of their historical data was archived on the Supernet, anyway. No need to maintain dusty old pieces of marble.

"Which one is this?" asked Kiima, pointing to one of the few intact statues, a strange bald man holding a staff.

"That's, uh, Avatar Aang," said the Machine Sage.

She looked back and forth between the statue and Kai. Maybe if he shaved his head? No, they looked nothing alike. Guess physical appearance didn’t pass on through reincarnation.

"What did he do?" asked the young Avatar.

"His tenure as Avatar was the most peaceful in recorded history. War, crime, poverty, all went down. People even stopped spitting on the sidewalk."

"Really? That sounds great!” said Kai. “How did that happen?"

"He . . . sodomized everyone who opposed him."

“. . .”

No one said anything for a single long second, then Kiima carefully took a half-step back from Kai.

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Future scenes set in The Dog Who Was a Prince

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 06:41:00 GMT

What follows are scenes I’m thinking of including in The Dog Who Was a Prince. It’s annoying how much I’ve got already written when you consider the fact that all of it is stuff from later chapters. I guess I just need to get over the hump of the next chapter. Again, there are obviously lots of spoilers, and again, I welcome any and all feedback.

This is as much as I have for now, I’ll put up some more of my writing notes tomorrow.

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Scattered scenes from Ranma Saotome’s Guide to Dating

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 05:49:33 GMT

These are some future scenes that I hope to eventually include in Ranma Saotome’s Guide to Dating. Again, this post is rife with spoilers. Any comments or questions are welcome.

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Notes towards Ranma Saotome’s Guide to Dating

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 05:02:58 GMT

Here are my original notes for Ranma Saotome’s Guide to Dating. Note that you shouldn’t look here if you don’t want to read spoilers. Feel free to drop me a line or ask me anything about this story.

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