karanguni | Entries tagged with historical thingers

It's that time of the year again!

snowflake_challenge time, that is. Hello to anyone who's randomly drifting by.

If you want to read about: translations, Japanese language stuff, intertextual rubbish - clicky! I talk less about my fics (of which I've picked 2) and more about the background behind their canons and how they're consumed: rakugo stories and the Tale of Heike.

( Day 1: In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created )

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

Tools of the Trade (9095 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 昭和元禄落語心中 | Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu (Anime)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Yotaro/Konatsu
Characters: Konatsu (Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu), Yotarou (Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu), Kikuhiko | Yuurakutei Yakumo, Yuurakutei Sukeroku, Miyokichi (Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Kiku/Miyo/Suke OT3, Misses Clause Challenge, Yuletide Treat
Summary: All they needed was a prop for the show. But sometimes, those old tools can seem to have a life of their own.

So here's 9K of something far different from the heart-string-ripping of the anime: it's a mundane/supernatural AU in the best of ways. Yotaro is a wonder, and Konatsu both practical and heartfelt.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Than Dreamt of in Your Philosophy (1775 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin
Additional Tags: Crueltide, Supernatural Elements, Lovecraftian
Summary: Stephen could not even have said what woke him, after - he only knew that something had called him and he had gone, up to the deck, barely decent.

So, Lovecraftian/weird fiction has been a sleeper runaway this year for the stuff I've read, and this here. My god. The mystery of the seas combined with just perfect, perfect back-forth dialogue between Stephen and Jack. Subtle and perfect and bless the Tom Pullings cameo. Bless this whole fic, really.

Tang Dynasty RPF

A Change of Season (3456 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Táng Cháo | Tang Dynasty RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shàngguān Wǎnér/Wǔ Zétiān
Characters: Shàngguān Wǎnér, Wǔ Zétiān
Additional Tags: Misses Clause Challenge, Chromatic Source, Chromatic Yuletide, Palace Intrigue, strong women of history, corridors of power, Poetry, Love Poems, Mentor/Protégé
Summary: Shangguan Wan-er could think of no reason for the Empress to summon a palace slave to her presence. No good reason. It would be the first meeting of two of the most powerful women of Chinese history.

Hngngngngngn I'm not even halfway through the historical RPF this year but this one is just. It's Wu Zetian, for one. And has poetry, and court politics.

HP Lovecraft

The Long Summoning (2410 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Misses Clause Challenge
Summary:Time isn't real. There is only what you need, and what it costs.

I think I said in my AO3 bookmark, "holy crap this is good." Holy *crap*, this is good.

Batman vs. Superman

Precision (4197 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lex Luthor/Bruce Wayne
Characters: Clark Kent
Summary: Precision. Like a knife sliding through flesh and muscle, avoiding bone and striking a beating heart.

If I chant "this is the Lex/Bruce I have waited a lifetime for" three times in the mirror, will I get more fic?

*apologises to DW for the backlog spam*

Dear History,

I'd feel bad about abusing you, except that you are just way too cool. Dude, Hanbei was pimpin' over his family by 15, a super cool general by 28 and living in hermitude because he was too awesome for Politics and Bloodshed. Then he got courted and given a best friendship and a multitude of supremely cool commands, all while trying not to die from internal illnesses. You can't give me this kind of guy and expect me to leave him alone. Love,

K.

Your Takenaka Hanbei/Japanese History Indoctrination Starts Here:

Meiba

371 words. Hanbei and Hideyoshi.

「名馬を買うと、実際の戦闘のときにその名馬を惜しんで戦機を逃がすことになりますから、これがいいのです」

Meiba wo kau to jissai no sentou no toki ni sono meiba wo oshinde senki wo nigasu koto ni narimasu kara; kore ga ii no desu.

If I bought a famous horse, there may come a battle when I let slip military strategies - in defence of the horse. This [sickly] one will do.

( 'This one here's a rather pathetic looking one, isn't he?' )

The Jardine Matheson Corporation - to summarise: Hong Kong, the early-to-mid 1800s. Shipping company! Smuggling opium into China for Great Profit! Being otherwise a very legitimate shipping company that seeks Independence and Liberty from the East India Company's monopoly over trade in the region! Politics! Letters sent over the course of the Opium War! It's exciting and I promise I'll make it even more unbelievably insane, even though it's hard to compete with a reality that involves Captains of ships almost starting international accidents, Owners of Companies who have glibber tongues and stunning eloquence and skulls that CAN WITHSTAND BEING BELTED IN BY CLUBS, late British colonialism that is oddly both reluctant and ridiculously effective at the same time, and two good friends who come from completely separate backgrounds taking over a new economic world. HAVE I PIMPED HARD ENOUGH? And in between there is everything about Hong Kong that I have ever wanted to research and spend time appreciating and combing through that I now will! /o/ \o\

J & M

Fandom: Historical fiction: 1800s Hong Kong, Jardine-Matheson &c.
Rating: PG
Characters: Jardine, Matheson, cameos by a bunch of other historical figures
Summary:

Correspondence between the Estimable Mssrs. James Matheson and William Jardine, now and later of the Jardine Matheson Corporation in Hong Kong, detailing in personal colours the trials and tribulations that accompany the establishment of such a Shipping Company in such a time when Her Majesty's interests are both Colonial and Economic and Diplomatic.

Mssr. Matheson, having been blessed with good birthing and more than respectable living circumstances, must be excused for his eloquence. Mssr. Jardine, having been blessed by hard living and leanness, but be excused for his frightening ability.

1066 words and a lot of banter!

( Dear James, am in England, please do not do anything too rash that may make us too rich in the next few months -- )

Language altered to appear suitably Annoyed (R) and Irascible (TM); this post bears only minimal resemblance to members of the public that may or may not be either living and/or dead. I swear.

28/1: Enumerated List of Bureaucratic Stupidity

To the American Banking system (and its slew of derivatives): I do not see the need or purpose in your sending my father and myself endless streams of correspondence. I do not need additional paperwork regarding anything to make me feel more self-important about the amount of money this family has deposited in your incredibly (pun fully intended, along with your 0.0000012% per month interest rate) and needlessly complex credit system, and my father is considerably jaded as-is and does not want to be informed, by means of (to date) 7 formal letters, 3 brochures and however many bits and pieces of paper marauding as check(que)books and/or advertisements, that you are Fully Aware of where his money is at any and all times. Rather, I'd be obliged if you left me with less drivel, and more information regarding parts of my account that I should've been informed of beforehand, id est: the drawing limit on my debit card, the fact that said debit card cannot be used for online transactions, and the fact that your company - against all standards of common sense and integrity and the ability to read in sequential lines - managed to not only misspell my name but also managed to rearrange my mailing address such that the second line became the first and the first line became invention. Thank god for postal codes.
To the paper pushers with whom I am communicating in order to secure simple, no-frills interviews and tours of your facilities: I plead with you never to reply to emails with the phrase (verbatim:) "[i]n regards to the unformal meetings". I weep for you, your colleagues, and whoever it is that has to read your reports on a regular basis, Mms. "Manager of International Relations".
To the makers of such movies as Troy: mother of Hades, what are you on, people? I could've forgiven Alexander its woes due to the fact that its casting was doomed to begin with, but Troy? Troy? Troy? One would think that Mssr. Pitt, having acted as a vampire and a gambler and a psychopath and a de-aging-re-aging man, would be able to brush his neatly evolved American accent to one corner and do better than scream (verbatim:) "IMMORTALITY!!!!!! TAKE IT!!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S YOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", punctuation not exaggerated. Furthermore, Patroclus. If actual further elaboration is necessary: what of the ardent feminisation, and then the constant implications of "cousin", and then the fact that he - and Mssr. Bloom - served only to make Mssrs. Pitt, Bana and Bean seem muscular and manly in comparison? I decline to comment on the bad theatrical execution, the constant (and annoying) soundtrack, and the fact that the depicted Paris could be broken thus by kicking any particularly adorable puppy somewhere in his vicinity.
To my love, gmail: I trust you. Please cease being slovenly; I have work to do.

*g* Okay, I have to stop, otherwise I think my brain will fall apart. But, yes, today has been an interesting day: for one, I've rediscovered the effects of a cup of coffee. Maybe it's just the fact that I'd spent around 9 years of my life getting only four or six hours of sleep per night and then slogging the rest of the day, but I'd never been affected by coffee until a few months ago. Tragedy! For then I could not drink it ere sleeping. I thought that I'd acquired some strange infection of the lymph. Truefact: after sleeping only 2 hours last night and then braving the roads (thankfully dead: I guess everyone's still hung over) on my bicycle, drinking a flat white did nothing more than restore me to humanity, as opposed to pushing me over the edge into Hyped Up Psycholand. Profit!

Additionally: if you live in the Australasian continent and are on my flist, there's a pretty high chance you're getting something in the mail sometime during the next 4-6 days. *BEAM*

Also: note to self, write creepy random boring piece about how the roads were empty. ish.

Thus is my boring life. *sets to writing Tsengfic at last*

[edit] Ended up updating the downingjones section of

nasdack; essentially: hell.

[edit] I think I'm going to sit here and stare at AIM for a while, so if anyone wants to catch me in my in between-caffeine-dosage lull, go 'head.

He's not my President, he's not a perfect man, but he has words and I, a human, listened:

We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

This means so much to me as an individual, as a citizen, as a person on our shared earth and as everything else that I can't even say what it means anymore.

Been catching up with a lot of movies that I missed out on during their intial releases, mostly to cover time in between studying and frantically filling out

livelongnmarry notebooks. Watched Alexander yesterday, the final cut version - and god. Oliver Stone, you took on an epic project, and while you could have made it brilliant - and you did try - you mostly made it slightly convoluted and very --

Yes, Alexander failed. If his aim had ever been to unite the worlds in a greater harmony, as opposed to a more base instinct to expand - Alexander failed, and his failure towers over the successes of many men. Mostly Oliver Stone's failure just makes me wish someone could have been there, a step back from the entire production, equipped with a giant-ass pair of scissors and a sense for continuity correction. I liked many parts of it, and he had so many talented actors under his call, but:

1) Colin Farrell. Just - no. No. No.
2) Anthony Hopkins - wasted, so wasted.
3) Linearity Isn't Always A Bad Thing
4) Condensation Almost Always Is

Though, to be fair, as ambiguous and odd as the Haphaestion/Alexander relationship was, I think it was interesting of Stone to play it as hinted-at-sexual-but-never-done, even if Bagoas ~~totally slutted himself out~~ got the happy Manhandling (TM). And Leto's Haphaestion, SO GOOD. Yes, you are not just a puppydog to the King! \o\ \o\

I am kind of disturbed as to how much I liked Val Kilmer as Philip. Okay, scratch that, really kind of disturbed.

And poor Jonathan Rhys Meyers. 20 seconds of time as Cassander, and like so many of the Companions/impressive-Greek-word-for-bodyguard-contingent, he never got fleshed out as much as he should've.

fjlkasjfkaj so many focal points, SO LITTLE TIME. I don't even want to be this critical, but so many stickling points just stab at me:

1) Your foley artists need to tone it way, way done.
2) Please Hire Some Voice Coaches. I don't understand why Alexander sounds Irish while Hephaestion can't make up his mind between American and/or faux-Irish-ness while Olympias sounds just totally Made Up.

Streets are filled with --

Picking up what others have left behind

Fandom Snowflake 01: Self-Rec

Yuletide 2016 Recs

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Tang Dynasty RPF

HP Lovecraft

Batman vs. Superman

Historical Sengoku: Hanbei drabble

Historical Jardine Matheson: J & M (Jardine, Matheson)

A couple of notes from the Rufus Shinra side of K's brain

If you can be good -

Alexander

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