Streets are filled with --

From yhlee – What's your favorite weird fact about premodern Japan?

Oh boy. My immediate instinct is to ask, "What's pre-modern Japan?", but that's because any amount of academic training makes people want to draw hard lines. I'm going to go with the start of the Meiji era (1868) as the cutoff, because something something general consensus something something Westernisation something something.*

* on one hand it is perverse to place the cutoff for "modern" at around the same time that Western influences started to take major hold. But on the other hand, Japan really did transition from feudal to more nation-state-y and - perhaps even more importantly - industrialised. There's all sorts of Things to be said about whether this rubric is dictated by... you get my point.

I'm actually incredibly bad at remembering weird/specific facts, but one that has stuck with me was the Japanese global export of silver from just before and throughout the Tokugawa shogunate (1600 - 1868).

I don't know if it's commonly know exactly how much silver Japan was pumping out into the global economy, but it was a lot. People might think of the Potosi mine in Bolivia, but Japan put out something like 30%+ of all silver in the world in the 1600s. Japan dumped silver onto the Portuguese, who then traded it to the Chinese.

Going back to some historical sources I used back in school (!?!), Mexico and Peru – both experiencing silver booms themselves – output something like 1.3 million kilograms of silver from 1560-1640; that is estimated to be one seventh of the trade from Japan to China in the same period. That's a boggling number. Japan produced so much silver it tanked the price of the commodity and dried up their mines. The Iwami Ginzan mine (now a UNESCO world heritage site) is one of my favourite cool places because it produced such a bonkers amount of Japan's silver.

rosefox and any other Watchmaker of Filigree Street fans, you might get a chuckle out of this – historically, daimyo fought like cats over the mine. The Mori (毛利) won it in 1564 and held onto it until the Tokugawa took over. Yes. That Mori.

If you have access to JSTOR, you can read the scintillatingly titled The Production and Uses of Gold and Silver in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan by Kobata on the general topic.

Give me something else to post about in 2020 here!

I am done with Yuletide writing, if not with Yuletide editing. Tried my best - missed some things I wanted to do for people, but 6 fics = not too bad.

Trying to take a nap, but instead stealing this from thefridayfive: open to flist! Ask me and I'll ask you the same thing in return. Feel free to twist these into fandom specific questions :D

1. Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas – which one do you use?
2. Do you own an ugly Christmas sweater?
3. Do you celebrate the Winter Solstice?
4. Now that you are ‘in the know,’ what would you leave out for St. Nick on the 24th?
5. Tired of the snow and icky weather yet? For those fortunate folks in the other hemisphere, are you tired of the humidity and hot weather?

Open game: any other questions about the end of the year/holiday rituals/&c.

In general: Taking a break on Snowflake; sleep still is off-cycle for some reason, and I can't quite brain. I owe a lot of you responses to your recs - that's going to be my feedback goal for the week!

Challenges: Then there's my chocolateboxcomm assignment - OH BOY. Research! Research! RESEARCH! In the meantime, I got my letter updated (/waves to author - sorry for the tardiness!). I'm trying to get my tags in for worldbuildingex, but disambiguating tags is so annoying.

In the meantime, here's a meme!

1. Do you have a word-count goal for 2018?
2. Will you participate in any fandom exchanges or fic challenges, etc?
3. Do you anticipate writing for a new fandom in 2018? Which one?
4. Do you think you’ll stop writing for a fandom in 2018? Which one?
5. Which WIP is first on your list to complete this year? Will you post a snippet?
6. Which yet-to-be-started fic is first on your list?
7. Will you change anything about the way you interact with other writers?
8. Is there a story idea in your mental vault that you’ve never been brave enough to try writing? Is 2018 the year?
9. Short term goals… what do you hope to complete this week or in January?
10. Will you keep a record of all the fics you write and/or post this year?
11. Would you like to try any new fanfic genres or tropes in 2018?
12. Will you change anything about the way you edit or rewrite in 2018?
13. Aside from fanfic, are there any other fan works you’d like to try creating? Fanart, or fanvids, gifsets, or podfic?
14. Have you ever lost large chunks of your work in the past, due to not backing up your work? Will you change your methods in 2018?
15. Do you foresee any personal or professional obstacles in 2018, that would keep you from creating fanworks?
16. Do you have that one fanfic that you wrote a ton for, ages ago, but never posted? Will this be the year, come hell or high water, that it WILL get finished and posted?
17. Do you typically answer all comments/reviews individually? Do you plan to change the way you interact with your readers this year?
18. Do you typically post multi-chapters as you write, or finish it all and then start posting? Would you like to change your posting method?
19. Would you consider non-fandom writing events, like NaNoWriMo or writing contests?
20. Any plans to work on original fiction this year?

Yoinking from yhlee:

Comment with a fanfic trope and, if you'd like, a character/pairing, and I will tell you:
• how likely I am to write it
• A few lines of theoretical fic

Day 3: In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.

Oh boy.

My best received fics happen to be the fics I had the most fun writing, always and without exception. Ones like:

• Naruto: Model Behaviour (finance AU Kakashi/Iruka)
• Discworld: 'Tis Impossible To Be Sure Of Any Thing (Moist, Vetinari)
• Hikaru no Go: Machine Learning

Fun things flow, and things with flow write better and read better and lend better to just... everything. They might not be the most "hard hitting" of fics, and they might not be fics that ventured to say something important, but they are important and hard hitting to me (and hopefully some people out there!) because they stretched the imagination and were fun; they were play!

My personal favourites?

FFVII is my homeground, and Empery - a Tseng backstory AU - stands out in my memory. While it's not my best written piece anymore, or the subtlest crayon in the box, it helped me find my headspace on a lot of issues, including bicultural things and post-colonial things, and I just remember sitting down at 12 in the morning and writing it all in one long, electric go. A similar fic, Year One (Reeve and Midgar), also hits the list for similar reasons, though I like it better as an objective piece of work. If you like Midgar worldbuild, I can rec that one in all good conscience!

That said, I'd written in FFVII for so long that I never really quite feel like an... independent? Or mature? writer in that fandom - so much of what I write is derivative of derivatives, and while that's not a bad thing, it's not my own voice, per say. Batman Beyond (and DCU in general) is where I hit my stride, and Counting Down The Hours (Terry, Bruce, looking into the past) lives on in my memory of being lyrically strong and emotionally plugged-in.

Without a doubt, though, collaborative works are where I feel I learned the most, was pushed the most, and had the most fun. Executive Reform (FFVII/Pacific Rim apocalyptic AU) was born from a prompt from Elemental, is the gen fic I never knew I could write, and was somehow the seed inspiration for Crim drawing amazing doujin. It's strange, it's tiny, it doesn't get read by many people, but I love it to the bottom of my black heart and it's been a joint fandom bus effort.

And what an ingrate would I be if I didn't mention Nasdack, the FFVII/FFXII stockmarket AU (Tseng/Rufus, Tseng/Balthier, Tseng/Rufus/Balthier???) that I swore nobody would read but me and pendency. It was born out of the '08 crash, written on what I'm pretty sure were the dregs of the dregs of whatever energy she and I had leftover from real life, the desire to see Balthier fuck anything that moved and a good few systems that couldn't, and was just one giant route from beginning to badly defined, never written end.

If you do decide to try and give this a go, ignore the AO3 order and start with:

Is that a trust fund in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? (18393 words) by karanguni
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: FFXII, FFVII
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Balthier/Tseng/Rufus, Tseng/Rufus, Tseng/Balthier, Balthier/Rufus
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Real World, Stockmarket AU
Series: Part 4 of Nasdack
Summary:

'He's a Bunansa. You're a Shinra. Tell me how this will go well, Rufus.'

Tseng's in New York, Balthier's in London, and Rufus is in the sky as the world burns around them. Hedging on futures can be such tricky things.

Then:

There is No Witty Euphemism For Dividing And/Or Conquering (15382 words) by karanguni
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: FFXII, FFVII
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Balthier/Tseng, Tseng/Rufus, Balthier/Rufus
Characters: Veld, Reno, Elena, Rude
Additional Tags: Stockmarket AU, Alternate Universe - Real World
Series: Part 13 of Nasdack
Summary:

Tseng's in New York, and so is the fledging Shinra-Bunansa empire: whether that is the point or the problem is anybody's guess. Hedging on futures can be such a tricky thing.

The fact that these collabs end up crossovers more often than not is a strange quirk of fandom that I will roll in till the day I'm too old to type. Good times!


(As I dug back through my AO3 to find all of this stuff, I've got to point out that AO3 isn't where the story begins: as much as I'd like to imagine I was always a decent writer, I started off with a Mary-Sue more-or-less self-insert Lord of the Rings fic on FFN. If that's not wince-worthy enough, I even stuck in little A/Ns involving the words "slash" and "yuck." I'm grimacing even thinking about it now, but that's really the fic that opened my eyes: I got flamed about flaming slash, and it made me think about why I'd said "yuck," and here I am like a million years later. I also got defended - people stood up for my (really shitty) writing, and told me to keep going even if haters were going to hate, and I wonder what might've happened to me if I never did get that boost of encouragement. I might never have written another word. My whole life would have been different – and that's... not really an exaggeration? I've met my best friends through fandom and fic; I've become an excellent academic writer (with third-party whatevers to prove it) because of writing fic; the way I think changed because of writing and fandom.

But that's not so much a rec as self-reflection. *g*)

Drabble Battle #2! Unfortunately, the Discworld prompt somehow managed to fling itself off the Elephants and go thundering elsewhere, so for the moment the battle rages between Space and Space. 8D voksen is to blame for the Gundam Wing, and everyone else is to blame for Trek.

Again, word count is not an indication of bias (FOR SERIOUS THIS TIME), and nothing is really read through or fully thought out. Experimenting with a few new styles, too!

( Gundam Wing: Treize lives! But Zechs takes huge political falls. (And I somehow manage to write only the introduction, where Treize doesn't appear at all, huzzah!) 1031 words. )


( Trek: Flying-o-phobic McCoy, meet Starfleet! 437 words. )


DECISIONS, DECISIONS:

Poll #664 Gundam Wing v. Star Trek knockout battle!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

View Respondents

And it was:

View Answers

Gundam Wing forever!
3 (42.9%)

Trek to infinity!
4 (57.1%)

ALSO WIK!!!: it is imperative (see the number of exclamation marks I used there?) that you give me your addresses for the Great Mailer if you wish to receive mail! SHYNESS IS NOT AN OPTION. I love sending mail, so indulge my sad little life and go paste yourself there. 8D

Because mostly I am spending this week failing to do anything but getting up and going to work. 8D

THE ANONYMOUS WRITING FEEDBACK MEME

RIP ME APART LIKE A BODICE, GO! It's on LJ, but there are anonymous commentseses, so you can go suck their server power if you'd so like! 8D

Must... catch... up... with... fandom... this... weekend...

Back from my first real day of work; 7 hours of meetings and many awkward moments with my mainly Chinese-speaking fellow people (read: man-people, since 5/6 of them are male), but they're all nice. Except for the meetings. Dear lord, it doesn't matter how big the company is, bureaucracy is always evil, and no one ever grows up enough to not quarrel over petty details. D: You are all project managers, dudes, what's wrong with you? Allergies to efficiency? DDDDDDDD:


To relieve my brain and celebrate going on vacation for four days (hee hee, I get away with going on vacation the day after I start work?), I join the memesheep flock: request a drabble from any one of my fandoms, the more situational and hilarious the better. :D I will try and get it all out in between flailing madly at having to leave the country tomorrow evening with so much work still needing to be done.

Things to do tomorrow:

[] Testimonial for that teacher
[x] Email that PR person
[x] Pack a bag so that you do not go forward unclothed


Things to do when I get home:

[] Subscribe to mobile broadband; this is no longer an option, this is a necessity
[] Layouts
[] Update Roads Diverged + new layout for it
[] DREAMWIDTH I have this irrational fear that, since I will be away on the 30th of May, someone will SWOOP IN AND TAKE MY USERNAME, which is insane, and probably more a reaction to having to sleep in the same room as my parents for the May Day Holiday than anything else.



Oh, but I come here a-spamming tonight: I'm thinking of taking up an MMO - never played one before in my life - and am going to try (the very free, from downloads to playing) Granado Espada, which looks wicked cool. Anyone want to join up with?

NEED TO GET INTO THE MOOD. \o\ So hit me up with drabble requests - make them as unusual as you want? Pictures, scribbles, bits of handwriting, advertisements, the sound of something, someone's voice, a brand name, a discussion of linguistic philosophy, porn, what have you. *BEAMS*

Yoinked from liviapenn

Comment with a story I've written, and I will tell you one thing I knew, learned, or wondered about while writing the story that didn't make it onto the page.


[Alsowik: could anyone rec me some good Serenity fic? Simon-fic in particular? :D? :D?]