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Yuletide: reveals / research
1/1/23 23:32Happy 2023, y'all! Here's to as happy and healthy a year as the fates allow.
( December. Well. )
Yuletide 2022: Being as extra as last year wasn't in the cards, but it was still a fine time. ChalionKat picked me up as a pinch-hit and sent Sins of the Cities' Mark Braglewicz and Justin Lazarus to fix Oliver Twist - a gift that was a delight to find under the tree not just for its own sake but because of the longtime grudge my husband holds against Dickens, who dissed a great-great's manuscript with the words "I would sooner dine on a boiled glove." Take that, Charles!
I was assigned to lnhammer, which delighted me because the prompt for "A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei" began with "WTF was Duke Pei thinking, burning a poem he knows is by a ghost?"
What with Fic in a Box (FIAB) fills and the promised continuation of a birthday present occupying the front burners, I didn't plan to draft the story until December, but after poking around the web over a couple of nights, it was clear that I would need to visit both the public and university libraries to get a better idea of (1) what the armor looked like, and (2) the terrain the ghost and the duke had traversed.
The top volume is Donald B. Wagner's Iron and Steel in Ancient China (Leiden: Brill, 1993).
Not pictured: Charles Benn's Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty (Westport: Greenwood, 2002), which was so idiosyncratic in style and substance that my eyebrows were hitting my hairline before I'd made it through the front matter. I'd also worked on an exhibition of samurai armor some years ago, and while its objects were of a different country and a later era, I revisited the catalogue anyway, as part of a general feeling-around-to-find-the-story phase.
Around this time, I also took a stroll through the FIAB list of mediums while compiling my pinch-hitter's wishlist, and that's when I learned about the golden shovel poetry form originated by Terence Hayes. Despite the game plan I'd sketched out, and my history of being able to write 1000-3000+ words of solid fic in a single night when necessary (or inspired), I was feeling twitchy about not having locked onto any part of the story yet, so I started a set of shovels to have something potentially submittable, with an idea of working through "Sir Orfeo" as well as the Chinese ghosts.
But then the key questions materialized in my head. Specifically: how did the ghost throw a sheet of paper, and how did the words get to us post-incineration? Once I realized those were the questions I wanted to answer, I started a file with the working title "The Stick Avenges the Sword." The first two paragraphs were slow to take shape - I think I was averaging 2-3 sentences a day - but then the rest of the story jelled in one or two sittings. I waited until the 8th to upload them in case anything else came to mind, and finetuned some spots on the 14th.
Paper Beats Duke (1384 words) by ribbons
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 掷裴武公诗 | A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei - 介胄鬼 | An Armored Ghost, Unspecified Fandom
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), Blacksmithing, Ghosts, Poetry, War, Brush Writing
Summary:
Shovels Stranded on a Riverbank (353 words) by ribbons
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 幽恨诗 | Poem of Hidden Resentment - 安邑坊女 | A Woman of Anyi Lane, 掷裴武公诗 | A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei - 介胄鬼 | An Armored Ghost, 虎丘石壁鬼 | Three Poems by a Ghost on a Stone Wall in Huqiu, Unspecified Fandom
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Poetry, Ghosts, Don't Have to Know Canon
Summary:
In addition to savoring the comments on and recs of my own work, I had the pleasure of secretly, gleefully delighting in the reactions to PerfectlySteadfast's "Courtship," which I beta'd.
( December. Well. )
Yuletide 2022: Being as extra as last year wasn't in the cards, but it was still a fine time. ChalionKat picked me up as a pinch-hit and sent Sins of the Cities' Mark Braglewicz and Justin Lazarus to fix Oliver Twist - a gift that was a delight to find under the tree not just for its own sake but because of the longtime grudge my husband holds against Dickens, who dissed a great-great's manuscript with the words "I would sooner dine on a boiled glove." Take that, Charles!
I was assigned to lnhammer, which delighted me because the prompt for "A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei" began with "WTF was Duke Pei thinking, burning a poem he knows is by a ghost?"
What with Fic in a Box (FIAB) fills and the promised continuation of a birthday present occupying the front burners, I didn't plan to draft the story until December, but after poking around the web over a couple of nights, it was clear that I would need to visit both the public and university libraries to get a better idea of (1) what the armor looked like, and (2) the terrain the ghost and the duke had traversed.
The top volume is Donald B. Wagner's Iron and Steel in Ancient China (Leiden: Brill, 1993).
Not pictured: Charles Benn's Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty (Westport: Greenwood, 2002), which was so idiosyncratic in style and substance that my eyebrows were hitting my hairline before I'd made it through the front matter. I'd also worked on an exhibition of samurai armor some years ago, and while its objects were of a different country and a later era, I revisited the catalogue anyway, as part of a general feeling-around-to-find-the-story phase.
Around this time, I also took a stroll through the FIAB list of mediums while compiling my pinch-hitter's wishlist, and that's when I learned about the golden shovel poetry form originated by Terence Hayes. Despite the game plan I'd sketched out, and my history of being able to write 1000-3000+ words of solid fic in a single night when necessary (or inspired), I was feeling twitchy about not having locked onto any part of the story yet, so I started a set of shovels to have something potentially submittable, with an idea of working through "Sir Orfeo" as well as the Chinese ghosts.
But then the key questions materialized in my head. Specifically: how did the ghost throw a sheet of paper, and how did the words get to us post-incineration? Once I realized those were the questions I wanted to answer, I started a file with the working title "The Stick Avenges the Sword." The first two paragraphs were slow to take shape - I think I was averaging 2-3 sentences a day - but then the rest of the story jelled in one or two sittings. I waited until the 8th to upload them in case anything else came to mind, and finetuned some spots on the 14th.
Paper Beats Duke (1384 words) by ribbons
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 掷裴武公诗 | A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei - 介胄鬼 | An Armored Ghost, Unspecified Fandom
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), Blacksmithing, Ghosts, Poetry, War, Brush Writing
Summary:
Where the poem thrown at Martial Duke Pei came from.
Shovels Stranded on a Riverbank (353 words) by ribbons
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 幽恨诗 | Poem of Hidden Resentment - 安邑坊女 | A Woman of Anyi Lane, 掷裴武公诗 | A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei - 介胄鬼 | An Armored Ghost, 虎丘石壁鬼 | Three Poems by a Ghost on a Stone Wall in Huqiu, Unspecified Fandom
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Poetry, Ghosts, Don't Have to Know Canon
Summary:
A trio of golden shovels based on the following:
1. Poem of Hidden Resentment, A Woman of Anyi Lane
2. A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei, An Armored Ghost
3. Three Poems, The Ghost of a Stone Wall in Huqiu
ETA: It turns out there are several makes of golden shovels. The one in play here is the Masterclass variation, where a word from each line of the source is used as the end-word of the corresponding line of the new poem.
In addition to savoring the comments on and recs of my own work, I had the pleasure of secretly, gleefully delighting in the reactions to PerfectlySteadfast's "Courtship," which I beta'd.
