IWSG: um...March

    As usual, I am having trouble writing.  Also having trouble with everything else, but that's an entirely different issue.

    One thing that's particularly frustrating me is that I've spent so long being a pantser that I kinda don't know how to write any other way any more, and I had a project I wanted to do that really needs to be planned out pretty carefully before I can start writing it.

    So I got to a certain point in the planning process and just...stopped.

    Not because I didn't want to do the project anymore, but because I just couldn't go any further.

    I needed to fully define the supporting characters and plan out their side stories, and....I just couldn't.  When I tried, I'd just sit there, staring at my planning document for a while, then give up and do something else.

    This happened over and over again until I eventually stopped even opening the file.

    I don't know how to rewire my writing brain.  I've been writing the same basic way since the 1990s.  Admittedly, things have changed a little, in that now I write my ideas down rather than trusting that I'll remember them, but they're still pretty nebulous, especially as they progress; I might have a pretty strong outline for the opening, and a relatively well-defined idea of the early middle, but the "outlines" always eventually devolve into "not sure where it goes from there, but the good guys win in the end" territory.  And sure, eventually I get near the vague parts and find myself writing a new partial outline, which then takes me through another section of the story, but it's still more pantsing than plotting, you know?

    Which is fine if it's just silly fan fiction or a novel I don't ever intend to show to others.

    It's a different issue entirely when it's the idea for a visual novel that would require me to hire artists and such in order for the final project to be completed.  I can't waste my money and/or their time working on a project that can never go anywhere because I can't visualize the details of the story until I've worked on part of the story.

    Admittedly, I wouldn't want to hire artists until I'd written a full draft of the script anyway, but if I can't ever start writing it, then it's still wrecked up.  And because it's something more complicated than I usually attempt--even though each story is planned to be linear, with only flavor text different based on player choice, the idea is still to have each major NPC have their own line of (mostly optional) sidequests to give them each their own story--I can't just say "well, heck with it, I'll just start writing and hope for the best!" because the best is not what would happen if I do.  It would just be my usual muddled mess.

    It's very frustrating and I have no idea what I can possibly do about it.

Finally remembered the last thing!

     After I failed to remember my last MDZS thing to add it to the previous "oh I forgot some stuff" post, I finally remembered it.

    It's that I was stunned to see that Crunchyroll has added the animated version of MDZS to streaming.  They didn't exactly put any effort into its presentation on the page for the series, though:  there's literally no description of the story (I can only think of one other show I've ever clicked on that left that space entirely blank, and that was something that was simulcasting so I had assumed they had no idea how to describe its story) and for the first two seasons the episodes have thumbnails and titles but no episode summaries.  Then for the final season and the quasi-fourth season (made up of mini episodes of things that happened during the earlier seasons that apparently they just left out) they have episode summaries but no thumbnails.  Everything about the show's page on Crunchyroll is just sort of "wtf." 😰  (Okay, actually, it seems like episode summaries are only available on the console version of Crunchyroll, as I just went to the version on my computer to double-check something and found no access to episode summaries at all.  Which is particularly weird all around, but maybe I'm just failing to navigate the PC version correctly.)

    The second time I clicked on it to have a look at the wtf-ness of it all (several days later than the initial time), I noticed something appalling in the descriptions of the episodes in that final season:

IWSG - I should probably come up with a title for this post but I'm bad at that

 

    So.

    Today's suggested question was about if we've ever wanted to go back and rewrite something, right?

    For me that's kind of a "yes and no" thing.

    Like anyone, I look back at my oldest writing and cringe.  But I tend to write exclusively for myself in the sense that most of the things I've ever written have never been put before other people in any context.  That being the case, if I ever want to rewrite something, there's nothing stopping me from doing so.

    However, for the most part I wouldn't want to because the really old things I've written are things I now don't particularly want to interact with in terms of their story material.

    Before I figured out I was asexual and aromantic, I often included heterosexual romance in my writing.  Actually, that even continued on for a few years after I figured it out, in fact.  But now I prefer to write about same-sex romance, if I include romance at all, so most of my old stuff is something I don't even want to interact with in any way.  And since it's not out there being interacted with by anyone else, that's fine.  It can continue to rot in digital oblivion.  (Or something.)

    On the other hand, I have been rewriting--and releasing!--a series of novels I wrote in 2014, so sometimes I do want to go back and rewrite older works.  (Okay, if I really wanted to go to older works, I started writing back in the 1990s, so if any of those even still exist on any accessible hard drive, I could dive back into the ultra-cringe of things I wrote when I was still a teenager.)  I need to finally get around to finishing up the research for the next rewrite in the series, though.  It's hard to find books talking in sufficient detail about Late Bronze Age Mesopotamia...

Forgot a few things!

     I forgot a couple things on my previous MDZS-related post.

    First, I wanted to mention that I not too long ago watched the anime Raven of the Inner Court.  Like The Apothecary Diaries, it originates in Japan but its setting is inspired by ancient China.  Unlike the other, though, I was pretty disappointed by Raven of the Inner Court.  The body count of bystanders was pretty high, the romantic elements were far too highlighted and far too shallow (at least in Apothecary Diaries Jinshi is trying to pretend he's not head-over-heels for Maomao, plus he actually has a personality and is extremely entertaining to watch), but I think my biggest problem with Raven of the Inner Court is that the anime's pacing is terrible.  They were clearly rushing to get through as much of the plot from the light novels as possible; if they'd spent twice as many episodes on the same amount of story, it would have surely been better, or at least had a lot less of "wait, who's that again?" syndrome.  (Having better character designs with more distinction between characters and a higher animation budget would definitely have helped, too, of course.)  However, as some of my problems with the story were definitely built-in to the original work, I'm not going to bother reading the light novels to get the original version, since I plainly wouldn't be satisfied with it, either.  And I'm obviously not its primary audience (since I prefer queer romance), so that's fine.

    So why do I mention it?  (And especially in a MDZS context?)  Because two of the male characters in it had names that made me sit up and take notice, especially in connection with each other.  Now, keep in mind that this is their names as written in the subtitles.  Unlike Apothecary Diaries, which gives its characters Chinese (or possibly just Chinese-like) names that can be pronounced in Japanese, Raven of the Inner Court gave its characters...how do I put this?  The Japanese versions of actual Chinese names.  If you ever do something like look for MDZS merch on a Japanese storefront like Mandarake, you sometimes find the names transliterated as they're said in Japanese, which gives really weird different names for some of the characters.  (I think "Lan" becomes like "Aoi" or something, going on the meaning of the character used (blue), instead of matching the sound.)  So, there is some uncertainty in my mind as to whether the names in the subtitles on Raven of the Inner Court should be viewed as the names intended by the author of the light novel or not.  (And since I don't actually care, I haven't bothered to look into that.  I would expect that it's either easily found out just on Wikipedia or something...or it's basically impossible to find out because nothing's ever been said in print.)  But either way, whether it's just the subtitles or the author's intent...

    ...two of the male characters are named Wei Qing and Wen Ying.

    Given that the lead of MDZS has the birth name of Wei Ying and one of the major female characters is Wen Qing, it feels like that cannot be a coincidence.

    It still could be a coincidence, of course.  (Or it could be someone in the translation-to-English pipeline deciding to throw in some MDZS references.)  But it's just so weirdly overlapping that it's hard to look at it as coincidental.  (And I did at least look up when the light novels started being published, and it was definitely after MDZS was published, so it's not impossible.)

    Then the other thing was....

    The other thing was...

    ...

    ...I've forgotten it.

    😭

Various MDZS-related thoughts

     So...a week ago Monday, I started rereading MDZS.

    Like, I actually did nothing else on that Monday except read MDZS; no internet, no TV, no games, nothing but reading.  I thought reading a gay romance novel from China in which two tyrannical dictators and a couple more would-be tyrants were thoroughly defeated was a good way to show my spite and disgust at something else that was happening in the real world that day.

    I ended up getting partway into volume three of the official translation in that first day.  (They had just defeated the Xuanwu of Slaughter when I finally stopped reading and went to bed.)  So, in one day I got through about 2 and 1/3 volumes.  The remaining 2 and 2/3 volumes took me six more days to get through.  😅  (I.E., I finished on the following Monday.  Well, except some of the bonus chapters.  Those were still pending and didn't end up finished until yesterday.)  Admittedly, I barely even opened the book at all on Saturday because I ended up having to spend most of the day out of the house actually doing things.

    Anyway.

    Rereading the novel really jammed my face down into the reality that I have been doing a very bad job in trying to recreate the characters in my fanfiction.  (It also really forced me to notice how sloppy my memory was of various things about the novel, including that I had been convinced the Yi City arc ended in volume one when it was actually entirely in volume two.)

IWSG - postless post

 

    Not sure what to write here today.  I'm not really feeling the monthly suggested question, either.

    I'm having trouble writing lately.  Not writer's block, per se, just...I don't know.  Lack of motivation, inability to concentrate, inability to pick a new project, lack of inspiration...I don't know what it is.

    I do have a new project that I'm planning--the script for a game, rather than standard fiction--but I'm still just muddling along in the planning stages, not finished defining who the characters are or even exactly what the place is where it's set.

    Today it's also not helping that it sorta feels like time was shut off a few days ago:  it started snowing late Saturday night and finished in the wee hours of Monday morning.  Who knows when I'll next leave my house.  😰  (Thankfully, I do have plenty of food.  And if I run out, it's not that far to the grocery store, like half a mile at most.  I could walk it if I wasn't so badly out of shape.)  As of right now (early Tuesday), the street still isn't properly cleared, and my driveway is not likely to show itself for a very long time.  I have heard very few cars leaving the other houses in the subdivision, and no mail was delivered yesterday; it really feels like time has simply stopped because of the storm.  That makes it even harder to focus on writing.

    But the lack of a project grabbing me and saying "write me!" is the biggest problem.

    And that's a hard one to conquer.

So, I've started a new project

     It's a visual novel.  Or possibly a VN/cozy-farming-sim hybrid.  Not sure yet.  I mean, the story is what it would be in a hybrid, but I might use RPGMaker and just fake the farming sim aspect with cutscenes showing the player character going about farm tasks in between the VN scenes.  (Which would have the bonus of allowing me to easily add some turn-based combat periodically.)  Whether or not I do that will largely depend on how well the script turns out; if it seems really good, then I might actually go to the expense of hiring a programmer to make a farming sim to integrate it with.  (Presumably this would also mean using some engine other than Ren'py.  Like Unity or something.)

    All that is for later, though.  I'm still just working on the script.

    No, not even the script yet.  I'm still in the planning phase, actually.

    I've gotten to the point where I'm deciding on the other people in the village, who they are and what they do.  (Fortunately, unlike normal cozy farming sims, there's only one love interest, and the MC will fall for her regardless of the player's wishes.)

    Anyway, since the story and two leads are inspired by danmei, I'm basing the setting on ancient China, though it's a fictional world.  (Like with Avatar:  The Last Airbender, you know?)

    I like what I wrote today about one of the NPCs for the town where the heroine settles down:

Village Head – a dotty grandpa type.  Seems senile because he is.  But very friendly and warm, loved by all.  Just don’t expect an intelligent answer to your question.  The type to misquote philosophy rather than tell you what you want to know.  (Ack, I’m going to have to invent a Confucius-analog and write countless aphorisms of his!)

    I'm not looking forward to the whole "inventing a Confucius-analog" part, but I still love that character description.  🤣