Time has flown by so quickly. Around this time last year (July 2022) I decided to "put pen to paper" and begin typing the idea that swirled in my mind for years:
My first fic- Outlaws of the Inland Sea.
Two of my main passions are Chinese history and anything related to JRR Tolkien. So, for the past few years, I was thinking of ways to combine the two while not disrespecting either topic. Last year I said "to hell with it" and began this fanfiction combining Water Margin and Middle-Earth. I thought it would be a daunting task, but as I wrote more and more and ruminated, these two seemingly different works managed to fit together like peanut butter and jelly.
I suppose I'll use this Tumblr to reflect on my fanfiction and my writing process. Maybe repost anything that I find worthwhile?
For those who prefer the AO3 link, here it is: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41763987/chapters/104777022
Want to see my reflections and other notes on my fanfiction? Here's the link: https://rivvyelf.tumblr.com/outlawsnotes
Dong Ping replied, "You speak of a succession crisis more than 1000 years ago. The current ruling family is Zhao. Surely you remember Zhao Kuangyin, the one who reunited the realm? Did they not compete with you over horse-taming to obtain your blessing?"
"Zhao Kuangyin..." Mouthed Lord Chai, then his eyes widened. "I recall that name! Knocked their forehead on the city gate when trying to tame their horse. But then Brother Kuangyin quickly recovered. I was still in the midst of negotiating riding times and the proper ratio of foodstuffs with mine when to my dismay, they tamed their horse first.
"How is the Emperor? I trust they are doing well."
Lin Chong closed her eyes. She knew who Emperor Taizu, otherwise known as Zhao Kuangyin, was. She did not want to be the one to tell Lord Chai the sad news, however.
That was General Dong's job.
And so she did, clasping her hands. "This young one does not wish to bear bad tidings to you, respected Lord Chai," Dong Ping began, "but Zhao Kuangyin died about 140 years ago. Their late highness became known to us as Emperor Taizu."
"Who told that loathsome cur of my imminent arrival?" She asked.
Loathsome cur? Lin Chong thought, glaring back at Dong Ping.
Unable to keep silent, Lin Chong retorted, "Maybe if you weren't showering every village with your gifts and killing geese with your looks-"
"So you sent a missive to your old master? To break a goose statue to mock me? You insolent... wretched..." Dong Ping hissed, her hand forming a fist around the goose head's neck as if she was ready to bash Lin Chong's brains in.
"I didn't, you dummy, deaf moron! But maybe I should've!" Lin Chong shouted. "Always bragging about killing geese with your beauty. What? You think Instructor Wang wouldn't notice falling birds in the distance?"
"You-!"
It's been a while since I've added new stuff to this fic. Although it's only 400+ words it is a very spicy 400+ words. Glad to keep writing.
A little bit belated, but thank you @polutrope for the tag!
Here are some lines from one of my current project ideas: Rings of Pikachu, a parody crossover fic of the "Rings of Power" TV show, and Pokemon.
Unfortunately, as "Rings of Power" did not have the rights to a lot of Tolkien's Legendarium, I had to adjust the names, accordingly.
"Pika... Pikachu pikapi... Pikachu."
Such were the words that she remembered long ago, when the Two Trees shone in the West, their light shining on the paper boat her paws made.
The boat glided to the center, moving with a current that neither was rapid nor slow. Just right in Pikachu's eyes. She gazed at her reflection. The yellow mouse wore a white dress today, donning a daffodil near her right ear, one of her favorite flowers.
Then a fully autonomous paddle boat sailed against the current, ramming into Pikachu’s paper boat, and ripping it to shreds.
"PIKA!" She cried, tears forming in her eyes. Her pointy, rod-like, leaf-shaped ears drooped downwards. "Pi... pika... pi," she wept.
She gazed to her right, grinding her teeth together, sparks of electricity rampaging on her red cheeks. Two children stood: one red-haired girl, and the other one...
Feyanor! Curse him!
Hmm, I don't have a lot of mutuals so count yourself lucky if you are tagged, haha! Feel free to write whatever and whenever if you are tagged (no time limit): @brasideios, @sarcasticdolphin
Excerpt: "His mouth was stretched wide open, like a tortured victim dying amidst the throbs of pain, with a face frozen in horror until time ended and the world became remade. Such was the look etched on his visage, a sight that would haunt anyone's nightmares until the end of their days."
It's hard finding time to write, beta-read, comment, and vacation, haha! But I found time to write today. Chengdu is really fun but also hot and humid. Hopefully it gets colder soon. Have to wake up early tomorrow :(
I enjoy walking around urban Chengdu visiting these really impressive malls where they have literally everything from ice rinks to swimming pools to all sorts of department stores and restaurants, etc. Then I saw store advertising roombas and memories resurfaced of me 6 years ago in China emailing my mom about these roombas. She hated cleaning. I was also reminded of how I wanted to walk with my mom in these malls because she would've liked to see this kind of stuff.
And that was when the grief hit me hard. I had to walk to the railing of whatever floor I was on to just stop. I looked over it, glad I didn't have any inclination to do anything more and just collected myself.
Then I went on my day. The pain will probably always be there, it just isn't as intense or overwhelming. Such is grief.
I've been able to neither read nor write stories in a long time. Poetry too, for the most part. I guess what I mean is that the art of the written word has become a stranger to me.
I hate what poetry classes did to my writing. Yes, the Wikipedia poems, but they are easier because they're not my own words, and I have gotten so many comments on those saying they are powerful pieces of art, but for me personally they're a way of hiding from the awfulness of trying to assemble my own words into poetry.
I hate the poems I wrote in poetry classes. I hate the version of me I showed others in those classes. I hate the way poetry classes taught me to draw from my own experiences and thoughts for poetry. I hate everything I learned about how to interpret poetry, the eye with which I learned to read poetry, and the vocabulary I learned to talk about poetry, and ultimately, I hate "literary" poetry.
"Literary," by the way, is the category of art that has more meaning, value and legitimacy than the "other" category, which is not "literary." A "literary" poem is published in special, fancy "literary" magazines and almost invariably written by a person with a MFA or PhD in poetry.
You could say that the distinguishing feature of "literary" art is its overwhelming sense of legitimacy. A "literary" poem is a poem in the same way that a nonprofit organization is charitable, that a CEO is rich, or that an SAT score demonstrates your academic prowess. It is a poem completely immune to the possibility that someone will think it sucks. It expects to be absorbed, analyzed, studied, and discoursed upon because something feels "official" about whatever designates it as Good Art.
Literary poems are not only written by and for a special subset of people that have been formally taught to read and interpret poetry, they are written exclusively for audiences that will automatically assume they are Good Art; beautiful, meaningful, and worth interpreting. Because of this, most literary poems are literal incomprehensible nonsense.
Just take this one:
Say I climb the ladder of wheat/and at the top there is a faucet dripping beads of water/but the water takes a year to turn into an eagle/and the sky's forty-three shades of gray pierce/the first inflection of my heart, the point where the signals/throw grass into the river. Say the river sags/and the horizon sucks the lance out of the ghost's hands/like the moment of being born, the point where a shadow's/tongue slides through the faultline./Grace. Sunlight, cherries.
(it continues like this)
And conceptually, I love art as collaboration between the creator and viewer, where abstract, indeterminate and murky things are forced to take shape through the participation of the viewer as they interpret and associate things that stand out to them in the work! The "aliveness" of art in the abyss between what the artist attempts to communicate and what the viewer feels is the coolest thing to me!
But this philosophy of art is incompatible with the idea that there is an elite category of art that is worthy of interpretation, analysis, and reverence. I can fuck around with this random word generator and get something that is roughly as meaningful as the above. I don't mean that as demeaning to the poem, I mean that I feel demeaned by the poem, because its linguistic play and experimentation is something that everybody can do, that everyone should try doing, but this poem has been designated as something exceptionally meaningful and worthy and its writer teaches writing at the University of Chicago. You can click through that website for hours and not find a single soul without a MFA or above in poetry or creative writing.
For me, the world of "literary" writing was like a room with a splatter of vomit across the floor that no one else would acknowledge. The ability to formally study poetry in college was a privilege, but I was constantly aware of privilege, and the thing about privilege is the more you have, the less you think about it. What of the ability to pursue a PhD in poetry? What small fraction of people could expend so much time and money on something that didn't really have a career associated with it? And of that fraction, which fraction would be seen as "good enough" to publish poetry books and to teach? With poetry this indeterminate, how were the "good" poets selected at all?
Literary writing excludes poor people, and the existence of published literary poets who are immigrants or minorities doesn't negate this. Increasingly, published writing in general excludes poor people. A LOT of popular authors graduated from very elite schools!
But literary poetry I hate especially, because it puffs itself up on unlocking the universe and human experience and pain, as if insight into those things is a seldom-appearing gift instead of something many people have, except they don't have the time and money to train themselves into expressing it in a way that appears Literary.
The "literary" vs. "non-literary" paradigm had an inescapable rottenness to it. I couldn't stop thinking about the luminous conversations I'd had with people who lacked the formal training to express ideas in a "literary" manner, but still showed me something vital about the universe.
I've been bitching about literary poetry for like two years now, and really, I just hate what studying all that shit has done to my own writing style. It's so frustrating that the joy and playfulness won't come back.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts OP. It brought up a lot of feelings and thoughts in me, so I hope you won't mind my attaching some of them to your well-considered piece above.
I felt the same way after I graduated - my Arts degree is a double major in English and creative writing. I studied writing more broadly, both fiction and non-fiction, poetry, prose and playwrighting, for four years.
One of the things that really bothers me to think about now is the sneer that was consistently directed at genre fiction. In not so many words, it was literary fiction or trash. This trend was even worse when it came to poetry. Most of what we studied was just what you're talking about here - that is (I'm going to be blunt) wank.
Even knowing how to read and interpret it - I can sometimes get at the meanings in it, if there is any - I can write it - but with all due respect to those who love it, so much of it is just pretentious nonsense.
Over the years, I've heard so many people say they hate poetry, and I firmly believe this is why - this idea that literary poetry is the only legitimate form, while every other, easily understandable form, isn't really poetry at all. I find that a travesty really.
And sidebar to all this - when I think about traditional publishing, and how they favour this form of poetry and (here in Australia anyway) fiction, there are capitalistic overtones in it all that really suck. The message really is - Produce what is demanded by the machine or don't write.
For years after I got my degree, I felt creatively stunted. I felt compelled to be writing something very specific - and for me that was Australian, highly descriptive, hard hitting and concerned with social issues around post-colonialism. It had to be realism, of course, and it had to be literary - and when I tried to do anything else, it felt wrong. I'd internalised this sense that writing what I loved, as I wanted to write it, was failing to come up to some imagined mark of true art, true writing.
I endeavoured for a long time to do that - to write what I was 'supposed' to write. Then I stopped writing for two years. Eventually, I found my way back to myself as a writer.
Even so, there are still two wolves inside me (as the saying goes) - one that just wants to write for fun, to indulge in light genre fiction and prose poems that are only loosely poems, and vignettes just for the hell of it - and the one that is, frankly, intensely judgmental and says I shouldn't be wasting my time. I should be writing the timeless, "great Australian novel."
I'm glad to say that on most days, the non-judgemental wolf wins easily these days.
And I'm glad I did the degree. I learnt so much, got shaken out of my comfort zone in the best of ways, was exposed to so many ideas I would never have found for myself, and that make me the writer that I am now - but there's no denying that there's this negative side to it all which I don't see many people talk about.
For a blogging site, it sure would be nice to have functional basic text formatting for posts. The ability to leave blank lines at will, for example, or to indent first lines only, or whatever.
You know. To make blog posts easier to read. On this blogging site.
Also - WTAF is with not being able to select a whole post in the editor? I hate that shit so bad. Sometimes, stupidly, I edit once I've pasted in text so thereafter I want to copy the whole post to save elsewhere - but can I? No. One paragraph at a time. This is extra super fun for poems.
And when I press enter to separate one of these text blocks into two - moving a sentence/block of text/entire paragraph, I would absolutely appreciate it not disappearing and my having to retype it.
Please @staff reconsider this new editor. Please, please, please, I am begging you, give those of us still writing long posts something to work with here!
Warning: I'm going to discuss about my 1 minor and 1 major trauma of mine. The minor one involves being deceived and the major one involves death.
This is a bit untimely, as I realized I was shadowbanned 3 days ago and thought nobody would see this post. And yes, I do write for myself but I also believe in sharing wisdom. Because I'm shadowbanned, I can't comment on posts, respond to comments (outside of these posts), or message people, and I don't think my reblogs and likes even show up. I think only people who follow me can see this post, but oh well. Hopefully, it doesn't take months or years like others who've been shadowbanned for this post to be seen outside my circle.
I'm putting a "read more" separator here.
I'm piggybacking @brasideios' post from 3-4 days ago on therapy and the importance of seeking it compared to the massive potential disaster of unresolved trauma and untreated illness. I'm going to share my experience of 1 minor trauma and 1 major trauma of mine and how therapy could've helped both.
Minor trauma: Deception
This was years ago so I didn't realize that I was still affected by me being gaslit years ago. I thought I was friends with someone. I commented a bunch on their FB posts. Later found out those comments were deleted. I asked why. Instead of telling me that they didn't want my comments to be seen by peers outside our circle (social butterfly), they tell me that it was FB's fault. I kept on commenting, and those comments kept on being deleted. Asked FB, FB denied such a glitch. Confronted friend. Things got ugly, but the worst that came was a broken friendship.
It was only recently that I realized that I don't have a trigger, per se, but a fuse that can be lit if I make compliments to people I've interacted with a bunch before, but those compliments get erased without any explanation. It's a fuse because it'll easily turn off if the person gives a reason. If there isn't a reason, the longer time goes the less rational I become. I realize now that it's because I didn't want to relive that memory, the feeling of being lied to, of being deceived, and losing a friendship (if we ever had one, to begin with).
I realized this after the fact because it happened again, except I put all of the blame on myself. I didn't directly ask "Why are you deleting my comments?" I blamed the social media site, believed the best in the person I was communicating to, and so on. I still don't know what happened... and let's be honest here, I probably won't. By the time I realized that the website was working fine, the long fuse was now a short fuse. Things snowballed. Comments kept on getting deleted. In one day, as I chose to unlock my likes and follows (may close those again if I get more spam accounts communicating with me), all of the remaining comments I gave to that person were deleted. I couldn't handle it. Ended up making them uncomfortable. We don't communicate anymore.
I still am beating myself up over this because if I had a therapist at the time, they would've easily identified the memory in the past that I identified a lot quicker. Then the solution could've been: politely ask them why comments are being deleted. Stop commenting on their stuff, wait for a response for like a month. Then prod again. Be patient. People are busy. If there's no response within a reasonable amount of time, just don't make a big deal out of it and do other things. Forget about the person and carry on with what you're doing. Don't let your imagination take over.
All a reasonable therapist would've asked was "Do you remember if a similar event ever happened to you in the past?" and things would've probably been resolved quickly, for good or ill.
Now I know, some of you are saying "Hey! That's a simple question, you should've thought it yourself at the time." To which I respond, "There's a term in history called 'backseat historian' and you're one right now." Unresolved trauma leads to illogical responses. And I'm paying for that right now. So, even for things you thought were buried and done, it could arise again, like it did with me.
Now on to the Major Trauma: Death
My mom passed away in early 2021. It was hell. Lost 1.5 years of my life because I just... we never said goodbye. And a growing part of me believes that once we die, we'll never see each other again.
Now this one would've required a very very special therapist who was an expert in Ruist culture. I didn't want a therapist that was trained in classic Western Psychology because Chinese culture was absolutely almost ruined beyond compare by Imperial Europe and America (Anti-LGBTQIA+, reinforcement of binary gender down to adding gendered pronouns in written Chinese, Stalinism, Short Hair for men [okay that's my personal belief], clothing, spheres of influence, etc.) and psychology played a massive part! I needed an expert in filial piety and annihilationism (I think that's the belief that once we die, there's no afterlife and we disappear forever).
For me, I was in a state of despair that nobody could really understand me. So I didn't seek therapy. 1.5 years down the drain. I regret that decision because, yeah, there's a high likelihood where I just storm off after the first 5 minutes, but referrals exist and I could've done a lot more research.
It wasn't until I started creatively writing that I began to heal. I write stuff that my Mom doesn't agree with (the changing of history, getting certain Chinese culture details wrong, LGBTQIA+ since she was Christian and I didn't hear her say a good thing about homosexuality). Believe it or not, this helped a lot.
But I'm certain a therapist could've dug that out too. Creatively writing about topics that would make a deceased person yell at you isn't exclusive to Ruist/Chinese culture. It probably would've taken a lot of time, swapping around different therapists, but I feel that I could've healed quicker if I went to a therapist.
Yeah, that's my story. Glad you stuck out until the end if you made it this far. Don't be afraid of seeking a therapist.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Finally decided to finally post this on AO3. It’s a poem based off of that song during Dian Wei’s death at the Battle of Wan Castle in the 1994 Romance of the Three Kingdoms tv series.
Summary: In the year 196 AD, General Zhang Ji was slain by a stray arrow. His widow, Lady Zou, reflects through a poem on her life before, during, and after their fates crossed.
Here is my poem in its entirety:
The Passing of a Youth of Little Repute
I wandered long in solitude
playing idyllic tunes with a lute.
Time passed like a breeze through the grass;
my youth was of little repute.
Then our lives crossed paths and entwined.
Your eyes sparkled and so did mine.
We walked in the day and lay in the night.
Those years with you were truly sublime.
Sun, oh Sun.
Light shines bright.
Days pass by.
Night ends quick.
I sat there in front of you
playing cheerful tunes with a lute.
Time passed like a breeze through the grass;
our lives worthy of song.
The seasons drifted onwards.
Your eyes grew duller.
Each night less warmth.
We both sigh together
as your duty called you forward.
Flames and blood, screams and pain,
yells echoing long through the eve.
Ambitions spread through the four seas,
Is all you lost worth what you gained?
Moon, oh Moon.
Pale dim light.
Nights are long.
Days pass by.
Thus I wait here in solitude
playing wistful tunes with a lute.
When suddenly a knock on the door
and my lute falls to the floor.
Sun, oh Sun.
Light shines bright.
Tears fall 'til
face turns white.
So I stay here
standing where you lay,
as my years go by
recalling my youth of little repute.
