joudama scribbling

There is nothing quite as Moment of Zen as being told it's discombobulating when someone hears you speak your native language. >XD

I caught the bus yesterday with one of my coworkers, and we were chatting about nonconsequentialities, and I mentioned I was on my way to Japanese class, which was why I was taking the bus (normally I walk to the train station, which is about 40 minutes away on foot. I...very much need the exercise). She's as big of a Jay Chou fangirl as I am, maybe bigger (that takes work, yo) and so I mentioned I was staring Chinese lessons. So we were talking about language learning, when she suddenly says, "Maybe it's because I only talk to you in Japanese, but in my mind, I've put you in the 'Japanese speaker' category. So it's really jarring when I hear you speak English to S! [S is the other N. American in my area, and his desk is next to mine) It's really weird to me when you speak English!"

*grin* I'm taking that as a good sign. Still, it was total Moment of Zen to hear that, because, yeah. The last time I had that kind of "Bwuh?!" moment at someone not using the language I was used to hearing them speak was when I heard a researcher I've always spoken to in Japanese speaking fully-fluent English to someone. I'd had no idea he was that fluent because he's never spoken a word to me in English, only Japanese. So I had the "OMGWTFBBQ?" moment then, and it's really weird to think of someone having that moment for me, but doing it when I use, you know, my native language. >XD

...I look forward to learning Chinese better so I can really break people's brains (...and increase my chances at employment; bilingual English and Japanese is one thing; trilingual English, Japanese, and Chinese is a whole other). And I rather enjoy tap-dancing madly over the stereotype that Americans are all monolingual.

...I have created a monster with materia ice, and it seems to have found its wings and is taking off (first chibirisuchan's recipes, now raisedbymoogle's fic based off those recipes). *wipes tear of pride*

...and, um, I have had a puppyverse fic planned for a while that uses "mastered" (aka, alcoholic as hell) materia ice. So it will be showing up again and is "canon" in my 'verses the same as McMoogles (and a few other things, like some names for the continents, a couple holidays [one of which y'all will see for Christmas], the Silver Dragon/Ginryuu/Yin Long/"Annals of the Silver Dragon" and an imperialist Wutai past) have become.

*cheers*

Adding to the Waaaaaaargh of my day, I just got my application form for the JLPT from the on-site Japanese teacher they have here (a lot of foreigners are here, so they offer Japanese classes for them to take. I can't take classes since I'm a contract worker, but after the failure of me trying to go get an application--there are no more applications in the city of Nara and only a handful of stores in Kyoto sell them--I went to ask if she had any and she said she was getting some this weekend and could get one for me.

So. Now I have an application form for the JLPT, and now all my free time is about to go up in a big puff of smoke because I have to pass the test this year.

Oh god, the JLPT. I hate this test. I really wish I had passed last year so I would never have to bother with it ever again. GAH.

( Job hunt kvetching. )

( In which I pout over writing chapter 10 of TTYNKAP. No spoilers. )

Since I FINALLY finished and posted "Serious," I started actually thinking about the next couple chapters--they'd been in the back of my head, with "Gong zuo [Get A Job]" acually vaguely plotting itself out during winter break and "Fuck" kinda sorta there with a giant question mark and worries about I was going to fill it in with--I've got the whole story planned, but the particulars sometimes aren't really there 'til I actually start, you know, writing said chapter.

And then, this morning, what exactly is going to happen in "Fuck" hit me. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

WUTAI ROAD TRIP! >XDDDDDDDD

Now I just have to decided if Elena gets ditched and left in Midgar or if her trainee ass gets dragged along with them. >XD

And randomly, I have a playlist now for TTYNKAP. It's almost all in Chinese, and what isn't in Chinese is sung by Chinese/Taiwanese/Singaporeans, and this amuses me. Not nearly as much as the fact that it includes Wang Leehom's "Not Your Average Thug," because dude, it's Wang Leehom, the singer I live to mock, and the song I mock the most of his, because, no, he's not your average thug--he's mommy's special little thug.

Now to get dressed and go to work with sekuhara boss. Gyech. I swear, if I didn't really need the money, I'd have quit already.

ETA - Well, I WAS gonna go to work, then got to the station and realized I had left my wallet at home, so no train for me. So today is off and I should be cleaning, but, yeah, so, I was playing the TTYNKAP playlist on my iPod, and got to thinking. I even had an "Oh SHIT! That's it!" moment when I was on the way home, and that's always a good thing.

Is it really bad that I really wanna write pseudo-rentboy!Reno because of that scene I had in the last chapter?

Man, I'm going to hell, but damn if it's not fun in the going. >XD

And I need to upload my "crack" icon, I really, really do.

And I've really used "really" a lot in this post.

Really.

...this is all the fault of trying to teach ten-plus Japanese two-to-four-year-olds English for an hour. IT BROKE MY BRAIN. I can't booze tonight since I have to work tomorrow (wedding singing, yay! Sekuhara [sexual-harassment] boss, BOO HISS BOO!) so I should go play Kingdom Hearts or go make dinner before my stomach rips itself out and crawls off on its own in search of food, NOT contemplate pseudo-rentboy!Reno.

...I'll let you guess which is winning, though.

I finished the next chapter of TTYNKAP!

*cheers*

I ended up pushing on through and finishing it tonight after I was a dumbfuck and scalded my left hand slightly--it hurts too much for me to clean like I planned to do tonight, but not too much for me to sit at the computer and type with ice over it. So there ya go.

So, the chapter is done and sent off to someone who knows FF7 timeline and the Turks better than I do, to make sure I didn't make any stupid mistakes.

The damn thing came in at 92K, yo. Dang.

And done? Done is OH so very good. :D

Also, TELL ME this song does not scream of Sephiroth. Ignore the picture of Jay Chou in a cowboy hat and instead click on the "more" link so you can see the lyrics. If I end up writing anything Sephiroth at all, it will be because of this song. There's a four-character compound that this comes from--天下無雙 (Chinese, "tian xia wu shuang," Japanese "tenka musou")--which "unparalleled/unequalled in the world." And that's Seph right there, man.

So, the next chapter of TTYNKAP? Is not stopping.

Eighteen. Pages.

Eighteen pages and still going. Hua Pao [Things That Go Boom] eventually capped off at twenty-two pages, but "Serious" looks like it's going to blow that twenty-two pages out of the water, going by how many scenes I need to finish filling out before it's done--four scenes have beginnings and endings but need the connecty-bits, and I get the feeling one more scene is going to have to be written, which makes me think this damn chapter might log in at close to thirty pages.

I've been trying to write at least a page or two every day, thinking that would bring me closer to the end of the fic, but no. It's like it's the Fic That Never Ends. It feels no closer to done than it did a couple days ago when I was at eleven pages. I was hoping to have it done by the end of the week, before all my homework starts rolling in (when your vocab list for the new three-month quarter is half a centimeter thick, and everything grammar you see has "JLPT Level 1" on it, you know you are in trouble), but I don't think that's all that possible. *cry*

Ahh, well, I guess at least one of the Turk!Reno chapters had to be a long one, to go with the forever and a year long Kiddie!Reno chapter.

Still, *death*.

So, I decided in the end to work on both the next chapter of "The Things You Never Knew About People" and a drawing. TTYNKAP now has an extra three pages, and I'm partway through the drawing of Jie's mom back before she was Jie's mom, back when she was an unmarried girl in Wutai.

I have no scanner, and my art supplies are in a sad state, but hey, I tried. f^^;;

It's barely half-finished since there is a lot of shading work I need to do as well as finish all of her hair and correct one of the eyes, but hey.

( Xiao Zhen. )

I would just like to say how very, very, very much I love it when I have a random "a-HA!" moment about a fic.

One hit me for TTYNKAP (The Things You Never Knew About People, and GOD, what a clumsy acronym that is), and I have no idea where I'm going to work it on or how, but by god somehow I will--the image of Reno and Jie deciding it was safer to jump out the window rather than face Jie's mom's wrath...only to have her yell through the locked door, when they try to come back, that if they went out through the window, they can come back in through the window...on the 4th floor.

I love, love, LOVE Jie's mom, I really, really do.

And now, back to writing--I want to get a page done of the next chapter, "Serious." It's at eleven pages and actually growing a very, very, very working plot.

Well, writing or drawing. I haven't drawn in almost a year, thanks to my supplies all being in a box in Gunma and me being in, you know, Aichi, but I had the random urge hit me this morning to do a realistic drawing of either Jie or Jie's mom, and I kind of wonder if I actually can do a drawing without a photograph--the two realistic drawings I've done, one of Gackt and one of Hyde, I used a photo to draw from (and had, you know, supplies. Like good pencils and blending sticks). I've never actually drawn a picture of that level of detail for myself, either--always just as presents for other people.

And now I'm babbling, so I'm gonna finish this now. >XD