Before & After & Inbetween

Yesterday's 2000 words bathroom scene survived today's "edit on the train"-session virtually unscratched (which means it's very likely sound text!) and gained another 300 words of transition to the actually memorial service scene, which will be told from Seishiro's pov...

...and yes, I'm so going to enjoy being back in his head for a change! I don't have the details yet, but I consider it highly likely that Seishiro won't dwell on the dear deceased's fate overly long! ;)

So what remains to be done?

Mostly chapter 20 with the memorial service and the Kamui confrontation, and the epilogue, consisting of Omi's report, architect's horror, Kamui's visit & Nokoru's letter, which is mostly written and only requires a bit of polishing and a few fillers.

But I can't promise anything regarding how long it's going to take. It may be fast, it may be excruciatingly slow. There are just too many plot threads to weave as to risk haste now.

Oh, and primera found a video translation of Subaru's character file on Youtube. :)

start-up word count for Epilogue B - Family Matters: 1661
appearing characters: Seishiro, Subaru, Tree-san, Nokoru, Suoh, Akechi, Iyjuin, Kamui, TwinStarFuma (TSF from now on), and probably Yoshi, the cat.
pov characters set: Subaru, Seishiro
pov characters possible: Tree-san, Kamui, TSF, Akechi
scene structure as of now: Tree's dreamtalking with Subaru, "It's the age", Campus meeting: "How's the tummy?", Subaru & Akechi, Sei & Nokoru, "You want this.", TSF intercepts Sei, All-in-One, Su & Nokoru, Camus' Caligula.
scene worked on today: DreamTalk
scene completed? yes
character getting a crash course in dark onmyojutsu logic: Subaru
character who begs to differ: Tree-san (and it is smug about it!)
quote of the day: "I don't serve you!"

Unrelated side-note: I caught the movie "Farewell, my concubine" on tv a few weeks ago, and it's still hauntingly vivid on my mind. It's a rare event that a movie truly moves me like this one does. Sadly, it's already a fairly old one with no dvd available here. If you get the chance to watch it, do it, it's definitely worth your time (as a TBX fan and else).

I must admit I liked the original startrek. I also liked some of the settings of the later series (DS-9, Voyager), but I also never truly bothered to follow the series (chronologically or complete), because I got ultimately bored after a dozen eps or so, when nothing of the potential conflict in the setup between characters and surrounding was even remotely addressed or put to use.
The same goes actually for many of the sciencefiction series brought to tv or cinema in the last twenty years. Get me right: I *love* StarWars IV (and its potential), but that was *before* the rest of the saga; I love Eureka with its all nonsense take on scientists, and a few more (notably the original Battlestar Galactica and Bab-5, but again, "it's the setting, stupid." (to misquote Bill Clinton)).

However, when was the last time you saw a believe scientific and social different world set up on tv? The only thing I can spontaneously come up with is StarGate for a series, and even there it's mostly the original seasons with the earlier being the better, the Atlantis part lost most (if not all and then some) of its flavor, and Blade Runner as a movie.

SF author Charles Stross posted about the shortcomings of sciencefiction shows and movies in his online diary that brings these issues to a very clear point in terms of scientific and social world building for spellbinding scifi stories. His example is Startrek:TNG, and even if you don't agree with me (or like TNG to death), have a look at the quoted script excerpt for one of its eps, before the technical helpers filled in the gaps. It's a thought-provoking read.

When the movie 300 came into the cinemas 2007, I was not tempted to watch it (ditto at the DVD release later that year). The topic wasn't that interesting to me.

However, since then the movie managed to be called (in no specific order & no assumption of completeness): fascist, racist, communist, (+ a lot more -ists), inhuman, violence-glorifying, historically incorrect and politically incorrect towards the elderly, the disabled, artisans, craftspeople, women, African people, Asian people - and it pissed off the entire nation of Iran.

All that while still getting a cinema rating of FSK-16 (roughly an "R") in Germany. Wow.

Let's say, I was intrigued. Today I sat down and watched it. And found that I liked it. A lot.

( So what is 300? )