L.J. Writes

Writing a textbook for a gig has eaten up most of my attention lately, but I'm trying to wrap up the current chapter and fire it off to my editor so I can work on a more enjoyable writing project--the wipbigbang Finnrey fic that I need to finish up and set up a posting date for along with my artist.

Work on the original novel has stalled out among all this, but I'm still thinking about it all the time and mostly despairing at how utterly short my abilities are falling of my aspirations T_T I do plan to move along on it once the WIP Big Bang is done, though.

So whatever it is I'm working on at a given time, work, fandom, or original, it looks like I'm doing a lot of writing! I feel a vague sense of impatience all the time and am trying to gather my thoughts & energies. Idk. One step at a time, I guess.

I finished reading The King of the Light in the East as a Work of Epic Poetry by Hwang Sun-gu. It turns out there was a full text of the original epic poem in the back of the book so I took time to read that too. I need a better annotated copy, though, because I counted like four mistakes in transcription and/or translation, some of it really basic stuff like the letter 花 (flower) being used in place of 化 (become). "He turned into a pheasant and flew away" is a strange enough sentence without being rendered as "He flower pheasant and flew away."

( Oh God they were rivals )

I spent Monday afternoon last week researching clothing from the time period I'm writing in, that is 1st century B.C. mostly to the north of the Korean peninsula. The dudes' feathered hats came up again, but I went through more comprehensive treatments of fashion in that era that were not focused exclusively on noblemen's hats. One of the books I took copious notes on agrees with me that the feathers were definitely real bird feathers early on but that feather-shaped or deer ear-shaped decorations also came into use later on.

All the books that I took a look at on this subject seem to discuss the Xiongnu(1) clothing uncovered at the Noin-Ula burial site in Mongolia, pointing out the similarities to Korean clothing in the basic structure of articles like form-fitting pants, wraparound tunic bound with a belt, and outer coat. A red tunic found in Noin-Ula shows traces of being trimmed with fur, which is a great distinctive look I could use since the ancient connection between the Xiongnu and Koreans seems inescapable.

( More ancient Korean fashion, plus pictures! )