editing progress report; life update; thoughts on the pronunciation of visual labels

[edenfalling]

Have received beta responses for "Secrets" chapter 10. Thank you, lasultrix and aichmetes! (Also, Cat? I love you and you are insightful as always, but goddamn it, write larger. Or use post-it notes. Your handwriting is as bad as my grandmother's, and that's saying something.)

*beats head against desk*

I knew it wasn't a great chapter. It suffers from A) being a transitional chapter, with the strongest scene occuring midway (and connecting only tenuously to the chapter's overall theme), B) attempting to paper over some awkward and/or inexplicable bits of CoS, and C) being written piecemeal over approximately 7 months. I already edited the hell out of it, and now I have two opinions on what needs more editing. Which is good! Don't ever think it isn't! But it is such a pain to pick my words apart and stitch them back together, especially when we're talking 9,000+ words, which themselves must mesh with the 90,000+ words in chapters 1-9.

*beats head some more*

I will do my best to fix it up and post it sometime next week.

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What I did this week:

1. Wrote about 300 words of "Finding Marea"
2. Wrote about 500 words of "Guardian"
3. Finally got around to downloading and arranging bits of "Chrysanthe," an original story (modern-day fantasy, dark-ish) that I left as an attachment on an email message for about a year
4. Wrote another 400 words of "Chrysanthe"
5. Read chapters 1-30 of Hunter x Hunter

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Speaking of #5, how does one pronounce that title? Hunter 'versus' Hunter? Hunter 'ecks' Hunter? Hunter 'times' Hunter? Inquiring minds want to know.

On a related subject, inquiring minds also want to know how to pronounce pairing abbreviations in Gundam Wing fandom. 1+2 -- meaning friendship and/or kissing but no sex between Heero and Duo -- seems likely to be 'one plus two.' But 1x2... ah now, how to say that? 1 'times' 2? For some reason, I've ended up mentally saying that as 'one by two,' as if I'm talking about the dimensions of a plank of wood. Hey, we all have our mental quirks.

Anyway, is there a commonly accepted verbalization of that style of pairing notation? Since FF.net banned the / character in story summaries, I've seen 'x' as a pairing notation appear in a growing number of fandoms... at least in fandoms that don't use portmanteau ship names (like McShep for McKay/Sheppard, or NaruSasuSaku for Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura, etc.).

For that matter, do people commonly pronounce the / in pairing names? That is, would you say 'aitch slash aitch arr' for H/Hr? Or would you just say 'aitch aitch arr'? I don't (mentally) pronounce the / mark, but since I've only discussed ships online, and therefore in writing, I have no audio references.

Comments

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's another way to write the pairings in the Harry Potter fandom. I have no idea why it's Hr; the practice was firmly in place by the time I started reading in the fandom. Maybe the fans figured that "he" to indicate a girl was counterintuitive.

My primary fandom, however, not only isn't Harry Potter, but is one where over half of the characters have only first names. Two have family names, one can have a species name added (which is usually used to indicate a secondary form which that character can take), the one with the species name has the same initals as another character AND the first three letters of his name match yet another's. Full names are about the only way to make sense of any pairing labels. See?

(Youko) Kurama
Kuronue
Karasu
Koenma
(Yukimura) Keiko
Kuwabara (Kazuma - this is his personal name, but he goes by his family name)

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

ack. i meant to just ask if you coudld othe surname trick n your primary fandom liek we od in hp. thansk for explaining itthough. isn't other mang aalso havingthis issue( was this about manga/animeat all?)
wow, agodo observationf for HE, i still thin ki nthis casetis i sexaclt ywhy I personally onl yuse full initials, or ffull first names.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, logically Hermione should be shortened to 'He' to distinguish her from 'H' for Harry, but 'He' for a girl does look a bit funny in English.

Abbreviations in YuYu Hakusho would be an absolute nightmare, wouldn't they. I am now trying to come up with portmanteau ship names and failing at that, too -- they just don't look right.