wherein Liz is still stressed over Remix; also, Stories of the Sacred

I am not actually done with my remix, but I posted the half-finished rough draft (with little outline sketches of the sections I haven't yet written) on AO3, to show that I am not defaulting.

This story. Oh my god, this story.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to work with this story. Or, rather, I did, but I forgot my tendency to run on uncontrollably at the mouth (or pen, or word processor, as it were), and just... ARGH.

I feel I am turning my brain inside out, and by means of occasional escape (for my sanity's sake), what do I then do? I go write pieces of other stories.

I'm crazy. There is no other explanation.

(Also, my friend Susan was supposed to call me this afternoon, but she hasn't, and her phone keeps dumping me straight into her voicemail when I try calling her, and I have to leave for work in 45 minutes, and... Um. Yeah. I am a little stressed right now.)

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In other news, I taught RE again this morning. Last week we did Mother's Peace Day (which is what Julia Ward Howe -- of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" fame -- wanted Mother's Day to be, back in the 1870s), which involved making little banners out of felt and chopsticks, with slogans about peace and/or mothers. They were very cute.

This week we did Mary and Martha, which is the story about two sisters who invited Jesus to their house; Martha worked really hard to feed everyone and make the visit perfect, while Mary sat down and listened to Jesus talk, which pissed Martha right the hell off. Except apparently sitting and listening was the better thing to do, since they only met Jesus the once, but you can cook and clean any time you want, and also Jesus didn't need things to be perfect.

In honor of that, we asked thematic questions and listened to each others' answers, and then made placemats and served each other snack. So yeah.

Next week is the annual class party, after which I am done teaching until autumn. Victory is mine!

wherein Liz is annoyed at a self-proclaimed "language geek" reviewer

One of my WIPs, Lemonade, contains three main characters. One (Sasuke) speaks only Japanese. One (Faith) speaks only English. The third (Duo) is a native English speaker, but also passable-to-fluent in Spanish, Japanese, and two or three other unspecified languages. (Plus he reads Latin, because that amuses me.)

In chapter two, Sasuke curses very briefly in Japanese. Specifically, he says "shimatta."

I just got the following review, from an anonymous person calling hirself "Language Geek":

Be careful, be very careful, Shimatta might just mean shit in Japanese, however it seems a bit close to Schmatta which is a rather derogatory term in Yiddish.

To which my response is, basically, WHAT? Yes, obviously words in different languages will occasionally sound similar (or identical) to unrelated words in other languages, but what does that have to do with anything? Nobody in this story speaks Yiddish. It's written in English with very occasional garnishes of Japanese and Spanish, for color. If you read any of the words as Yiddish terms, you are actively looking for things to misinterpret. (Well, okay, I think I used a very Anglicized Yiddishism once -- something along the lines of 'plans, schmans,' but that's standard American usage at this point, and the first word of that kind of phrase is always in English anyway.)

Besides which, seriously, Japanese. Not Yiddish.

Twit.


(I am being petty enough already, so I will not go on to rewrite the review in properly grammatical English. But oh, I want to. Because I am, at heart, extremely petty about certain things. *sigh*)