flonnebonne

Happy belated Hikago day! I didn't do to celebrate anything this year, although I've been reading the fics from the latest round of blind_go and the Let's Five meme at the Dreamwidth community and enjoying it muchly. 

One boring thing I did finally remember to do, though, was upload all my old blind_go fics to my ff.net account:

Two by Four (blind_go round 1)
Waya wakes up beside Touya, and Hikaru wakes up beside Isumi. Much argh is had. 620 words. 

Blind Going In (also round 1)
Touya plays a game of go with a blind man. This version has been edited down a bit from the original version posted on blind_go. 1423 words. 

Across the Board (round 2) 
Eight minor characters, eight hosts for Sai. 975 words. 

Go Wars (round 4) 
On the planet Tokyooine, our young hero Shindou Hikaru lives in happy ignorance of the evil Institute and its nefarious grip on the galaxy's Go. Until one day he meets a ghost of the Old Republic.... Still sadly unfinished, and likely to stay that way. 2556 words. 

Blind Woe (round 5) 
Weekly Go is celebrating its 15th Anniversary with an essay contest! The topic of the essay: an experience that changed your go. All submissions must be typed and double-spaced. A parody of the blind go challenge itself. Will hopefully finish this one day. 11,732 words. 

Fine China (round 9) 
Isumi and Waya in China, and the walls growing between them. Angsty pants. 989 words. 

An Exorcism (round 10) 
A priestess labours to exorcise a ghost on behalf of her client, a housewife in Tokyo. She does not know the ghost, nor does she care to. 1530 words. 

I'm not going to bother posting these on my LJ, so the final versions of these fics will all live on ff.net. Hurray for the Pit! 

Life and Death Problems by flonnebonne
Hikaru no Go/Ender's Game crossover, Touya, Shindou, Waya, 2227 words, G, no obvious spoilers for either series.
A sequel to my fic Hikaru's Game. Won't make much sense if you haven't read that fic.

( Touya turned on his desk and found a life and death problem waiting for him. )

( "Everybody's OK now," said Dink. "Nothing was wrong with any of us that five days of cowering in blacked-out rooms in the middle of a war couldn't cure." )

The one-year anniversary of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan passed a couple weeks ago. 

It's very weird, once again, to be hearing conflicting news from both sides of the Pacific. Over here, I watch grave news reports about the Japan's governments failure to help the region recover economically. The survivors aren't doing well and aren't getting the help they need. I've heard the term "wasted year" a couple times. On 3/11 itself, the height of solemnity, I went to a very solemn bell-ringing ceremony at my old university. People cried. The homestay students from Saitama I took with me (two highschool girls) cried. I cried.

On the other side of the Pacific...well, I haven't seriously been following Japanese news (I see a few headlines here and there, but that it), but I occasionally get emails from friends in my town in Fukushima (not on the coast, but 64km from the reactors) and in Sendai city (not the gravely affected part of the city)...and here's the thing: they barely mention the quake. They talk about their daily lives, job promotions and making dango and looking forward to spring. One friend from my town told me he went to a big festival in the biggest city in Fukushima on 3/11. I'll  translate what he wrote:

"There was a celebration in front of the station called 'Sending Koriyama's Lively Spirit to the Country, to the World!' There were soldiers there who sang and played instruments, dancing cheerleaders, Ultraman, a show with bells, and comedians and singers, including anime singers."

And he put all his usual smiley emoticons in the message too.

I think the underlying message of the festival must have been "We want to revive this prefecture, not drown it in sorrows!" It's a distinctly Japanese way of dealing with disaster and sorrow, I think. "Move on, move on." Or maybe it's just a natural thing for people who have been cast as victims to say "Stop making us victims! Let us be people again!"

When I visited my town in August last year (did I mention that in my journal?) it was the same thing; the majority of my friends said, "We're fine! We're fine! The outside world is overreacting!" And for my town it is mostly true that they're fine, because they're not on the coast, no one died in the disaster, and the damage was not extensive. I didn't even see any of it by the time I visited in August; it was almost completely fixed by then. And they were much less afraid of radiation than I was. Even my farmer friends. They showed me maps and figures and pointed out how the fish in the supermarket was from places like Chile and Canada. I have to wonder how my friends' cucumbers are selling this year though...

There were exceptions, of course--people who did not just bravely carry on. One friend, who has children in elementary school, moved to Hokkaido because of the radiation. She's now involved in an organization that is protesting against the government for failing to adequately protect people from radiation. She occasionally sends me emails from her organization. 

But, overall, the message from my friends has been a casual "We're okay. It's been hard, but we're okay."

I'm sure there are plenty of amazing and intelligent responses to this show on the internets, and I've started reading some of them, like canis_m's stuff over here. 

( This is not one of those amazing and intelligent responses. SPOILERS! )

Actually, I do have some slightly intelligent things to say, including some comments on the feminist aspects of the show, such as they are, but those will be in another post.

You need 55% to pass N1.

...I got 56%.

THIS IS AWESOME. ぎりぎりFTW!

Language Knowledge (Vocab/Grammar): 45/60
Reading: 19/60
Listening: 37/60
Total: 101/80

Wow, I really guessed well on the first section. I had no idea what the right answer was most of the time.

...Obviously I need to do more reading practice. Of real books and articles, not just manga.

I thought I'd done a bit better on listening, but by that point I was really tired and cold and unable to concentrate, so I guess that's about right.

They sent me a bent certificate, but I guess that's what you get when you only pass by 1%. I lost my 2-kyu certificate, so having anything is better than nothing.

As Chun Li would say, やった！

Slam Dunk:
Akagi and Mitsui are at Shintai, milling around a gym with a lot of other students. They might be there for scholarship interviews or something. Mitsui acts all smooth and cool while Akagi is all stressed out. Mitsui is like, "I've got lots of Nationals experience so this is all old hat to me." And then he starts talking to some students from overseas in French and English. Apparently, if you go to nationals you learn French and English. What a showoff.

FFVI:
Locke and Celes and probably/maybe Terra are living in western Canada during WW2. They are all depressed because it's WW2. For some reason Locke & Celes move to Ontario in the middle of winter (ugh) and leave Terra behind, who makes sadface. In Ontario, Celes becomes an elementary school teacher and Locke becomes...I don't know, her lazy dependent? Why wasn't he drafted? He makes angryface because he is a lazy male dependent. Eventually he storms into one of Celes' classes and drags her out of town on "important business." Celes doesn't make a big fuss, because it must be important. Guess what, they end up going spelunking for the Phoenix esper.

(In my dreams, my favourite characters must act like douchebags?)

Anzai's School for Gifted Basketball Players (Part 2 of 2)
by flonnebonne
Slam Dunk and X-Men (mainly the '90s cartoon) fusion
Characters from Shohoku and Ryonan, plus Kiyota and Mikio
4307 words, PG-13, no spoilers.

( Part 2 )

Anzai's School for Gifted Basketball Players (Part 1 of 2)
by flonnebonne
Slam Dunk and X-Men (mainly the '90s cartoon) fusion
Characters from Shohoku and Ryonan, plus Kiyota and Mikio
4307 words, PG-13, no spoilers.

Oh, and this fic is all juin's fault.

( Part 1 )

Slam Dunk fans! You must watch this.

via http://thelockerroom.livejournal.com/58639.html: