Planting and writing
3 April 2023 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeSowed a tray of rocket (from seed harvested last year; possibly I should have been using up the old commercial seed first, but I wanted to check that this 'worked'!) and a six-pack of Swan River daisies, four compartments blue and two pink.
There is no sign of activity from the mesembryanthemums in the bathroom, but something is putting out roots in the little pot of Roma tomatoes, now moved from the bathroom to my kitchen windowsill -- I am just not sure it is going to be a tomato, as opposed to the ubiquitous corn-marigolds! (In fact I see it has only been a week since I sowed those two pots; it feels like longer.)
I have also planted five nasturtiums (variety Alaska Mixed) -- for the record, these were *not* my saved seeds but last year's commercial ones! Though it will be interesting to see what colour the second-generation nasturtiums come out.
The Gigi story (which will require a title...) is getting rather bogged down, unfortunately, because I've got myself into a position where I am basically now stuck simply paraphrasing the penultimate scene of the story from Gaston's point of view. Arguably not too much of an issue (I pretty much did just that with This Mask of Death, after all, and it was a success both in-fandom and out), especially since I imagine not that many people are acquainted with the original story as versus the musical --I have no idea how closely the musical follows this scene!-- and since I'm translating from French in any case, but I have also managed to get myself into a situation where I jumped directly into the middle of the scene via Gaston's thoughts, and am now trying to incorporate necessary material from earlier on without being too untrue to the original progression or seeming to 'whitewash' the character. (He is, I think, doing his best to behave decently according to his lights -- as are Gigi's grandmother and great-aunt, who are disappointed in her, but prepared to take the attitude of 'least said, soonest mended' rather than browbeating her into his bed -- but he is also engaged in what amounts to moral blackmail on a reluctant schoolgirl.)
I'm consciously *not* doing a direct translation 'with interpolated thoughts' in the style of a straight novelisation, not so much for copyright reasons but because of the aforementioned continuity issues (and also because it would be hard work and pretty boring), but as a result I'm continually walking a tightrope between where the conversation in my head wants to evolve, versus the tone and order of events in the original exchange. It's fine to have Gaston exclaim in an injured tone "So you just want to be friends" (which he does *not* say in Colette's version, but I imagine is pretty definitely something along the lines of what he is thinking), and it's probably all right to have him say "Whatever you want, I'll give it to you", because he *does* say more or less exactly that (Dis-moi seulement ce que tu ne veux pas. Tu peux dire aussi ce que tu veux… Je te le donnerai…) at an earlier stage in the scene which I have in effect omitted -- but I feel obliged to be careful that I don't accidentally end up implying things that don't fit Colette's depiction. What I'm aiming for is a scene that *feels* like a match for the original if you don't compare them line for line, but is actually substantially different!
(I may have been scarred by too many Phantom-friendly fics in which an unrecognisable Phantom suddenly asserts that he 'would never hurt a woman' and/or saves the heroine from the depredations of the unspeakable de Chagny brothers... Speaking of which, I now have two reviews on "Chick nor Child" on FFnet :-)
There is no sign of activity from the mesembryanthemums in the bathroom, but something is putting out roots in the little pot of Roma tomatoes, now moved from the bathroom to my kitchen windowsill -- I am just not sure it is going to be a tomato, as opposed to the ubiquitous corn-marigolds! (In fact I see it has only been a week since I sowed those two pots; it feels like longer.)
I have also planted five nasturtiums (variety Alaska Mixed) -- for the record, these were *not* my saved seeds but last year's commercial ones! Though it will be interesting to see what colour the second-generation nasturtiums come out.
The Gigi story (which will require a title...) is getting rather bogged down, unfortunately, because I've got myself into a position where I am basically now stuck simply paraphrasing the penultimate scene of the story from Gaston's point of view. Arguably not too much of an issue (I pretty much did just that with This Mask of Death, after all, and it was a success both in-fandom and out), especially since I imagine not that many people are acquainted with the original story as versus the musical --I have no idea how closely the musical follows this scene!-- and since I'm translating from French in any case, but I have also managed to get myself into a situation where I jumped directly into the middle of the scene via Gaston's thoughts, and am now trying to incorporate necessary material from earlier on without being too untrue to the original progression or seeming to 'whitewash' the character. (He is, I think, doing his best to behave decently according to his lights -- as are Gigi's grandmother and great-aunt, who are disappointed in her, but prepared to take the attitude of 'least said, soonest mended' rather than browbeating her into his bed -- but he is also engaged in what amounts to moral blackmail on a reluctant schoolgirl.)
I'm consciously *not* doing a direct translation 'with interpolated thoughts' in the style of a straight novelisation, not so much for copyright reasons but because of the aforementioned continuity issues (and also because it would be hard work and pretty boring), but as a result I'm continually walking a tightrope between where the conversation in my head wants to evolve, versus the tone and order of events in the original exchange. It's fine to have Gaston exclaim in an injured tone "So you just want to be friends" (which he does *not* say in Colette's version, but I imagine is pretty definitely something along the lines of what he is thinking), and it's probably all right to have him say "Whatever you want, I'll give it to you", because he *does* say more or less exactly that (Dis-moi seulement ce que tu ne veux pas. Tu peux dire aussi ce que tu veux… Je te le donnerai…) at an earlier stage in the scene which I have in effect omitted -- but I feel obliged to be careful that I don't accidentally end up implying things that don't fit Colette's depiction. What I'm aiming for is a scene that *feels* like a match for the original if you don't compare them line for line, but is actually substantially different!
(I may have been scarred by too many Phantom-friendly fics in which an unrecognisable Phantom suddenly asserts that he 'would never hurt a woman' and/or saves the heroine from the depredations of the unspeakable de Chagny brothers... Speaking of which, I now have two reviews on "Chick nor Child" on FFnet :-)