Research work is fun
Sep. 11th, 2010 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiseheartThat's what I've done in the recent weeks, whenever I had a free minute: researching 12th century Japan, aka the late Heian period, all characters from "The Tale of the Heike" and stuff concerning the early samurai era. No, I'm not writing a thesis about it - I'm writing fanfic. Dr. Who fanfic. The same story in which Toshiko is travelling with the Ninth Doctor for a while. And they just happen to land in the middle of the Battle of Dan-no-ura, in 1185.
Every halfway sane person would just look up a few facts and go on with the story. Apparently, I'm not even halfway sane. Every fact I stumble over leads to new, fascinating facts and persons I've never heard of before. It's like doing virtual digging or whatnot. It's also confusing as hell - why must all Japanese names start with at least five syllables and go upwards from there?
Also, the more I find out about that period, the more obvious it becomes that I've got no idea about anything. And it makes me dig even deeper. All that for writing fanfic; because I'm obsessed with detail and just have to know as much as possible about the environment my characters are acting in. Even if nothing of that ever appears in the actual story.
I think I'm really beyond help at this point.
Every halfway sane person would just look up a few facts and go on with the story. Apparently, I'm not even halfway sane. Every fact I stumble over leads to new, fascinating facts and persons I've never heard of before. It's like doing virtual digging or whatnot. It's also confusing as hell - why must all Japanese names start with at least five syllables and go upwards from there?
Also, the more I find out about that period, the more obvious it becomes that I've got no idea about anything. And it makes me dig even deeper. All that for writing fanfic; because I'm obsessed with detail and just have to know as much as possible about the environment my characters are acting in. Even if nothing of that ever appears in the actual story.
I think I'm really beyond help at this point.
