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camwynhttp://www.megaloceros.net/pencils.htm#Newark has three new pics. Two are marked 2/3/02; one is a second entry under the Greek Slave statue. I don't know why I stopped where I did with her and with The Rigger - no, that's not true. My butt was falling asleep when I was doing the Slave, so I stopped halfway through the chain. The Rigger, however... I think I just decided to go on to something else. Sorry about that.
Meanwhile, I've been pawing through my latest acquisition from Borders- Outrageous Chinese: A Guide to Chinese Street Language, by James Wang. This has had the unforeseen side effect of prodding more of the Xiang family into my brain, so... y'all are gonna get filled in on my Akashic's relatives here. Hope you don't mind.
Hsiang Ho's name is more properly transliterated as Xiang He. He has one older brother, Xiang Yu, who was born in the Year of the Dragon (Ho was Year of the Dog). I would give specific years, but the VicMage game started in 1997, and Ashes is 1996; I'm treating them as two alternate timelines, one with Ho as the main character and one with Fang instead. In the VicMage timeline Ho was born in 1970. His brother was born in 1964. As of 1997 Xiang Yu was known to most people outside California's Chinese-speaking community as Peter "Iron Fist" Xiang, the youngest judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The nickname started off as 'Iron Hands', and was bestowed on him shortly before he passed the bar; someone took a swing at him during a quiet celebration with friends in a bar in Boston, and his response was to grab the man's fist, midair, and grip it in exactly the right way to convince the fellow that any further foolishness would result in multiple broken bones. It sort of mutated after he became a judge... he's got a nasty iceman demeanor in the courtroom, and a tendency to come down on people like a ton of bricks if they step out of line. Fair, though, with tremendous respect for constitutional law and procedure. He's 6'5", married to a lovely lady by the name of Ying Mei. (I've asked LJ to use a picture of him as the picture with this entry. You can also see him at the Pens Gallery at megaloceros.net.) They've got two daughters, the older of which (Nadine) is likely to one day Awaken and go haring off through the world-lines until she finds her uncle Ho. She doesn't particularly believe that Uncle Ho was on a ship destroyed by Abu Sayyaf rebels in the Philippines, see.
Ho has two uncles and two aunts on his father's side, and one aunt on his mother's side. His mother is from Shanghai, an accountant by trade, and is a gentle, even-tempered woman who makes an excellent balance for her patently insane husband. Unfortunately I have forgotten her family name, although her personal name is Cui. Like her husband, she was converted by missionaries and primarily uses her English name, which I believe is Anne. Her sister's name is Li, and I believe Li is childless despite her and her husband's best efforts to the contrary. It's something of a family problem; Anne had a horrible first pregnancy, and gave birth to a several-months-premature baby who didn't survive after that. Almost didn't have another child, but her father-in-law died and her husband was so upset by this that she agreed to try again. Anne's sons were both born in America. Neither one, as it happened, wound up accepting Christian baptism. Yu was caught at a very early age by Uncle Fang and pointed rather firmly at the Chinese traditional belief systems, and despite all his mother's efforts to the contrary, he took to them like a duck to water. She sighed and let it pass, reasoning that he'd come to his senses eventually, but then her younger son announced he was not only becoming Buddhist but joining a monastery... Neither she nor her husband took that very well, although she managed a little better than him. Nice lady, if a bit lost in the background sometimes.
Especially compared to her husband, Xiang Yu. Or, as he prefers to be called, James. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Yu was the fourth of five children, and for eight years was his father's youngest son. His older brother Hong was slated for inheriting the Xiang family businesses from the beginning, so Yu quietly pursued his own studies in the hopes of establishing himself somewhere prosperous. Like his older brother, he started off working in the kitchens of one of his father's restaurants; unlike Hong, he then went off after a few years to work somewhere else. Yu bounced through a lot of restaurants in the process of learning his trade and picked up more cooking styles than any one man has a right to know. Eventually one of his forays into the exotic led him to encounter a group of Lutherans, and he converted after some due consideratin; another such foray put him briefly on the mainland for two weeks, during which time he met Cui. It was something of a whirlwind courtship, but they married quickly and eventually emigrated to the United States. They settled in San Francisco, eventually opening several restaurants. James can perform in a truly frightening array of culinary styles; rumor has it that you can put anything short of human flesh in front of him, and he'll find a way to not only make it edible, but make you want to eat it. He tends to get obsessive about his interests, and cooking is one of them. Unfortunately, while he's flexible in the kitchen, he's not as flexible in his interpersonal relations. That's a big part of why neither he nor Anne spoke to Ho for a year and a half after Ho told them about the Buddhism thing. It was mostly her pain, combined with quiet pleading from his elder son, that convinced him to break down and let Ho back into the family circle again.
You know, this is gonna get way too long to handle all at once. I'll stop here. The rest of the family, and Uncle Fang, can wait until another day.
Today's pulp survival tip is #86: Don't touch the Ark of the Covenant.
Meanwhile, I've been pawing through my latest acquisition from Borders- Outrageous Chinese: A Guide to Chinese Street Language, by James Wang. This has had the unforeseen side effect of prodding more of the Xiang family into my brain, so... y'all are gonna get filled in on my Akashic's relatives here. Hope you don't mind.
Hsiang Ho's name is more properly transliterated as Xiang He. He has one older brother, Xiang Yu, who was born in the Year of the Dragon (Ho was Year of the Dog). I would give specific years, but the VicMage game started in 1997, and Ashes is 1996; I'm treating them as two alternate timelines, one with Ho as the main character and one with Fang instead. In the VicMage timeline Ho was born in 1970. His brother was born in 1964. As of 1997 Xiang Yu was known to most people outside California's Chinese-speaking community as Peter "Iron Fist" Xiang, the youngest judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The nickname started off as 'Iron Hands', and was bestowed on him shortly before he passed the bar; someone took a swing at him during a quiet celebration with friends in a bar in Boston, and his response was to grab the man's fist, midair, and grip it in exactly the right way to convince the fellow that any further foolishness would result in multiple broken bones. It sort of mutated after he became a judge... he's got a nasty iceman demeanor in the courtroom, and a tendency to come down on people like a ton of bricks if they step out of line. Fair, though, with tremendous respect for constitutional law and procedure. He's 6'5", married to a lovely lady by the name of Ying Mei. (I've asked LJ to use a picture of him as the picture with this entry. You can also see him at the Pens Gallery at megaloceros.net.) They've got two daughters, the older of which (Nadine) is likely to one day Awaken and go haring off through the world-lines until she finds her uncle Ho. She doesn't particularly believe that Uncle Ho was on a ship destroyed by Abu Sayyaf rebels in the Philippines, see.
Ho has two uncles and two aunts on his father's side, and one aunt on his mother's side. His mother is from Shanghai, an accountant by trade, and is a gentle, even-tempered woman who makes an excellent balance for her patently insane husband. Unfortunately I have forgotten her family name, although her personal name is Cui. Like her husband, she was converted by missionaries and primarily uses her English name, which I believe is Anne. Her sister's name is Li, and I believe Li is childless despite her and her husband's best efforts to the contrary. It's something of a family problem; Anne had a horrible first pregnancy, and gave birth to a several-months-premature baby who didn't survive after that. Almost didn't have another child, but her father-in-law died and her husband was so upset by this that she agreed to try again. Anne's sons were both born in America. Neither one, as it happened, wound up accepting Christian baptism. Yu was caught at a very early age by Uncle Fang and pointed rather firmly at the Chinese traditional belief systems, and despite all his mother's efforts to the contrary, he took to them like a duck to water. She sighed and let it pass, reasoning that he'd come to his senses eventually, but then her younger son announced he was not only becoming Buddhist but joining a monastery... Neither she nor her husband took that very well, although she managed a little better than him. Nice lady, if a bit lost in the background sometimes.
Especially compared to her husband, Xiang Yu. Or, as he prefers to be called, James. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Yu was the fourth of five children, and for eight years was his father's youngest son. His older brother Hong was slated for inheriting the Xiang family businesses from the beginning, so Yu quietly pursued his own studies in the hopes of establishing himself somewhere prosperous. Like his older brother, he started off working in the kitchens of one of his father's restaurants; unlike Hong, he then went off after a few years to work somewhere else. Yu bounced through a lot of restaurants in the process of learning his trade and picked up more cooking styles than any one man has a right to know. Eventually one of his forays into the exotic led him to encounter a group of Lutherans, and he converted after some due consideratin; another such foray put him briefly on the mainland for two weeks, during which time he met Cui. It was something of a whirlwind courtship, but they married quickly and eventually emigrated to the United States. They settled in San Francisco, eventually opening several restaurants. James can perform in a truly frightening array of culinary styles; rumor has it that you can put anything short of human flesh in front of him, and he'll find a way to not only make it edible, but make you want to eat it. He tends to get obsessive about his interests, and cooking is one of them. Unfortunately, while he's flexible in the kitchen, he's not as flexible in his interpersonal relations. That's a big part of why neither he nor Anne spoke to Ho for a year and a half after Ho told them about the Buddhism thing. It was mostly her pain, combined with quiet pleading from his elder son, that convinced him to break down and let Ho back into the family circle again.
You know, this is gonna get way too long to handle all at once. I'll stop here. The rest of the family, and Uncle Fang, can wait until another day.
Today's pulp survival tip is #86: Don't touch the Ark of the Covenant.
