follow me into the rain

Last night I wrote a short Ginzura ficlet inspired by a prompt from Flufftober and by a Ginzura Kisstober hashtag on Twitter. I wrote it fairly off-the-cuff. Hopefully I'll be able to write more short stuff like this in October, whether for Flufftober or even Kinktober or promptless.

Title: Only Time Enough For This One Candle
Characters/Pairing: Gintoki/Katsura
word count: around 640
spoilers/setting: no real spoilers, set vaguely
Prompt: Candles, lanterns, fairy lights

( and then they both went home with a cold )

Currently, from March 20 - 26, there's a Shoka Sonjuku Week going on in Gintama fandom, set in motion by this account on Tumblr and this account on Twitter. There's a set of three prompts for each days which can be seen in this pinned tweet on the Twitter account - except for the last day, the 26th, which only has the prompt "Big Brother", as that day is also Oboro's birthday.

There's been some wonderful stuff written and drawn already, and the organizing accounts do their best to reblog/retweet it, so please check out those accounts if you like to read such content!

I've taken part so far by drawing for Day 1, choosing the prompt "Chores", and for Day 2, choosing the prompt "Magic".

I'm afraid I haven't had any ideas for the prompts for Day 3, so I skipped that one and went directly to Day 4. I picked the prompt "Dream" from Competition/Sacrifice/Dream and this time went for text instead of image.

This is a ficlet from Nobume's POV from some point in time before the Farewell Shinsengumi arc, but after the canon starts and maybe after the Courtesan of a Nation arc. There are some things in it that are informed by Shôyô's and Oboro's backstory, even though it doesn't seem like Nobume fully knew all of those things -- but she certainly knew more than the readers/viewers did before that arc started. I'm assuming her she guessed at some of it, at least.

Working title: Another Way Is Possible
Word count: 463 as I post this (I won't do a recount if I polish it)
Characters: Nobume POV (1st person), Shôyô and Shôyô's other students mentioned/alluded to
Spoilers/setting: you should at least have watched Farewell Shinsengumi before reading this, and probably Battle at Rakuyo as well
flavour: pensive

( those sunlit lands on the other side of the relentless river 'If Only'... )

Meme again! Forgot where I found it.

1. Put your iPod or mp3 on shuffle.
2. Write down and post the first 10 songs you get, and also the opening line to each song.
3. Name what character each song or opening line reminds you of. [This might be tough!]
4. Finally, write at least 2 brief ficlets inspired by some of these songs or opening lines. [Okay, I actually added this last one because I want an excuse to write unpretentiously and semi-spontaneously. Though, um, I don't think I will write them all in one sitting!]

( Results behind the cut )

Okay, that's it for the answers - the ficlets (which took two/three days to write despite being quite simple - fast, I am still not! - are posted as comments below. Spoilers for Nana and Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Reposting two commentfics I did for this thread over at Dreamwidth (found via anenko. The first one was first posted anonymously and has been extended from 105 words to 176. One is for Ranma 1/2, the other a Ranma/Fruits Basket crossover.

On the first one: I usually just friendship Akane and Ukyo - I find it tough to split up Ranma and Akane, for one - but I still wanted to try the prompt. Still very vague on what on earth has happened with Ranma, though! (I also still want to use a similar set-up for a longer Akane + Ukyo friendship/Akane levels up in martial arts fic, one day.)

On the second: this prompt seemed like a cool idea, sticking those two together. But I had to respect that the power levels are so different in the two series and that one of them must take place at least a few years after the other. It would have been neat to work in a reference to their curses, but alas, it didn't really fit here.

As always, nitpicks etc are more than welcome!

( prompt: Akane/Ukyo: Being true to you )

( prompt: Kyo and Ryoga, training together )

So! I got tagged - or rather, asked to be tagged - by scribe_protra a week or so back (*checks* uh, actually it was New Year's Eve - I'm even slower than I thought!) for a writing meme! This one is connected to user pics.

This is how the meme goes officially, though as you see below I didn't follow all of it:

1. Reply to this post, and I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and write a drabble about (each of) the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

Beside the icon glee, I think - though I could have this all wrong - that the point is to write something brief and fast without taking it too seriously. Unfortunately, I normally fail at brevity and quickness, so that failed, even though I cheated and asked scribe_protra to only pick four of my icons rather than six. And I wound up way over 100-word length for all of them - though I did hold on to the "not taking it too seriously" part. Anyway, it was still fun to do, and I'd love to pass it on in case anyone's interested.

If you do want to do this, please ask how many icons I should pick - since I only had four, I can hardly demand anyone else must write six!

Concrit is welcome as always - this is just for fun, but it's always good to get tips on wording, correction on typoes etc!

( here we go )

Posting the longer version of a ficlet I just posted on onepiece_300. First attempt to write this pairing.

edit: Changed the rating.
edit 2: Forgot to say that as usual, nitpicks and other concrit is much encouraged.

Title: Shade and Sweet Water
Rating: G PG
Media: fic
Pairing/Characters: Vivi/Kohza
Word Count: 491
Prompt: Summer
Spoilers/setting: Set at least a month after the fall of Crocodile, and quite possibly a lot longer. (I’m not sure what season the Strawhats were in Alabasta, given that their drought was unnatural.) Title stolen from old fandom, Elfquest, where the phrase is a greeting among the Sun Elves.

( like the gentle rain from heaven )

Here's a fic I posted a while back on onepiece_300, where it was treated kindly despite going waaaay over the word limit. But afterwards I felt like polishing it up a bit. After getting great beta from tonko_ni (PLUG: whose fic Till You Feel It All Around You, one of the bestest genfics ever, has now gotten recced on TVTropes! \o//PLUG), I rewrote it a bit and then... sat on it for several weeks for some unaccountable reason. To be honest I figure those who'd be interested have probably seen it already, but since I think it's better now I shall go ahead and post it here, anyway. ;p

After I'd posted the first version, it occurred to me that this ficlet felt close to the style of another fic writer who's on my friends' list. I'm not sure if anyone else would agree, let alone that very writer, but I'm noting it here anyway. Nothing wrong with a little influence, I hope!


Title: Repairs and Replacements
Rating: G
Media: fiction
Characters: Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Chopper, Franky, Brook
Prompt: Broken

Spoilers/setting: From volume 3 to somewhere in Thriller Bark
Summary: Some things can be fixed and others can't.

( What happens after something breaks )

Got hit by random idea for ye old fandom. Possibly a bit over the top. ConcirtConcrit muy cool.

Title: Shiver
Word Count: 589
Fandom: Ranma 1/2
Rating: G (or maybe PG for swearing)
Characters/pairing: Ranma/Akane
Prompt: Fear

Summary: There are times when she frightens him, and it’s not when you might think.

Disclaimer: The characters of Ranma 1/2 were created and are owned by Rumiko Takahashi. They are used here without permission for entertainment purposes only. This fic is not intended for profit.

( the ground beneath her feet )

Here’s the longer version of a ficlet I posted to onepieceyaoi100 a few days ago. Reposted here for the sake of completeness – plus, if someone feels like offering concrit, it would be awesome. :D

Title: A Savage Gentleness, previously: Too Kind edit: I'm changing back to the original title/edit
Word Count: 432
Prompt: Restrained Sanji
Rating: G, worksafe
Pairing: Sanji/Usopp or Sanji->Usopp; possibly not romantically
Spoilers/setting: Post-Thriller Bark, pre-Shabondy
Flavour: serious, moderately angsty
Summary: The helplessness of strength

( Sanji just wants to make things better )

I finally managed to write something else for Chopper that was more IC and upbeat (despite the title ;) than my earlier drabble. I have no idea why I seem to need a lot more words to write ‘happy’ than ‘sad’, especially for a scene that’s all there in the manga already. I don’t know why I write so much about Skypiea, either.

I guess this would be the companion piece to “Up”.


Title: Getting Down
Word Count: 457
Spoilers/setting: Manga chapter 302, “Finale” (end of Skypiea arc).
Character: Chopper
Rating: G
Summary: ( One golden moment suspended in time. )

I must say, I'm rather pissed at fanfiction.net right now for their latest formatting change. It's already hard enough to make something look nice over there, with their weirdly strict demands on what formatting can be used in story titles, chapter titles, summaries, and in the text itself. Now they've removed hyphens as paragraph separators as well for some mysterious reason.
I guess it's at times like this I should be grateful that I'm not very prolific, but I still find it exceedingly irksome. >:(