Fandoms 13 and 14
[Title] Static
[Fandom] Torchwood/Doctor Who
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] In the Year That Never Was, Toshiko hears the news of Japan's burning.
All at once, there is nothing.
Toshiko sits in someone else's basement next to a scavenged laptop and stares at the unpunctuated text sitting on a half-dead domain name. Even the radio has stopped now. There is only static, but she keeps thinking she's hearing voices about to rise out of it.
went up in flames an hr ago
no survivors
After a few moments (seconds? Minutes?) she finds herself swallowing, shifting position a little, as if she's testing she's still alive. She thinks, I should do something. I should feel something.
She was never very good at feeling the right things. Crushes came along at the worst times. Maths was amazing. Sharing a flat at university was a nightmare. She always felt singular, the outlying point in a sea of data. Sometimes she wondered if it was a race thing. That if she went back to Japan, she'd suddenly fit. She had been pretty sure it wouldn't work like that. But she'd had the option. She'd had another culture that she could pretend she was considering returning to if everything went to hell here (and in some of the more empty nights she had thought it might have got close to that).
(She never had any idea what hell really was.)
Isn't it horrifically selfish to process the deaths of millions entirely around what it means for your own self-actualisation? Shouldn't you be sobbing at the realisation your entire family is gone, if not for all the other lives? Why is it that now, when you're suddenly in the privileged position of being able to put a face to all the death, can you only think of petty life? Who cares whether you have the appropriate feelings? Why do you think it matters?
There's still nothing but static. She's not sure whether or not she wants anything else.
[Title] Wisdom of the Ages
[Fandom] Ghost in the Shell
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Batou never intended to start a library.
Some of the books were there when Batou took possession of the safe house, and he wasn't going to waste precious time chucking them out. Specially not as the last thing he wanted was to tip anyone off the place had new ownership.
So they stayed and he had a good laugh in his head about how he'd become the type of guy whose safe house had to have a library. Being able to call up any book you liked on your visual/audio feed not good enough for you any more? (Only it never had been, really, for him. If you had the full-immersion on, he didn't like the way someone could sneak up on you, and if you had it running in the background then he lost track of the story or couldn't focus on whatever else he was doing. Paper you could pick up and put down when you wanted to.)
He never planned to add to that library, either, just that he was in one of the junk markets on a day off and he spotted a copy of Catcher in the Rye, cover blotched with rain spots, spine cracked, and he'd always meant to read that sometime. And then he kept his eyes open, because it was like a game trying to find treasure among the seas of rubbish.
And come on. His apartment had no room for books. And he wasn't gonna store them at work, not when he'd given Togusa so much stick about obsessive love of antiquated technology. And the safe house had all the shelving already there, why not use it?
He was never sure if he wanted the Major to know about it. She'd probably only roll her eyes and laugh. Or be impatient. Never one for inefficiency, was she? And yet... she was the one who went diving, and if that wasn't inefficient and stupid, then god knew what was. Certainly book-collecting didn't come close.
As it turned out, when she did see it, they both had other things on their minds, and it probably wasn't her seeing it anyway. He went back after, stared at the spines, wondered if any of 'em had something to say about all the shit that had just gone down. He thought not. But then he thought that was unfair. Wasn't the point that actually, today's tech had no more to say about life than anything else had?
[Fandom] Torchwood/Doctor Who
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] In the Year That Never Was, Toshiko hears the news of Japan's burning.
All at once, there is nothing.
Toshiko sits in someone else's basement next to a scavenged laptop and stares at the unpunctuated text sitting on a half-dead domain name. Even the radio has stopped now. There is only static, but she keeps thinking she's hearing voices about to rise out of it.
went up in flames an hr ago
no survivors
After a few moments (seconds? Minutes?) she finds herself swallowing, shifting position a little, as if she's testing she's still alive. She thinks, I should do something. I should feel something.
She was never very good at feeling the right things. Crushes came along at the worst times. Maths was amazing. Sharing a flat at university was a nightmare. She always felt singular, the outlying point in a sea of data. Sometimes she wondered if it was a race thing. That if she went back to Japan, she'd suddenly fit. She had been pretty sure it wouldn't work like that. But she'd had the option. She'd had another culture that she could pretend she was considering returning to if everything went to hell here (and in some of the more empty nights she had thought it might have got close to that).
(She never had any idea what hell really was.)
Isn't it horrifically selfish to process the deaths of millions entirely around what it means for your own self-actualisation? Shouldn't you be sobbing at the realisation your entire family is gone, if not for all the other lives? Why is it that now, when you're suddenly in the privileged position of being able to put a face to all the death, can you only think of petty life? Who cares whether you have the appropriate feelings? Why do you think it matters?
There's still nothing but static. She's not sure whether or not she wants anything else.
[Title] Wisdom of the Ages
[Fandom] Ghost in the Shell
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Batou never intended to start a library.
Some of the books were there when Batou took possession of the safe house, and he wasn't going to waste precious time chucking them out. Specially not as the last thing he wanted was to tip anyone off the place had new ownership.
So they stayed and he had a good laugh in his head about how he'd become the type of guy whose safe house had to have a library. Being able to call up any book you liked on your visual/audio feed not good enough for you any more? (Only it never had been, really, for him. If you had the full-immersion on, he didn't like the way someone could sneak up on you, and if you had it running in the background then he lost track of the story or couldn't focus on whatever else he was doing. Paper you could pick up and put down when you wanted to.)
He never planned to add to that library, either, just that he was in one of the junk markets on a day off and he spotted a copy of Catcher in the Rye, cover blotched with rain spots, spine cracked, and he'd always meant to read that sometime. And then he kept his eyes open, because it was like a game trying to find treasure among the seas of rubbish.
And come on. His apartment had no room for books. And he wasn't gonna store them at work, not when he'd given Togusa so much stick about obsessive love of antiquated technology. And the safe house had all the shelving already there, why not use it?
He was never sure if he wanted the Major to know about it. She'd probably only roll her eyes and laugh. Or be impatient. Never one for inefficiency, was she? And yet... she was the one who went diving, and if that wasn't inefficient and stupid, then god knew what was. Certainly book-collecting didn't come close.
As it turned out, when she did see it, they both had other things on their minds, and it probably wasn't her seeing it anyway. He went back after, stared at the spines, wondered if any of 'em had something to say about all the shit that had just gone down. He thought not. But then he thought that was unfair. Wasn't the point that actually, today's tech had no more to say about life than anything else had?