it's a nice day to start again
This has been going around kuroxfai and, well, I was in the mood. I neglected step one, though, so we have ficlets from various fandoms. I'll admit, I cheated a little and completed sentences after the end of songs. Left paragraphs and thoughts hanging, though. I also skipped songs that're in Japanese and songs I don't know (yes, there're several songs I don't know on my playlist. Comes with having a music geek for a little brother ^_^;; ). And I fixed my grammatical and spelling errors that I noticed when rereading. Okay!? I fail at the meme!
01. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
02. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.
03. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!
04. Do ten of these, then post them
Fandoms covered: Fullmetal Alchemist (x2), Gundam Wing: Episode Zero, Supernatural (x2), xxxHolic, Heroes, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Ranma 1/2, Honeydew Syndrome.
All fics are G and any overtly mentioned pairings are canon.
this is generally what Mina's fics look like before she edits them obsessively for days
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01. School's Out - Alice Cooper
Fullmetal Alchemist
Out for summer, out til fall. We might not come back at all
He's glad to leave. He'd never seen the point in attending school, once he'd decided on his path. But Alphonse wanted to go, because perhaps it was a little shred of normalcy to cling to after thier mother's death. A little bit of time that wasn't the two of them alone in that big, empty house. A little bit of time that wasn't burying themselves in their father's books and trying to find their mother resurrected between the covers.
But now they're going to Dublith. Following a real path, with a real purpose. Moving forward, at last. When classes end for summer, he knows he's never going back. School never held any real draw for him, and he doubts he'd be able to sit still during it with the knowledge his mother is finally alive and well again and waiting for him back home.
He watches the school rush by as the train rolls through the countryside, carrying him and Alphonse to their new home in Dublith, and thinks that he would have liked to set fire to the building, or some other loud, reckless act to let everyone know that they're never going back. Only forward.
----------------
02. Paradise City - Guns N Roses
Gundam Wing: Episode Zero
Oh, won't you please take me home?
You don't mean to do it.
You're used to the streets. You prefer the streets to the adults and their delusions. Their God who's supposed to save people, but all you've ever seen is death. You can't believe in their God, and you tell them as much. There's only Shinigami. Shinigami who took Solo and everyone else. Shinigami who left you alone.
With the adults.
You leave on purpose. You don't like the church and you don't want to go back. Even if they took the tangles out of your hair and fed you and bathed you. You don't want to go back. You're better off alone.
But it's two days after you leave that you realize they've ruined you. Even a day of being spoiled is too much. You've seen the way that life could be. You've seen what you can have. You know where you're going out here, but the world's a much bigger place if you start over there.
She finds you. The nun who washed you on that first day at the church. Sister Helen, you think the old man said her name was. And you'd meant to fight it at least a little. To come along, but to come kicking and screaming with your heels dug into the ground. Instead, the words come out in a rush unbidden, begging her to take you back.
-----------------------
03. Numb - Linkin Park
Supernatural
All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you
You aren't sure why you pick that particular school. You've been around most of the country, and California has no more draw than anywhere else. Stanford just stands out on the list and you decide to apply. It's a snap decision.
Dean will be furious, but he'll forgive you, you're sure. Your dad will also be furious, but you care less about forgiveness from him.
You've always heard about teenage rebellion. Ungeraged sex and drugs and alcohol and violence, they say. How funny that the biggest rebellion of your life will be to apply to college.
You send the application secretly with a shit-eating smirk that you can't wipe off your face for days. Dean just thinks you've finally gotten laid and your dad doesn't seem to notice anything out of place at all.
-----------------
04. Trip Like I Do - Filter and the Crystal Method
xxxHolic
Can't you? Can't you trip like I do?
You don't see why Doumeki has to be so perfect. He's taller than you. Smarter than you. More athletic than you. He doesn't cook, but you're sure that if he decided to try, he would do that better than you, too. He just doesn't mess up the way normal people do. The way you do.
It's frustrating.
It's not until this crazy set-up with Yuuko has become regular fare and you're used to being thrown into insane, life-threatening situations that you begin to notice he's human. That he does things wrong. That his aim is sometimes off. You've seen the panic in his face over and over again when you've come too close to death. You've seen him cursed. You've seen him bleeding. You've seen him helpless.
Yuuko doesn't grant wishes. Yuuko gives the means. Yuuko helps people help themselves. Sometimes, the customer doesn't even know what their wish is. You wonder briefly, in a moment of introspection, if maybe Yuuko gave you the means to grant a wish you didn't know you had. A wish to see Doumeki be messed up and human like you.
-----------------------
05. Terrible Lie - Nine Inch Nails
Heroes
Hey God, why are you doing this to me?
It's one of your more exhausted moments. You sit and you stare into space, listening to Molly's breathing as she sleeps, and you play devil's advocate. Trying to see it from Sylar's point of view.
He's been given the power to figure out anything. To pick it apart into its component pieces and understand it. As a scientist, you find the very idea amazing. Fantastic.
He's also found all these spectacular people. People with powers similar to his, yet completely different. Powers that he can learn to use, if only he can find how they work. It's on the tip of his tongue how to use them, if he can just see a little further. A little closer.
Thinking of it like that, you wonder if maybe having so much knowledge dangled just out of your reach would drive you mad enough to murder as well.
And then, to top it all off, he meets Peter. Peter who can understand anything just by looking at it. Empathizing with it. Peter with a power even greater than Sylar's own. Peter with a power so much more convenient and less messy than what the other man was given.
You think perhaps Sylar was given the short end of the stick. You wonder, tiredly, absently, if Sylar thinks so, too.
-------------------------
06. Dance Like An Idiot - Lemon Demon
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Get off the wall, stand proud and tall. Get out there and dance like an idiot
You're pretending not to know him. Even though you'll be leaving this world as soon as the kid gets back with his princess, you still can't quite bear to be seen with the mage when he's, well, like this. Insane is the best word you have for it. It's his default persona, you think.
You wondered, when he first started moving, if maybe "dancing" on Ceres was a far different act than it was in Japan. But you've since come to the conclusion that no one, anywhere, on any world could partake in this activity of his and expect to come out with a single shred of dignity left. Except for the man in question. Who is insane, and therefore doesn't count.
But then your mind, traitor that it is, turns these thoughts around on you and thinks that perhaps the mage possesses a special kind of bravery that allows him to wiggle in that fashion (and in public, no less!) and not be morbidly embarrassed.
----------------------
07. Lose Yourself - Eminem
Fullmetal Alchemist (spoilers to manga chapter 38, references made up to chapter 63, but I wouldn't consider them spoilers)
If you had one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?
He knows what's coming. He knows how dangerous the path he's on is. He knows he'll probably die, 520 cenz still outstanding. He's given that money up as lost to that gangster of a fifteen year-old, anyway.
He's okay with that. Okay with not coming out of this and never seeing the fruits of his labour. Because he isn't doing it for himself.
He's doing it for his subordinates. For Riza, who's forced herself into a role she doesn't suit to follow something she believes in. Who's walking side-by-sde with the enemy. For Havoc, who any other officer would have given up on, even though he deserves so much more than retirement. For Fury and Breda and Farman, with fine-tuned skills that would be overlooked without a superior officer who knows them - who cares to know them - and uses those skills to their fullest. For the lower ranks who are sent to the front lines without mercy. Without care. For Fullmetal, who's fifteen and being used as one of the military's dogs. Who will be misused if someone isn't there to watch out for him. For Maes who was too good and too loyal and who died trying to help a friend. Whose death was manipulated to serve the ends of those who sit at the top.
----------------------
08. Down With the Sickness - Disturbed
Supernatural (references up to S02-14)
it seems that all that was good has died and is decaying in me
Dean isn't going to stop him. He knows this. Dean doesn't have it in him to kill the last of his family, and no promise or begging is going to change that. His brother just can't do it.
And the idea of turning into something he isn't terrifies him. He dreams about it. About killing people with his bare hands, torturing them - Meg gave him plenty of material to feed those thoughts.
He's dreamed about what he might do to Dean. About killing Dean. Hurting Dean. Torturing Dean. And in these dreams, Dean never fights back. Because he's Dean, and Dean won't hurt him even if he's completely lost himself and become whatever the Yellow-Eyed Demon wants him to be. With all the uncertainty in his life right now, it's the only thing of which he's sure.
This unshakable faith in his brother should be comforting, but it really isn't.
--------------------
09. Wanderlust - Claire Voyant
Ranma 1/2
And I tell you, don't be afraid to say you're wandering
Being the way he is, Ryouga often relies on the kindness of strangers. Strangers who take him in, who shelter him, who feed him. He can survive on his own, but hospitality is always welcomed and repaid in any way he can manage.
Some people have menial tasks they need done. Lifting and carrying, the types of things one of Ryouga's strength and build can be used for. Some people just want the company. Someone to talk to. To shake up the routine of the day-to-day.
This man falls into the latter category, Ryouga thinks, sitting at the table with a bowl of soup. But the shelter from the rain is welcome, and so Ryouga tells the man about his travels. About his love and his rival. The man offers his own anecdotes, of inheriting the family business and household. Of never leaving his hometown and marrying young. Ryouga envies him and says so.
The man laughs and says that Ryouga speaks as one who's never experienced the tedium of the simple life. He says that he envies Ryouga's travels and adventures and his passionate duels for the heart of the one he loves.
Ryouga doesn't understand how anyone could envy his lot in life, but he doesn't argue.
---------------------------
10. Wishing I Was There - Natalie Imbruglia
Honeydew Syndrome
I wish it made sense, like a joke that no one gets
You're not supposed to think like this. It's not supposed to matter if the stupid idiot is flirting with some girls. It's what he does. Because he's a jock. And jocks do that. They sleep with cheerleaders and don't even look sideways at emo!kid brainiacs who prefer books to football games.
It's the way things are supposed to be.
As the emo!kid brainiac, you're not supposed to get jealous. You're not supposed to do stupid things to piss him off and make him pay attention to you like some dumb chick in a romance novel. It's just not how these things go.
Even after you're together. After you've fumbled your way into each other's arms, against all odds, you can't quite believe that this is really the way things are supposed to be moving. You keep imagining him finding someone else. Leaving you behind and laughing you off like a bad joke. You can't help but expect it to happen.
But it doesn't. And Josh continually does this whole defying expectations thing where he always seems to gravitate back to you. It blows your mind.
01. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
02. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.
03. Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!
04. Do ten of these, then post them
Fandoms covered: Fullmetal Alchemist (x2), Gundam Wing: Episode Zero, Supernatural (x2), xxxHolic, Heroes, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Ranma 1/2, Honeydew Syndrome.
All fics are G and any overtly mentioned pairings are canon.
this is generally what Mina's fics look like before she edits them obsessively for days
------------------
01. School's Out - Alice Cooper
Fullmetal Alchemist
Out for summer, out til fall. We might not come back at all
He's glad to leave. He'd never seen the point in attending school, once he'd decided on his path. But Alphonse wanted to go, because perhaps it was a little shred of normalcy to cling to after thier mother's death. A little bit of time that wasn't the two of them alone in that big, empty house. A little bit of time that wasn't burying themselves in their father's books and trying to find their mother resurrected between the covers.
But now they're going to Dublith. Following a real path, with a real purpose. Moving forward, at last. When classes end for summer, he knows he's never going back. School never held any real draw for him, and he doubts he'd be able to sit still during it with the knowledge his mother is finally alive and well again and waiting for him back home.
He watches the school rush by as the train rolls through the countryside, carrying him and Alphonse to their new home in Dublith, and thinks that he would have liked to set fire to the building, or some other loud, reckless act to let everyone know that they're never going back. Only forward.
----------------
02. Paradise City - Guns N Roses
Gundam Wing: Episode Zero
Oh, won't you please take me home?
You don't mean to do it.
You're used to the streets. You prefer the streets to the adults and their delusions. Their God who's supposed to save people, but all you've ever seen is death. You can't believe in their God, and you tell them as much. There's only Shinigami. Shinigami who took Solo and everyone else. Shinigami who left you alone.
With the adults.
You leave on purpose. You don't like the church and you don't want to go back. Even if they took the tangles out of your hair and fed you and bathed you. You don't want to go back. You're better off alone.
But it's two days after you leave that you realize they've ruined you. Even a day of being spoiled is too much. You've seen the way that life could be. You've seen what you can have. You know where you're going out here, but the world's a much bigger place if you start over there.
She finds you. The nun who washed you on that first day at the church. Sister Helen, you think the old man said her name was. And you'd meant to fight it at least a little. To come along, but to come kicking and screaming with your heels dug into the ground. Instead, the words come out in a rush unbidden, begging her to take you back.
-----------------------
03. Numb - Linkin Park
Supernatural
All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you
You aren't sure why you pick that particular school. You've been around most of the country, and California has no more draw than anywhere else. Stanford just stands out on the list and you decide to apply. It's a snap decision.
Dean will be furious, but he'll forgive you, you're sure. Your dad will also be furious, but you care less about forgiveness from him.
You've always heard about teenage rebellion. Ungeraged sex and drugs and alcohol and violence, they say. How funny that the biggest rebellion of your life will be to apply to college.
You send the application secretly with a shit-eating smirk that you can't wipe off your face for days. Dean just thinks you've finally gotten laid and your dad doesn't seem to notice anything out of place at all.
-----------------
04. Trip Like I Do - Filter and the Crystal Method
xxxHolic
Can't you? Can't you trip like I do?
You don't see why Doumeki has to be so perfect. He's taller than you. Smarter than you. More athletic than you. He doesn't cook, but you're sure that if he decided to try, he would do that better than you, too. He just doesn't mess up the way normal people do. The way you do.
It's frustrating.
It's not until this crazy set-up with Yuuko has become regular fare and you're used to being thrown into insane, life-threatening situations that you begin to notice he's human. That he does things wrong. That his aim is sometimes off. You've seen the panic in his face over and over again when you've come too close to death. You've seen him cursed. You've seen him bleeding. You've seen him helpless.
Yuuko doesn't grant wishes. Yuuko gives the means. Yuuko helps people help themselves. Sometimes, the customer doesn't even know what their wish is. You wonder briefly, in a moment of introspection, if maybe Yuuko gave you the means to grant a wish you didn't know you had. A wish to see Doumeki be messed up and human like you.
-----------------------
05. Terrible Lie - Nine Inch Nails
Heroes
Hey God, why are you doing this to me?
It's one of your more exhausted moments. You sit and you stare into space, listening to Molly's breathing as she sleeps, and you play devil's advocate. Trying to see it from Sylar's point of view.
He's been given the power to figure out anything. To pick it apart into its component pieces and understand it. As a scientist, you find the very idea amazing. Fantastic.
He's also found all these spectacular people. People with powers similar to his, yet completely different. Powers that he can learn to use, if only he can find how they work. It's on the tip of his tongue how to use them, if he can just see a little further. A little closer.
Thinking of it like that, you wonder if maybe having so much knowledge dangled just out of your reach would drive you mad enough to murder as well.
And then, to top it all off, he meets Peter. Peter who can understand anything just by looking at it. Empathizing with it. Peter with a power even greater than Sylar's own. Peter with a power so much more convenient and less messy than what the other man was given.
You think perhaps Sylar was given the short end of the stick. You wonder, tiredly, absently, if Sylar thinks so, too.
-------------------------
06. Dance Like An Idiot - Lemon Demon
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Get off the wall, stand proud and tall. Get out there and dance like an idiot
You're pretending not to know him. Even though you'll be leaving this world as soon as the kid gets back with his princess, you still can't quite bear to be seen with the mage when he's, well, like this. Insane is the best word you have for it. It's his default persona, you think.
You wondered, when he first started moving, if maybe "dancing" on Ceres was a far different act than it was in Japan. But you've since come to the conclusion that no one, anywhere, on any world could partake in this activity of his and expect to come out with a single shred of dignity left. Except for the man in question. Who is insane, and therefore doesn't count.
But then your mind, traitor that it is, turns these thoughts around on you and thinks that perhaps the mage possesses a special kind of bravery that allows him to wiggle in that fashion (and in public, no less!) and not be morbidly embarrassed.
----------------------
07. Lose Yourself - Eminem
Fullmetal Alchemist (spoilers to manga chapter 38, references made up to chapter 63, but I wouldn't consider them spoilers)
If you had one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?
He knows what's coming. He knows how dangerous the path he's on is. He knows he'll probably die, 520 cenz still outstanding. He's given that money up as lost to that gangster of a fifteen year-old, anyway.
He's okay with that. Okay with not coming out of this and never seeing the fruits of his labour. Because he isn't doing it for himself.
He's doing it for his subordinates. For Riza, who's forced herself into a role she doesn't suit to follow something she believes in. Who's walking side-by-sde with the enemy. For Havoc, who any other officer would have given up on, even though he deserves so much more than retirement. For Fury and Breda and Farman, with fine-tuned skills that would be overlooked without a superior officer who knows them - who cares to know them - and uses those skills to their fullest. For the lower ranks who are sent to the front lines without mercy. Without care. For Fullmetal, who's fifteen and being used as one of the military's dogs. Who will be misused if someone isn't there to watch out for him. For Maes who was too good and too loyal and who died trying to help a friend. Whose death was manipulated to serve the ends of those who sit at the top.
----------------------
08. Down With the Sickness - Disturbed
Supernatural (references up to S02-14)
it seems that all that was good has died and is decaying in me
Dean isn't going to stop him. He knows this. Dean doesn't have it in him to kill the last of his family, and no promise or begging is going to change that. His brother just can't do it.
And the idea of turning into something he isn't terrifies him. He dreams about it. About killing people with his bare hands, torturing them - Meg gave him plenty of material to feed those thoughts.
He's dreamed about what he might do to Dean. About killing Dean. Hurting Dean. Torturing Dean. And in these dreams, Dean never fights back. Because he's Dean, and Dean won't hurt him even if he's completely lost himself and become whatever the Yellow-Eyed Demon wants him to be. With all the uncertainty in his life right now, it's the only thing of which he's sure.
This unshakable faith in his brother should be comforting, but it really isn't.
--------------------
09. Wanderlust - Claire Voyant
Ranma 1/2
And I tell you, don't be afraid to say you're wandering
Being the way he is, Ryouga often relies on the kindness of strangers. Strangers who take him in, who shelter him, who feed him. He can survive on his own, but hospitality is always welcomed and repaid in any way he can manage.
Some people have menial tasks they need done. Lifting and carrying, the types of things one of Ryouga's strength and build can be used for. Some people just want the company. Someone to talk to. To shake up the routine of the day-to-day.
This man falls into the latter category, Ryouga thinks, sitting at the table with a bowl of soup. But the shelter from the rain is welcome, and so Ryouga tells the man about his travels. About his love and his rival. The man offers his own anecdotes, of inheriting the family business and household. Of never leaving his hometown and marrying young. Ryouga envies him and says so.
The man laughs and says that Ryouga speaks as one who's never experienced the tedium of the simple life. He says that he envies Ryouga's travels and adventures and his passionate duels for the heart of the one he loves.
Ryouga doesn't understand how anyone could envy his lot in life, but he doesn't argue.
---------------------------
10. Wishing I Was There - Natalie Imbruglia
Honeydew Syndrome
I wish it made sense, like a joke that no one gets
You're not supposed to think like this. It's not supposed to matter if the stupid idiot is flirting with some girls. It's what he does. Because he's a jock. And jocks do that. They sleep with cheerleaders and don't even look sideways at emo!kid brainiacs who prefer books to football games.
It's the way things are supposed to be.
As the emo!kid brainiac, you're not supposed to get jealous. You're not supposed to do stupid things to piss him off and make him pay attention to you like some dumb chick in a romance novel. It's just not how these things go.
Even after you're together. After you've fumbled your way into each other's arms, against all odds, you can't quite believe that this is really the way things are supposed to be moving. You keep imagining him finding someone else. Leaving you behind and laughing you off like a bad joke. You can't help but expect it to happen.
But it doesn't. And Josh continually does this whole defying expectations thing where he always seems to gravitate back to you. It blows your mind.