brigdh

I'm semi-signed. I just haven't taken the final plunge and committed yet, so I'm not on the master list. Plus, I've only got two potential relationships for the mods to choose from, and I think you're supposed to submit three.

I wish I knew the Gensoukai arc better. I'm suddenly thinking, somebody might be able to do a fun cracked-out crossover with Touda and Jeep. Or perhaps Karikura and Jeep.

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What are you people doing?

Sweating blood over our extremely late

yaoi_challenge stories? Or maybe that's just me. *koff*

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So not just you. So very, very not. In fact, I feel a sudden urge to go back to bed and pull the covers over my face out of sheer dread. But when you sweat blood, it's not an option: it just ruins perfectly good sheets.

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Oh, psh. I didn't even come up with two relationships to choose from, I just had my one. Spren's pretty easy-going, and besides, I think it was more important to have three to choose from when the challenge first opened up and everyone was grabbing for the most wanted pairings. We're kind of just picking up the leftovers, now.

But now I'm curious! Who are your two choices?

...that would actually be really cool. I'd love to see that, now that you've thought of it.

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I was actually thinking of begging for advice about this one. My first quasi-choice, which came with the caveat that I wasn't sure I could make it work, was Hisoka/Muraki/Tsuzuki. The thing is, the full epic version has been a WIP for something over a year and a half now, and heaven alone knows whether any part of it will ever really be done. So I found myself thinking, what if I could do a radically condensed version? Would that be better than nothing? Would doing it destroy the full version, so that I shouldn't risk it even if I could do it? Or, maybe even if I did ever finish the full version, two variants would be cool and postmodern!

I have no idea what the answer is or ought to be. If you do, please tell me. -- That, of course, assumes I could do it at all, which may be incautious of me.

Number two, thrown up so that the mods would have a choice, was (and is) FMA: some combination of Mustang and Kimberly. Mostly because while I haven't explored much in FMA, from what I've seen so far people seem to write a kinder and gentler Mustang than the one I saw in the series, and I think it could be interesting to take him a little darker.

And I'd make that Jeep thing my number 3, because I'd like to read it; but I'm not sure how I'd even approach it.

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I know! I want fic. *pouts*

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Aw, honey. That's too bad. I feel like I've been having trouble lately too, so I'm hoping this challenge will work for me. But I wish you luck too, even if you don't sign up.

I've found that I relate to them a lot differently than any other characters I've written before, too. Weird. I wonder why that is.

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Hee. Well, at least you're signed up for something, so I guess I can't hold it against you.

And though personally, I read the books so long ago that I don't even remember who Neville is, I think I remember that

boniblithe's a fan of them, so yay!

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Oooo. Well, I can't complain there: you're still writing fic, so I'll have something to read. Hopefully, at least- I forget what fandom you're doing, but I doubt it'll be something I've never heard of at all.

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Hmmm. Well, I don't think that writing them for

stagesoflove should in any way impact writing a longer version later. I mean, my god, how many versions of the Hisoka/Tsuzuki relationship have I written? And I've yet to get bored with it or have anyone complain that I'm always telling the same story.

On the other hand, if you mean you're afraid that writing the shorter version will kill your motivation to write the longer version, I don't know. It could; you never know what weird things a brain might come with. However, it could make it easier: writing this version might help you see more clearly how you want the relationship to work and what types of things you can do with it.

I'm interested in your second version too, though, because in the episodes I've watched Mustang has struck me as very dark, and yet the few fics I've read (mostly off my flist), were almost... fluffy.

Yeah, it's not something I want to write myself, either. Yet I'd love to read it.

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I'm telling you, it's weird about Mustang. It's almost a relief to know that you're seeing the same oddness, because that confirms that it isn't just me, misreading the canon so as to get what I want from it.

It's not as bizarre a reading as uberuke!Hisoka, but it's strange enough that I always wonder what show those guys were watching. Surely it's not the one I found, where he enters endangering children and inflicting full-body burns on opponents who could have been disarmed less violently?

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Well, I'm pretty sure you've heard of Yami. *G* And Weiss, though I'm not sure you've experienced that particular freight train yet.

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Luckily, I had a breakthrough on the one that had me most worried, so I've got quite a bit written on it now. The bad news is, it's going to be long. And the other one almost has to be long, by virtue of the relationships involved.

And still

stagesoflove tempts me, because no one's doing Wild Adapter or Tactics or Gaiden. I am my own worst enemy.

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I'd read only a few fics before I ever started watching the series, so I can't say I had any real grasp on how he's generally portrayed. Still, even at his first appearance, I remember thinking, "Wow, he completely manipulated every person involved in this. That is way darker than I was expecting."

Any decision about

stagesoflove?

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Yami? Hmmm, yes, sounds vaguely familiar...

I've seen only four or five episodes of Weiss, but I've listened to people talking about it so often that I could name all of the good guys, the bad guys, describe their appearance and personalities, and, for a few, give a short summary of their backstory.

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Believe me when I say that Weiss is one of those sources to which no amount of discussion would do justice. It makes Yami look downright coherent, and rather cheerful, though it has its own humor (the edge of hysteria kind). Four or five episodes would only give you the barest taste, and my urge to make all of fandom watch it is probably akin to my urge to say, "Look, is that someone on the wing?" when on an airplane with my best friend, who is terrified of flying. Apparently, I want to be a paramecium in my next life.

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Oh, god, Gaiden. *tries desperately to tempt you*

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Oh, I'd be willing to watch it, if only to have a better idea of who the Weiss team are. (Schwarz is easy to keep track of, oddly enough.) But I saw some stills and some plotline summaries a while back, and there wasn't enough of a visceral grab for me to make an effort to get the episodes (unlike YnM, FMA and Saiyuki Reload and Gunlock, in all of which I was willing to invest major time and effort pretty much at first glance).

Who knows? If I ever saw it it might run me over after all. It certainly inspires great stories from my flist, despite the odd way that the art and summaries of the thing itself have failed to call out to me. I certainly don't think pushing it is the equivalent of tormenting people who are afraid of flying.

And hey, YnM is cheerful. The contrast between the good cheer and the actual content is one of the gloriously cracked-out aspects that makes me love it.

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That's not very nice. You want me to finish stories, don't you?

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But- but- you're making me chose between finished stories and Gaiden drabbles? Can't I have both?

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Any decision about stagesoflove?

Not yet, but I'm teetering in the direction of going for it, and perhaps letting the mods choose the flavor of doom. I'll be sad if you all are playing and I'm not, for all that I still rather fear commitment and wonder whether last year's solution wasn't better after all.

I already know exactly how the Hisoka/Muraki/Tsuzuki relationship works. It's horrifying how well I know it. It's the writing, with all the need for plot and transitions and the technical difficulties of the occasional Muraki pov that makes it a permanent WIP. But maybe I could avoid all that if I did a version in tiny little pieces. The temptation, it is very tempting.

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