The Beat and the Timing

This story got into my head earlier this week and wouldn’t let go until I got it written down.  My first Gintama fanfic and it’s about one of the antagonists for some reason.  I knew I preferred to write about non-main characters but this did surprise me somewhat.

Title: Silence
Author: Rhyssa Fireheart
Pairings: Implied Oboro/OC
Characters: Oboro, Utsuro (mentioned), Naraku, OC
Fandom: Gintama
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Don’t own it, never will.  Just like to play around with it in my mind.

I.

One of his oldest memories (after being saved by Utsuro-sama) was of feather soft touches and barely there whispers.  When he was first introduced to the other students of the Tenshouin Naruku school, he hadn’t noticed her at first.  She stayed in the background and it was only when her name was said that he first felt a fleeting touch on his back and she appeared before him, bowing a greeting. 

He was surprised to see a girl at the school; weren’t they going to be trained to be assassins?  Why would a girl be there?  Years later, if he bothered to think back, he would realize how naïve he’d been.  Right then though, he did as his teacher told him and observed.  She wasn’t exactly tiny, but then again, they were only kids.  Her black hair was cut short and from what he could tell, she had dark eyes.  Her skin was tanned, so probably taken from a rural village somewhere.

Even then, he noticed how quiet she was.  Despite the seriousness of what they were to be trained for, the other students were noisy and acted like normal children should.  She seemed wrapped in silence standing there, her voice low and barely heard over the other conversations.

He also noticed her studying him in return.

( Read more... )

Well, WAAAAAAAAY back in February, I signed up for a gift exchange at transmute_fluff.  Everyone who signed up was assigned a different person to do a gift fic or artwork for.  I had mine in before the April deadline and my story was posted back near the end of May.  Now, I guess there were some problems with people not getting their assignments turned in, so that meant some people didn't have anything in return yet.  Since it's an anonymous exchange the names won't be revealed until everything's been posted, so that means my story's been posted, but my recipient doesn't know it's from me yet.  Not a huge deal I guess, except that nothing's been posted for me in return.  I was going to wait until the end of the exchange when everything's been posted, but when that'll be I have no clue.  There have been several little one-offs "for the community" but who knows if/when all the stories will be up.

So since I'm annoyed, I'm just going to post the story I wrote and be done with it.  I'm not really caring at this point if my recipient finds out it was from me or not, since I highly doubt they even read my journal.  So here it is.

Title : Photograph
Author : Rhyssa Fireheart
Recipient's name : Seaweed_FMA
Rating : K
Pairing(s) : Hughes/Gracia, Mustang
Disclaimer : Don’t own it, never will.  Just like to play with it in my mind.
Warnings : Extreme lameness? ;-)
Author's notes : None


Enjoy!  I plan to cross post this at Fanfiction.net and on Coeur de Feu, of course.

Here's chapter 2 of "Fanning the Flames."  I have another chapter written for this, but I typically re-read my work several times making small edits as I go along.  Once I think I have nothing more to change, then it's ready to post.  I also have no clue where I come up with story titles from, sometimes I think they suck overall.

(Chapter 1)

As a note, the main character I'm using is an OC, and there is another here as well that I introduced in my story "The First Step."  Crossposted to Fanfiction.net, _fanfics_ , koukakukidoutai and my own site.

Enjoy!

So I'm going to keep on updating and adding my older fics here, just because.  I think I'm going to link to the story on my site instead of on fanfiction.net, just because I went through and cleaned it up on my site a bit.  I think I'm going to post this over on hagaren_manga  and _fanfics_ as well, just to get some more exposure.  I'm trying to be a comment whore, lol!  Not that I think it'll work, but oh well.  So here's the basic story info and a quickie summary before linkage.  Enjoy!

Title: Small Favors
Author: Rhyssa Fireheart
Pairing: None
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist (spoilers for manga chapter 37 I think it was)
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Don’t own it, never will.  Just like to play around with it in my mind.

Teaser: The rays of the setting sun snuck beneath the rain clouds like thieves, stealing away the lingering gloom.  She knelt beside the grave holding a bouquet of daisies.  Her sister had always loved the white and yellow blooms.  She heard him come up behind her but didn’t react when he placed his hand on her shoulder.

(Read more...) story linkage.

And the second FMA fic I wanted to post.  This one is a companion to "Conversations by Starlight."

Title: Conversations in Winter
Author: Rhyssa Fireheart
Pairing: Kimbley/OC
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Don’t own it, never will.  Just like to play around with it in my mind.

Summary: Her voice reminded him of the last time they’d spoken in Ishbal.  There was a sense of finality in the quiet words, and she walked away without looking back, shoulders slumped.  He caught up with her and walked by her side, the sounds of their footsteps echoing ahead of them as they walked the hallways of their world.
As before, originally posted on Fanfiction.net and archived on my own site.  Enjoy!

So, posting "The First Step" worked fine, and that fic is just under 3k words according to what MSWord tells me.  I previously tried posting "Small Favors" and that is just under 6.5k words, so that gives me around 3k of wordage to play with to see what the limit is for posting directly versus having to link the story.  I know I'll have to link "Memories" since that's over 11k words all told, although I could probably post it in chapters as I did over at fanfiction.net.  Still deciding how I want to do that for now.

So I'm figuring some things out and going to see what I can work out here.  Maybe I can have this be an active journal after all.  Still, that implies I'm going to post actively period, and I really need to be more disciplined about that.

So I signed up for the fluff fic/art exchange over at transmute_fluff just for fun.  I have no idea how this is going to work out, but I'm certainly willing to try.  Plus I'll have at least a month to write something and I'm sure I can come up with something in that amount of time.  I put that I want to give a fic since my drawing skills have atrophied so badly over the years (as I put in my application post).  I really should do something about that, but I'm lazy.

Posting this tonight because I'm going to start yet another FMA fic for myself.  If it goes as I've planned, it'll be 34 chapters in total, but I'm sure they'll be shortish chapters.  But that would still probably make it my longest story to date (my FFVII fic "Memories" was 22 pages in MSWord, this should top that), so we'll have to see.  One of the reasons it should be so long is because I plan to base it around the moves in a chess game and the game I picked had 34 moves each for white and black (that means 67 moves in total) and I'm going to do them in pairs (white/black I mean).  Anyways, it makes sense to me and right now that's what matters.  But chess notation is kind of cool looking and those will form the chapter titles.  It'll be posted on fanfiction.net once I'm done and since it'll be in chapters, I'll be able to post it here as well.  And as always, it'll be archived on my portfolio site.

Reminds me though, this means I still have two other FMA fics to work on (one in my "Conversations" series and one related to "Small Favors")  in additon to the story I'm starting tonight, plus an FFVII fic that's been in progress for a while as well.  I need to reread my FFVII fic to see where I was going with it (it's a long one) and rewatch FFVII:AC again to get back into the world.  I've been writing FMA fics for a while now that I've lost touch with my FFVII ones.

Not completely sure how I can post longer entries, such as cross posting the fanfics I've written so far. Can I even do that somehow? I guess I must do research. I only have three fanfics total, with another four in some stage of progress, even if it's only the title and an idea.

Something I'd like to mention about fanfics though. I've found that both FMA and FFVII have sparked my writing interest once again. I used to write a lot more back when I first started playing online games with Asheron's Call. It was a great atmosphere to write in and I lost a lot of work by posting it only to message boards and not backing it up anywhere. My bad and I've learned my lesson long since. Since I've started writing again and have posted my stories to fanfiction.net, I've noticed a bad trend on the site. Mainly that of bad writing.

Yeah, I know it's the internet and all and people don't seem to care anymore, but the sheer amount of just plain bad writing bothers me. I'm not even talking about the ideas. In fact, some of the story ideas are really good and pretty original, but the writing itself is horrible. I mean, I personally think I can write a freeform ramble with absolutely no point at all better than some of these stories are executed. Maybe because I'm so much older than the majority of those posting there; I'm pretty sure I'm old enough to be their mother in a lot of cases, which means that I benefited from a completely different school atmosphere. Not to mention that whole "Catholic school with nuns" thing I had going for me. I can remember being made to diagram sentences when I was a kid. Most nowadays would have no clue what that meant.

I can even understand typos. Everyone has them, they sneak in and sometimes the most careful proofreading can't catch them. I have one I missed in a story where I had an "if" instead of an "is." It happens. I'm talking about the plain bad spelling that permeates these stories, honestly, MSWord, while part of the devil's empire, has this thing called spell and grammar check. While I don't always agree with the grammar check part, it at least alerts me to something that should be looked at. Spellcheck is the same. But it seems as if these writers just want to get something out there as quickly as possible. That's bad in several ways. You should always, ALWAYS, reread what you've written several times before considering it complete. I edit my stories as I go now, and tend to reread what I'd previously written before I start any writing session. You have to make sure your story makes sense.

This last part really makes me nuts. The leaps of logic that take place in some stories just make no sense at all. I don't mind if you're goal is to get two characters together, but please don't have them look into each others eyes in one sentence, then in the next one declaring their undying love and intention to get married. Background and "filler text" help these things out. I tend to write boring stories because they are more descriptive than anything else (IMO), but I don't make leaps of logic either. Or I try not to.

I can't help but think this has something to do with how English and Creative Writing and Literature is being taught in schools today. One of the best friends is a college level English and Literature professor. My mother-in-law taught English for years. And I was taught how to write theme papers, thesis papers, persuasive arguments, etc. when I was in school. I can't imagine not writing the way I do, even if it does come off as stiff (been accused of that more than once on message boards).

The other side to the argument of letting people post no matter what it looks like is to prevent stifling creativity. If they enjoy it, over correction could give them a bad feeling and they'll stop posting/writing/drawing/whatever. I don't agree. If you're making serious mistakes, someone should tell you so that you'll avoid those in the future. Except that I've seen a trend on ff.net where people say "no flames" or don't want anything negative posted. Maybe it would be better if that sort of thing is done privately, but I can't help but think that's just a cop out. People don't want to be told they are doing something bad, or that what they did is crap. They want just good news and happiness and light. Constructive criticism is dead apparently. There are so many stories that I start reading because the summary sounds interesting but I stop within a few moments because the writing is so badly constructed that it's unreadable.

I'm not sure if there is anything that can be done. I'm not a teacher, and I'm not sure I could provide feedback that doesn't get me flamed as being a complete and utter bitch when I do so. But for god's sake, please at least take the time to read your own story before posting it for the world to read. Read it outloud so you can hear the rhythm of the words.

Gah, I just felt a need to rant about this. Don't get me started about some of the pairings I've read about that make no sense at all or are so badly set up it's not worth the pixels they take up on the screen.