Writing meme. Sort of. It counts, dammit.

[balsamandash]

Okay, writing is basically impossible, so here's a thing:

Under the cut are 15 rainbowfic stories I have in mind but am stalled on/cannot start! Pick one (or two, or five, whatever) you like the sound of, and I will either:
1. Write the next three sentences and post them for you. [Or the first three if I didn't start it yet.]
2. Write the sentence or image that keeps floating around my head for it and post it for you. [Because that's generally how these things work.]
or 3. Tell you three random things about it. [They may or not totally make sense out of context, and may be meta on why I want to write the fic/setting up the timeline or world/something other than a straight what happens.]

Feel free to pick something someone else did; I'll either do a different number or just share more. And if you need verse notes, those are here.

1. A Little Bit Of Progress: if it hadn't been for the accident, she'd had been a real superhero, not just a guinea pig. (Sith [Since]/All I long for is to roam -- must this be my only home?)

2. Angelic Tribes: Raphael and Uriel, after the split. (The past is a road where the bus doesn't run, and there's no station called "Yesterday."/Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day.)

3. Despite the Abundance: Nate remembers that mortality is a thing that happens. Funny, that never bothered him before. (A moment and my simple, careless plans were all unmade./Beware of the person who has nothing to lose.)

4. Little Bit of Progress: Something introductory for the other set of siblings. (Some little things get broken, and a little means a lot.)

5. Mythverse: Show me the cult/church of Dionysus. Yes, I have to ask. (Anon/"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.")

6. No Child Is Spared: Discussions with Cliff and Anya, mostly about the twins. (Frenemy/Meet regularly with someone who holds vastly different views than you.)

7. No Child Is Spared: Sedoretu AU. (The border between friendship and love/Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.)

8. No Child Is Spared: Three times Dave stubborned himself into the hospital/three times Teddy ended up doing the sickbed vigil no matter how hard Dave tried to keep him from knowing. (I was up all night with a sick friend./You can't unmake your own mistakes.)

9. Sentient Magic: It wasn't supposed to work that way. And yet, now that it did for her, she... (Obscurity/Don't be chosen; make the choice to choose.)

10. This City's Got Grace: Bobby and his city while the other two are gone. (I'm all alone, and I think someone left me./Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.)

11. With Only Strangers Watching: She joined Sundrop with real aspirations of helping people. (Dayspring/By the time you see the patterns, it's a hundred times too late.)

12. We Do Not Sleep: The not!protege, her backstory, and her sudden devotion. (Remember the everyone you meet wears an invisible sign. It reads, "Notice me. Make me feel important."/Do you follow it because it's true, or just because you must?)

13. One of the unnamed fae verses: Long story short, he's not a good dad, but dammit he tries. (“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.”)

14. Unnamed magical creatures verse: Powers =/= morality, or, look, he doesn't WANT to be able to puppet people, it just kind of happened, someone take it away please. (There’s no way to run or hide when the thing you fear’s inside./"A person's a person, no matter how small.")

15. No Child Is Spared/And The Devil Makes Three: The one where Meg is actually Teddy's guardian angel. (Trust/I think you'll find the line is fine between the saint and sinner.)

Comments

[rootsofthestories]

I'm picking 10 and 12. I am making myself only pick two because I love you and I would honestly just have you do all o them if I had my way.

Three things about 10; you might get sentences later.

[balsamandash]

1. If I really had the energy and ability to write the story I wanted here, it could very easily end up being in the area of 10k, it would be a love letter to Brooklyn written by someone who's falling out of love (him, but also me, in a way), as well as a meditation on the subject of being someone who never was able to learn to charge after what they want and need, and on the good and bad parts of being the lighthouse to guide people home again; it would also basiclly be this quote, in full-length story form: “It's hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there's something to be said for the hero who charges off to battle, but when you get right down to it there's a whole story in who's left behind.”
You could also sum it up by saying this is the story of how Bobby loses his faith in everything; in himself first, and then his people, and then his city. It's somebody who doesn't know how to be really alone suddenly having to learn. Like. Of all three here he's very clearly got the easiest story in this chunk of time, but it's not a happy story. It's more tonal in my head than it is words at the moment, it's bittersweet and lost and quiet and I don't know if I could ever make the words happen the way I want them to, but I'd like to.

2. Another reason I'm holding off on the writing is I'm pretty sure the various New York angels, or at least the borough angels, are all going to need to show up eventually, because fuck, this is not a man who ever really wants to be alone and they're what family he's got left; I'm still trying to remember if we actually pinned those down for canon or not. XD For that matter, I probably need to nail down the timeline for how long they were gone before I can write it, so.

3. Mini mental soundtrack so far: Scarborough Faire (also probably A Prayer to the Sea and Drown This Broken Heart; none of these are perfect fits but tonally pretty fitting, and this goes for a lot of these); This is My Town; How Far We've Come [Boyce Avenue]; Losing My Religon [Boyce Avenue, but also original]; Maybe Sprout Wings; Get Lonely

12. Also three things, for now.

[balsamandash]

1. In this universe, ghosts generally have a purpose for being ghosts - unfinished business, the fear of what comes next, someone to look out for. And if you're around long enough, that purpose hardens and becomes what you're about; those are usually the ones who can, eventually, appear to the living. It depends on willpower and strength and desire but that's how it generally goes. So, you stick around because you can't bear to not see how your sibling/child/best friend ends up, you might end up becoming their guardian angel, suddenly gaining form when you see them in danger to intervene. You stick around because you need to protect your home, you might haunt it; because you needed to get home, you might end up one of those stories, the girl they pick up on the highway.

2. So this is the thing about she-that-needs-a-name: she was always afraid, she's been afraid, she's still afraid. I'm not sure if she's from the same killer or not; if she is, she's one of his first victims, before they even came to our detective's attention, she's been dead for a while. She's also been abused and hurt non-stop; her family was awful, she catapulted into an awful relationship after that, an awful friendship after that, and she was only barely in her 20s when she died. There's a couple of deaths that treat her nice, but deaths never hang around with anyone for long and they're a bit terrifying, honestly.
So along comes the main character and the thing about ghosts that stay because they're afraid is, if they don't get locked into something, they tend to try on and discard a lot of things. The fear can only propel them for so long; if they never find something else to stay for, they sort of.... fade away, eventually. And this quest for justice is interesting, and then more than that, this is pretty much the first person of importance in her life to treat her kindly.
So she sort of becomes her guardian angel in a way, and that's unheard of, a ghost staying for another ghost.

3. The quest for justice, however, is also very interesting. Especially in the question of "can they manipulate the world so he gets caught, or are they just gonna try and haunt him to death?"
She may have some rage issues. Some. And PTSD issues. A lot. Look, she's not a happy camper to start with here, but things will get better. Sloooooooooooowly.

Re: 12. Also three things, for now.

[rootsofthestories]

I love both of these things so much. Boby and his story kind of breaks my heart a little and the ghostgirls are excellent and my glee for them makes me a horrible person but I don't even care.

[k_a_webb]

2 and 9 sound really interesting. :)

[mortalcity]

1?

[silveradept]

3, 4, 9, and 12 have interesting premises.