>> forever is a mighty long time
May. 31st, 2017 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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noyabeansposted the reincarnation au! got kinda excited so I posted it earlier than expected, but that's in part because I've missed posting stuff up in general lol... I still spotted a few parts that could have been better phrased, but couldn't really think of how to phrase it any better anyway... so whatever. this makes 52 fics in total, 8 away from this year's goal.
more under the cut, I guess...
yup, so I ended up using The Cab's Diamonds Are Forever as a muse, although more in name than in actual concept. there are 14 different scenes in this fic, including the three canon ones. originally I was planning to use the first line of each scene to link to a bigger theme, but I evidently failed, lmao. would have been nice though, because the word REINCARNATION has 13 letters.
what I was going for:
I wanted to keep to canon universe, which means running with what canon content we already have from chapter 200. I only really ever had two big ideas in my head - first one would be that Kuroyaku meeting in Nekoma would be the 'first time' they meet twice in a life; the second would be that their meeting in Nekoma would be part of the reincarnation/red string of fate concept.
I also wanted to write a variety of AUs without having to put too much effort into researching different things - which flowed well with the style, which is focused more on showing than actual telling. plus each scene is really short - average of 8-10 paragraphs per scene; the longest one is the beach one, which doesn't even really count since most of that was dialogue. so I didn't really have to worry about universe-building and research too lololol.
another problem I ran into was the fact that I was dead set on using the DGM AU. DGM AU = supernatural elements = ?! which is how I stumbled upon the idea of parallel universes. it's also the reason why there's a scene (fire) where Yaku is hinted as having magical abilities... xD so that it wouldn't be so blatant that I was just looking for an excuse to write a DGM AU lmaooo.
scene breakdowns:
actually, the first scene I wrote (following the introduction) was the medicine boys AU. I don't really know where that one came from; it was most probably from my eternal thirst for urban warfare AU - speaking of which, I fricking got baited for post-apocalyptic AU for SASO BR1 and I'm super distressed now - but anyway. I wanted urban warfare AU but didn't want to write any battles (plus I've written a few now so I didn't want to end up repeating themes, even though my readers don't overlap between ships... I think), so I took it for a spin and went with the 'Oliver Twist' kind of mood? I don't know. I wrote it while in bed at 2am.
the next one was the coffee shop AU. I wrote it while feeling uninspired... at the cafe the other day, lol. and for lack of creativity, I decided to use whatever drinks I saw on the menu. my brother got the iced mocha (he got a double shot of espresso) and I got toffee nut ice blended, but I originally wanted a cinnamon cappucino. so yes, I let Kuroo drag me. stop being rude, Kuroo, the toffee nut was good. also because I really wanted to write a scene with Yakunoya vs Kuroyaku, so how could I let that chance slip, right?
the gaming AU was a scene I had in mind from the time I started planning, but I'm not sure why I wanted to write it that much. I wrote it based off of a lot of my own real-life experiences with my gaming friends - at some point, everyone leaves - and I wanted to use that concept... of Kuroyaku being on the same team but never having met before.
journalist AU was really self-indulgent, tbh. I somehow thought of that (probably because I just interviewed that chef last last week? lol) and thought it would be good to use that scene to parallel the canon question of "Have we met?" but with a 100% plausible answer - "Broadcast journalist". funny thing's that journalist AU was supposed to be arranged before the meeting between them in Nekoma (the scene where they meet in Nekoma actually has a flashback to the journalist AU), but somehow when I was arranging the scenes I realised that it flowed better if the journalist AU went after. not sure what that did for parallelism, though. I know Mel totally didn't get it OTL
war AU was a definite - it was one of the AUs that, like the gaming AU, I knew I would write. what are you saying I wanted to make them kill each other? I don't know what you're talking about. it was really difficult to write a fight without using my usual descriptors and stuff, so a lot was actually left up to the reader's imagination. I think I did good on that AU though, despite that. it was also very painful to write. I hope I never have to write my OTP killing each other again.
illness AU was... hmm. this one was probably born of all my failed sickfic!AUs that I tried to write in the past, though none of them were ever specifically for Kuroyaku. heck, Kuroyaku is the only ship I'd never planned a sickfic for. it was, also, a difficult AU, but I wrote it right after the war AU so it was just... continuous suffering tbh.
and in line with the suffering, I figured, what the heck, just get all the deaths out of the way. which is how I started on DGM AU. the DGM AU was difficult to write not just because of the death, but because of the AU itself. I'm very well-acquainted with DGM (duh) but I've always drawn a distinct line between DGM and Haikyuu in my mind. DGM is straight up pain, okay. character death is a canonical thing, the good guys are apparently bad and the bad guys are apparently not-bad?, I've killed my favourites, tortured them, etc etc. while Haikyuu is, obviously, not. breaking down the distinction between two fandoms also made me realise exactly how painful DGM as a series is lmaooooo and also how soft Haikyuu has made me. another challenge was summarising DGM in enough words that a non-DGM fan could get the gist, not so much that a DGM fan would be turned off, while also leaving out unnecessary information that would bog down the story. all things considered, I'm ridiculously proud of the DGM AU and how it turned out! I think it's my favourite one. I'm not being biased here.
fire AU and beach AU were vague ideas - okay, no. fire AU had a specific prompt: I wanted a scene where Kuroo fled the village to safety, only to find that Yaku wasn't there; that Yaku wasn't safe. I was actually planning to kill Yaku in that AU too, but then... "Linn, let the poor guy live." okay, me. beach AU was driven with one dialogue line in mind, and only that one dialogue line: "if I had to choose, I'd live my life over again with you.*
it didn't come out exactly like that, but I already expected it not to. so yeah, that was what beach AU was designed specifically for.
canon universe, ironically, became the most difficult to write. it was due to a bunch of factors, honestly, but the first and foremost one would definitely be because I'd written the little bits and pieces of this world, where pretty much every single headcanon of mine has been written into an actual story. it's very hard to get rid of that, even though it's been a good 2 months since I wrote that fic. I left the canon scenes (excluding intro) for last, and pretty much vagued my ass off tbh... there was no other way for me to write it without ending up with an unnecessarily long description of all my headcanons that have already been written before.
last of all, my style!
okay, actually I'm a super uncreative and uninspired person. "different style" essentially means lowercasing all my words, parallelisms, and messing around with formatting. :D
but besides that, I consciously forced myself to not describe every twitch of eyebrows or sound of explosion or unnecessary exposition of backstory and background information. I wanted to make my readers read their own interpretation instead of guiding them every step of the way, which is what my usual narrative style does - it draws a really specific visual image in the reader's mind, and I wanted to avoid that this time around. it was made easier, I think, by the fact that a lot of this fic was focused on the... idea of reincarnation, of course. you can't really describe something as intangible as that, I think.
I also have to admit that my whole monologue of fate and destiny and time and place was inspired byritzfics' comment on eggshells - loosely speaking, life is a combination of chance and choice. I didn't get to explore that, but I wouldn't have known how to, anyway. not unless Kuroo were a character like Lavi - for whom I'd actually written a fic exploring specifically this. but that was an opportunity I only got because of how Lavi's character is set up. I wouldn't be able to do that for Kuroo or Yaku, but it did bring choice:trust to mind as I wrote the ending sequences.
I sent this fic to Mel before I published it, actually, and they said it's one of my best fics so far. honestly, I don't really think the same - I feel like a lot of things are still lacking, and I know that this style is not one I can easily write in for prolonged periods of time. and I don't know... I feel like it doesn't really have much soul in it? or maybe because I probably wrote my whole soul into it, so I don't feel like I have a soul anymore. something like that.
I forgot to mention this earlier, but I included Sakishima on a whim. I had a picture of the whole Nohebi on my Google Doc tbh, just to remind myself that I wanted to write a scene where I can draw reference to how similar Sakishima looks like to Yaku. I don't know why I wanted to do that, but it was interesting.
all things considered, I created the doc on May 23, and finished it on May 30. since I was in such a bad writing rut last week (and for the whole month), I think this fic was a really good break all in all, and I'm pretty proud of it even though I'm also not 100% for it as I am for Ages.
edit [10.04pm]: included explanation of Sakishima.
more under the cut, I guess...
yup, so I ended up using The Cab's Diamonds Are Forever as a muse, although more in name than in actual concept. there are 14 different scenes in this fic, including the three canon ones. originally I was planning to use the first line of each scene to link to a bigger theme, but I evidently failed, lmao. would have been nice though, because the word REINCARNATION has 13 letters.
what I was going for:
I wanted to keep to canon universe, which means running with what canon content we already have from chapter 200. I only really ever had two big ideas in my head - first one would be that Kuroyaku meeting in Nekoma would be the 'first time' they meet twice in a life; the second would be that their meeting in Nekoma would be part of the reincarnation/red string of fate concept.
I also wanted to write a variety of AUs without having to put too much effort into researching different things - which flowed well with the style, which is focused more on showing than actual telling. plus each scene is really short - average of 8-10 paragraphs per scene; the longest one is the beach one, which doesn't even really count since most of that was dialogue. so I didn't really have to worry about universe-building and research too lololol.
another problem I ran into was the fact that I was dead set on using the DGM AU. DGM AU = supernatural elements = ?! which is how I stumbled upon the idea of parallel universes. it's also the reason why there's a scene (fire) where Yaku is hinted as having magical abilities... xD so that it wouldn't be so blatant that I was just looking for an excuse to write a DGM AU lmaooo.
scene breakdowns:
actually, the first scene I wrote (following the introduction) was the medicine boys AU. I don't really know where that one came from; it was most probably from my eternal thirst for urban warfare AU - speaking of which, I fricking got baited for post-apocalyptic AU for SASO BR1 and I'm super distressed now - but anyway. I wanted urban warfare AU but didn't want to write any battles (plus I've written a few now so I didn't want to end up repeating themes, even though my readers don't overlap between ships... I think), so I took it for a spin and went with the 'Oliver Twist' kind of mood? I don't know. I wrote it while in bed at 2am.
the next one was the coffee shop AU. I wrote it while feeling uninspired... at the cafe the other day, lol. and for lack of creativity, I decided to use whatever drinks I saw on the menu. my brother got the iced mocha (he got a double shot of espresso) and I got toffee nut ice blended, but I originally wanted a cinnamon cappucino. so yes, I let Kuroo drag me. stop being rude, Kuroo, the toffee nut was good. also because I really wanted to write a scene with Yakunoya vs Kuroyaku, so how could I let that chance slip, right?
the gaming AU was a scene I had in mind from the time I started planning, but I'm not sure why I wanted to write it that much. I wrote it based off of a lot of my own real-life experiences with my gaming friends - at some point, everyone leaves - and I wanted to use that concept... of Kuroyaku being on the same team but never having met before.
journalist AU was really self-indulgent, tbh. I somehow thought of that (probably because I just interviewed that chef last last week? lol) and thought it would be good to use that scene to parallel the canon question of "Have we met?" but with a 100% plausible answer - "Broadcast journalist". funny thing's that journalist AU was supposed to be arranged before the meeting between them in Nekoma (the scene where they meet in Nekoma actually has a flashback to the journalist AU), but somehow when I was arranging the scenes I realised that it flowed better if the journalist AU went after. not sure what that did for parallelism, though. I know Mel totally didn't get it OTL
war AU was a definite - it was one of the AUs that, like the gaming AU, I knew I would write. what are you saying I wanted to make them kill each other? I don't know what you're talking about. it was really difficult to write a fight without using my usual descriptors and stuff, so a lot was actually left up to the reader's imagination. I think I did good on that AU though, despite that. it was also very painful to write. I hope I never have to write my OTP killing each other again.
illness AU was... hmm. this one was probably born of all my failed sickfic!AUs that I tried to write in the past, though none of them were ever specifically for Kuroyaku. heck, Kuroyaku is the only ship I'd never planned a sickfic for. it was, also, a difficult AU, but I wrote it right after the war AU so it was just... continuous suffering tbh.
and in line with the suffering, I figured, what the heck, just get all the deaths out of the way. which is how I started on DGM AU. the DGM AU was difficult to write not just because of the death, but because of the AU itself. I'm very well-acquainted with DGM (duh) but I've always drawn a distinct line between DGM and Haikyuu in my mind. DGM is straight up pain, okay. character death is a canonical thing, the good guys are apparently bad and the bad guys are apparently not-bad?, I've killed my favourites, tortured them, etc etc. while Haikyuu is, obviously, not. breaking down the distinction between two fandoms also made me realise exactly how painful DGM as a series is lmaooooo and also how soft Haikyuu has made me. another challenge was summarising DGM in enough words that a non-DGM fan could get the gist, not so much that a DGM fan would be turned off, while also leaving out unnecessary information that would bog down the story. all things considered, I'm ridiculously proud of the DGM AU and how it turned out! I think it's my favourite one. I'm not being biased here.
fire AU and beach AU were vague ideas - okay, no. fire AU had a specific prompt: I wanted a scene where Kuroo fled the village to safety, only to find that Yaku wasn't there; that Yaku wasn't safe. I was actually planning to kill Yaku in that AU too, but then... "Linn, let the poor guy live." okay, me. beach AU was driven with one dialogue line in mind, and only that one dialogue line: "if I had to choose, I'd live my life over again with you.*
it didn't come out exactly like that, but I already expected it not to. so yeah, that was what beach AU was designed specifically for.
canon universe, ironically, became the most difficult to write. it was due to a bunch of factors, honestly, but the first and foremost one would definitely be because I'd written the little bits and pieces of this world, where pretty much every single headcanon of mine has been written into an actual story. it's very hard to get rid of that, even though it's been a good 2 months since I wrote that fic. I left the canon scenes (excluding intro) for last, and pretty much vagued my ass off tbh... there was no other way for me to write it without ending up with an unnecessarily long description of all my headcanons that have already been written before.
last of all, my style!
okay, actually I'm a super uncreative and uninspired person. "different style" essentially means lowercasing all my words, parallelisms, and messing around with formatting. :D
but besides that, I consciously forced myself to not describe every twitch of eyebrows or sound of explosion or unnecessary exposition of backstory and background information. I wanted to make my readers read their own interpretation instead of guiding them every step of the way, which is what my usual narrative style does - it draws a really specific visual image in the reader's mind, and I wanted to avoid that this time around. it was made easier, I think, by the fact that a lot of this fic was focused on the... idea of reincarnation, of course. you can't really describe something as intangible as that, I think.
I also have to admit that my whole monologue of fate and destiny and time and place was inspired by
ritzfics' comment on eggshells - loosely speaking, life is a combination of chance and choice. I didn't get to explore that, but I wouldn't have known how to, anyway. not unless Kuroo were a character like Lavi - for whom I'd actually written a fic exploring specifically this. but that was an opportunity I only got because of how Lavi's character is set up. I wouldn't be able to do that for Kuroo or Yaku, but it did bring choice:trust to mind as I wrote the ending sequences.I sent this fic to Mel before I published it, actually, and they said it's one of my best fics so far. honestly, I don't really think the same - I feel like a lot of things are still lacking, and I know that this style is not one I can easily write in for prolonged periods of time. and I don't know... I feel like it doesn't really have much soul in it? or maybe because I probably wrote my whole soul into it, so I don't feel like I have a soul anymore. something like that.
I forgot to mention this earlier, but I included Sakishima on a whim. I had a picture of the whole Nohebi on my Google Doc tbh, just to remind myself that I wanted to write a scene where I can draw reference to how similar Sakishima looks like to Yaku. I don't know why I wanted to do that, but it was interesting.
all things considered, I created the doc on May 23, and finished it on May 30. since I was in such a bad writing rut last week (and for the whole month), I think this fic was a really good break all in all, and I'm pretty proud of it even though I'm also not 100% for it as I am for Ages.
edit [10.04pm]: included explanation of Sakishima.
