So get with this already
- Gerrick to me

I'm suddenly in the mood for a lil muse-ly blurb. Enjoy.

He's sitting here. Well, not here, obviously, since here would be the chair I'm occupying. Instead he's sitting to my left, perched comfortably on the table that runs perpendicular to mine. He's reading whatever I'm typing with more interest that he's letting on, though his amusement is clear enough.

Sure you want to do this? he asks, gesturing with a finger to the computer monitor flickering before him. Indeed, flicking in this dark room, whose only illumination is the harsh orange light from the small desktop lamp. And of course, the computer screen. Sure you don't want to go write that story of yours? Hinata's about to wake up and smell the sandalwood y'know.

He speaks, but not in the manner we all are used to. He speaks; his lips move, but no voice comes out. The words go direct to the brain, his voice rich and deep, cocky and serious. All tones and all variations. It's a pick what you want mental buffet.

But all the better for delivering inspiration - pick whichever tone has delivered the most emotional impact, and his words will always be crystal clear.

I'll write it in a while, I answer him. Even without glancing his way, I can still see the flaming red of his hair tilt, just as he tilts his head in reply to my answer. And even in the darkness, I can see the green of his eyes gleam.

Sure you will, he says airily, tossing something slim into the air and catching the end between his lips. From the corner of his mouth, And I'm the Queen of France.

Now he strikes a match and puts it near his mouth, pretending to take a deep drag. A flash of pearly whites and he sniggers, Trust your imagination to come up with a Pocky smoking Muse.

My imagination? Gerrick, you're my imagination. You thought of it yourself.

Yeah. Pretty damn creative of me too, he drawls, leaning back against the shelf and chewing the stick of Pocky with the content-ness of cow chewing cud. But enough about me. Get back to your damn story. It's almost 2am.

And indeed, it is.

That guitar is going trying to kill me; Me, having tripped over it for what seemed to be the twentieth time

I got it! I know, I know, it's only been an hr since my last post, but I think I've figured out why I like non-cannon pairings!

It's the challenge of trying to come up with an entirely plausible plot that coincides with the main anime, and at the same time keeping the characters in character. Because we all know that while it's easy to write a piece of fiction that has the two intended characters suddenly confessing their love and all... it's too easy. It's too easy to ignore the 'rules' of fanfic writing, if there are any. Unofficial rules then, shall we say?

I'm not saying that I'm a good writer to be able to come up with alternate pairing scenarios, cause I'm not and I don't. Well, not too well anyway. I'm more comfortable in the realms of AU (Alternate Universes) cause then I don't have to adhere to the anime/game's original plot. But it is a challange to do it, and hey. Challanges are fun.

Which reminds me. I probably should post this in my fanfic blog, but I'm too lazy to switch right now. An unfinished ficlet I found!

Title: Hotel California

Bolded Italics are song lyrics
Italics is for thought
And sometimes, just to confuse the reader, the song lyrics ARE the thoughts! :D

On a dark desert highway …

The street lights flickered, long periods of darkness punctured by brief angry flashes of sickly yellow light to illuminate the desolate roads. And here a lone car traveled; a convertible, the make unknown and lost as it faded in and out of shadows.

Cool wind in my hair.

Aoshi had forgotten how chilly the desert nights were. How long, exactly, had it been since he last passed through a desert? Not recently, obviously enough. He was tempted for a moment to put up the top of the convertible, but a strange nagging feeling tsk-ed at him. For tonight, he would need no shelter from the cold.

After tonight, he would need not shelter evermore.

Now the seemingly arctic wind bought a companion; a strange scent, brief yet potent.

Warm smell of colitas
Rising up through the air

And a humourless smile graced his thin lips. No one ever came here, deep in the heart of nowhere. It probably accounted for the poor maintenance of the roads regardless of it being a ‘highway’, the pathetic condition of the street lights.

The lack of people meant a severe lack of the Law. Thus, the only people to actually guest here were druggies, high on marijuana and suchlike, camping not far from the roads though far enough to stay out of sight. Well. Druggies and people like Aoshi.

People like him. Haunted by visions of a dark-eyed woman in a pretty lavender robe, crying, pleading for a release that they knew would never occur. People like him, whose only solace to her was to find her, and allow their presence to offer her a brief respite.

Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light.

The rogue thought ploughed its way through his consciousness, jolting him back to the reality of the road. A brief frown, what lig…

And he saw it. The briefest of twinkles in the distance.

And still, in his head, the voice continued whispering… My head grew heavy, and my sight grew dim…

Through sleep-fogged eyes, he suddenly found himself in the grounds of a hotel. The welcoming smile of the nightman in his little guardhouse was lost on Aoshi as he parked his car amid the others. As he turned the key in the ignition, unbidden words fell from his lips, as though it was not he who spoke, “I had to stop for the night…”

Lil bro: Yes yes Sakura. Go like fuzzy eyebrows. Then the other girl can go for that guy
Me: Yes!
Lil bro: Hinata to Naruto, I mean.
Me: NO!!

As inane that quote was, I find it fitting for this post.

Ok, as an intro, I'd just like to say that I've been avoiding Naruto like the plague. Yes, I am exaggerating. If lil'est bro happens to be watching, I'll glance as I walk by. But I won't actually make an effort to sit down if I had something else to do. Like feeding mosquitos for example.

But anyway, a few days ago my lil brother (not to be mistaken with my lil'est brother) pulled out a huge CD album and flatly said, "We can't avoid it anymore. I'm bored and there's nothing but Naruto."

So we bunked down in front of the computer, and as usual ran an anime marathon. Episode 1 to 77, if I'm not mistaken.

Don't get me wrong, Naruto's a good anime. Sound characters, excellent soundtracks (gotta dig that electric guitar, y'know?), interesting plot and very solid variety of fighting styles. And hey, there's ninjas! Anything with ninjas automatically gets extra points.

I'd dedicate a haiku to it, if I was any good at them. But I'm not so I won't.

Uchiha Sasuke is gorgeous. And as with any anime, I try think of a good pairing for the guys I find cute. Sakura is out of the question. She's the obligatory Miaka character in the anime, though maybe I'm just being harsh. Or not. All I know is that she's all talk no brain nor brawn. Just all mouth. And inner Sakura just makes me want to hang her from a tree and poke her with a sharp stick hoping the stick will change into a spear. Yes, I've been reading American Gods again (Thank you Dallie).

So yes... who who who to pair him up with. And... unsurprisingly my mind does a *click* connection with Hinata. Which kinda dooms me, again, because I know I'll go online and search for Sasuke/Hinata fanfics and I just know I'll end up disappointed.

I think my brain just wants to torture me, cause I keep on picking the non-cannon pairings. Like Aoshi/Megumi from Rurouni Kenshin. Sephiorth/Aeris from Final Fantasy 7. Auron/Lulu from Final Fantasy 10. The dude with Knight-ARMS and the psychic girl from Project Arms. And now Sasuke and Hinata.

But those two just make me go 'awww'. They'd look good together! And my sadistic mind thinks it's adorable to get a girl who'd blush and stammer to get with a guy who'd probably get annoyed by girls who blush and stammer. But hey... thing is... it would work. I could go on and on about how they'd work, but I think I'll save that for another post.

Heck, I'll be honest. I can make it work. I've already got two pages of a Sasuke/Hinata fic going on and I'm pretty damn sure I can work it into the Naruto timeline, thought I'd have to consult my All-Knowing Naruto encyclopedia to work any kinks out. Take a bow, Dallie (Two Dallie references in one post! Go me!).

But anyway, off I go to Fanfiction.net in search of non-existant Sasuke/Hinata fics. And I gotta tell you, it is very, so very depressing to see 95% of all Naruto fics are yaoi (male-male) fics. It is also very depressing to see the other 4% as Sasuke/Sakura fics, cause I know Sasuke can do better. The other 0.9% is still too high a statistic for me cause they're incest fics. Incest! Like seeing those Kakashi/his student fics weren't bad enough. Maybe I'm too close-minded or something, but seeing Kakashi/Sasuke or even Kakashi/Sakura fics floating about gives me the shivers. Isn't there an age gap of like... 10 years, or something? ::shudder::

What strange minds flutter about in the darkness of Fanfiction.

But... to my surprise, there's actually about 30-40 (count them! Just count them!) Sasuke/Hinata fics out there! YES! There ARE people who also think the pairing works!

::indulges in a self-satisfied snigger::

And the best thing is that at least half of them are coherant, and three quarters of THAT are extremely well-written!

So, in conclusion... Yay.

"There's an octopus in the middle of the band"
- Me watching a Thai concert

Nifty title innit? Well, I've gotten kinda fed up with this 'I need to write but can't find the proper mood' phase so I've plonked my ass on the chair and am forcing myself to write a one-shot songfic. After all, songfics are dead easy and one-shotters are always good.

It's good to be writing again. However... ::looks at Gerrick:: My muse just had to hit me with the Sledgehammer of Inspiration while I was in the car. Taking my ever-present notebook out to jot down story notes in a moving car is not good. Especially when my handwriting is akin to a worm farm. But then again, it wasn't as bad as the weird looks people gave me when I was walking around behind my family and still writing page after page of notes.

Picture this.

I've trailed my lil bros into Booker. I've got a notebook open, a rather plain notebook whose only decoration is the "Don't blame me, it's a software problem" quote on the front. I'm scribbling madly, making my usual lil jottings in every available space on the page. If this means I have to write sideways and loop it in circles, so be it.

I am not looking where I'm going. But I'm not bumping into anyone or anything either, so it's a good thing.

But this girl... she's browsing the anime section in Booker. She sees me, still writing away, and she freezes. I glance her way and that's it. But over the top of my notebook, still within vision, I see her make this... face. This face that very obviously said, "What the?" and she started edging away. Still giving me creeped out looks.

Geez. What's so creepy about a girl walking and writing? Well, it's either that or my clothes. Maybe it was my clothes, who knows. But I didn't get any weird looks when I had my notebook away so my money's on the writing thing.

But could I help it? I had the urge to jot down all the ideas, all the scenes flashing madly in my mind! If I didn't I'd be bound to forget and that's... just... ::makes a face::

This cripple on my social-appeal aside, it's good to be doing this again. I missed it. When I stopped, or rather, found myself unable to write, it felt... wrong. Like I'm not being who I'm supposed to be.

I guess I didn't realize how much writing means to my identity.

No, I'm wrong. It's not the act of writing itself. It's the imagining. How to make the impossible be plausible. Conceiving a new reality in my head and giving it shape in words.

I was frustrated that I couldn't write. But I didn't realize not being able to write didn't mean I couldn't stop penning down my ideas.

So now, I have some pretty good ideas in that lil notebook of mine. And I've written some scenes, hard as they were. But the more I write, the easier the dreaming becomes.

Realities converge, meld and seperate. But yours is the only true reality... for a given value of "true".

That's just one of the ideas in my lil' book, just waiting to be fleshed out. Heh. But it'll have to wait till I get this one-shotter done.

::looks up:: Damnit. Suddenly it's turned into an introspection on myself again.

"When you care enough to send the very best, send someone else."
- Runner; WarCraft III The Dark Throne

I'm depressed. Depressed. D - E - P - R - E - S - S - E - D - E - D. Down in the dumps, feeling blue, sad, miserable, lowly, can't think of any other words or phrases but I think you get the message.

I probably need to get out of the house, but unfortunately I have no moolah. I have exactly one dollar to my name, and that's not even enough to buy myself a drink.

Goddarnit. Why is everything piling up these past couple weeks? It's not helping that I've got the Stomach Ache From The Seventh Flaming Hissing Pit Of Hell Three Doors Left From The Water Cooler. Didn't help that I thought I was fine enough to go for the family dinner at the Indian restaurant, where they serve many a deliciously spicy dish that does their culture proud.

Oh yes.. my laptop's been sent to the computer shop for them to try get it to work with that wireless adapter. Unfortunately they've decided a reformat is in order. Oh god, please let them have the foresight to backup ALL my files. Otherwise I am going to cross the boundaries of misery into full-fledged manic hysteria. Well, maybe not hysteria, but certainly into the realm of Locking Myself In The Room To Be Sad At My Pillow. Then maybe a wee bit of hysteria. Cause, y'know. I've some nice fics in there that I'd like to continue, and I can't do that if they're gone.

And now to sum up what I'm feeling, in the words of someone whose name I can't recall at the moment.... Haaiiiizzzzzzzz