Who likes fanmixes? Who likes NaNo?

[thelinesoflearning]

Who likes combining these things to help me figure out what in the holy fuck I'm writing? Who likes helping me stop contemplating totally skipping out on writing this year? Anybody? YAY.

Here's the deal: Under the cut is an alphabatized list of characters from stories I keep going back and forth on for this year's NaNo. (This means no Luna fic and no Sentient Magic people; I'm set on them.) Throw me things off of it. I will make a 5-10 song fanmix for them. This may include drabbles if I feel ambitious.

The plan is that somehow this will a) help me figure out who I'm really gonna be into writing, and b) help me figure out who I can't -- if I can't piece together a tiny fanmix for them I probably don't know enough about them to write their story yet. And you'll get music recs and maybe interested in someone off their mix? So... yeah?

Don't worry if you don't know anything about the character/world you're asking for, the point is for people to ask blind. If you do know that's okay. But you really don't have to. Feel free to ask for more than one. The only reason I'm not doing all of them is that I will probably start crying if I try.

Bonus round! If two characters have the same acronym/word by their name, they're from the same story, as that's their verse name. Throw me a pair if you want. Get a minimix on their relationship, whatever it may be. If they never meet I will... figure something out I don't know.

Main Characters Ahoy
Alice (Powers!)
Allison Bird (WSL)
Cin (CSBM)
Cora Russell (WSL)
Dave (Cupcake)
Denver (CSBM)
Mary Christine (MM)
Nat (WSL)
Regan (CSBM)
Samuel (Powers!)
Teddy (Cupcake)
Thomas (Powers!)

Comments

[thelinesoflearning]

So funny story: You know those characters that are so intertwined that anything for one of them includes the other....? Samuel and Thomas are a pair of codependant, magical twins. So yeah.


I'll Believe in Anything - Wolf Parade
Give me your eyes, I need sunshine
Your blood, your bones, your voice, and your ghost
We've both been very brave, walk around with both legs
Fight the scary day, we both pull the tricks out of our sleeves
But I'll believe in anything and you'll believe in anything

Ten years old and scared and strange, they hold fast to each other, never explaining to anyone the things they can do. People find out anywhere. Their parents find out, checking in on them late one night to find Samuel a grey tabby in his brother's arms, Thomas talking in his father's voice.

They're too young, too unsure to say anything when their parents try to decide what to do with them now. Too scared of what they might be to say no when their mother's crying and their father's using words like 'the only way'.

But the Sundrop Center isn't scary, even if it looms in the distance on the drive, giant and cold from the outside. Inside, it's friendly, it's warm. Inside, there are people like them. There's no scolding when Samuel wants four legs or wings, and there's nobody telling Thomas he has to use his own voice.

Trapped inside, they're freer, and though Samuel rarely keeps the form he was born in, he stops changing and twisting so that people can't find him. Though Thomas still doesn't use his own voice, he borrows his brother's, and hardly anyone can tell the difference.

City of the Second Hand - David Berkeley
In the City of the Second Hand, who's the savior?
Slow down, slow down for what's in store.
Lines are drawn into the avenue, into the core.
Slow down, slow down when more is more.
And all she said so far is, "Don't forget who you are."
No, don't forget who you are.

Safety doesn't last forever.

When they're fifteen, the teachers sit them down and explain what all the blood test, all the scans, all the medications are for. They explain how the very gift that brought them to the Center, the very thing that's both made them strange everywhere else and made them fit here, is killing them. They tell them that there's no cure.

And after that, they're scared again. Samuel finds hiding places to twist himself into, revolted by the idea of changing, still hating to be seen without turning himself into something else. Sometimes he finds his brother. Thomas never talks.

Eventually, they get used to the idea. They learn to live with knowing the most important thing about them is a death sentence. They spend two years adapting to the idea, learning to deal with it.

And that's when a new danger knocks down their door.

Butterfly Soul - Vixy and Tony
Butterfly soul, find yourself a place in this world
Butterfly soul, find yourself a face in this world
Hangin' on the wind, never was something sure
Hang on to yourself, it's a chance to endure
Don't you see, won't you listen to me?

They tell them they're more than test subjects, they tell them there's a different world out there. They pull them away from home, away from the people who have been family for seven years, the teachers who praise them, the doctors who work every day to make their gift less of a curse.

They take them back to the place they say is home, to the parents they haven't seen since the day they were brought to the Center. They say this is the life they deserve, they should have been living.

Thomas starts stealing stranger's voices again, and Samuel is surprised each time he passes a mirror. Their parents look at them like strangers. Samuel wants to go home.

Kingdom Come - the Civil Wars
Run, run, run and hide
Somewhere no one else can find
Tall trees bend their lean pointing where to go
Where you will still be all alone
Don't you fret my dear, it'll all be over soon
I'll be waiting here for you
Run fast if you can, no one has to understand
Fly high across the sky from here to kingdom come
Fall back down to where you're from

They run. It's not running anymore technically; they do it on the day they're eighteen, the day no one can tell them where to go. They run to find the family ripped away from them. They run away to find home.

Transcontinental, 1:30 AM - Vienna Teng
Don't let the sun go slack
I want to bring you back to where I know you
Oh wait, don't give up on us yet
I just want you to let you let me hold you
....
I know we're transcontinental 1:30 A.M.
And there's not even a wire just a whispering in air
I know we're transcontinental 1:30 A.M.
But I'm here, I'm here

They hunt out hints of connection, through payphone calls, emails read quickly on library computers. Two am phonecalls to Joey after her parents are asleep, Thomas stealing soothing voices. Long, messily-typed letters with Alice, Samuel stealing new faces so that librarians don't kick him out. Sometimes they plan and sometimes they pray.

But mostly, they just reach out, and hold to those brief connections with everything they've got.