anythingbutgrey | war stories ficathon

War Stories: A Comment Ficathon

Welcome to the war stories ficathon. Some quick guidelines:

What can I prompt and how do I do so?

Basically whatever you want, as long as there's a core component of a war story therein. Can be pre-, post-, or intra-war as long as it is, at its core, about the war. I'm pretty general with my concept of fictional conflicts, so if you've got a battle or a zombie apocalypse or a revolution, you're good to go. That means you can take a fandom that has a canonical war (like, say, Harry Potter) or you can take a fandom that doesn't have a war (like, say, New Girl) and plop them into a Hunger Games war AU or a zombie apocalypse. Have fun with it. I'm grim about my war stories but you don't have to be.

Prompts should contain the following format:

Fandom (not optional, can be multi-fandom or crossover) - Characters/Ship (optional) - Timeline (optional) - Prompt (which may be a plot, song lyric, quote, etc., but is not optional)

In other words, you can leave a character and/or a ship, and/or a timeline, which are optional, and a prompt, which is not. If you want, you can just leave a set of song lyrics and see what people do with them. If you want, you can just leave a timeline with those lyrics, or a just a character, or all three.

How do I respond?

There are no restrictions in terms of word count, format, tense, point of view, etc. Please title all of your response fics as such in bold at the top of your comment (make sure to close the bold tag!) since LJ took out comment titles because they're dumb:

Title - Character/Ship - Timeline

Presumably, your fics will contain these three things even if they weren't in the prompt. You can also fill prompts that have already been filled. If something speaks to you, as it were, it doesn't matter if there's already fic for it. You can write your own.

How do I promote?

Here's a tumblr post (gen image if you have no idea who Mako Mori is in which case go see Pacific Rim ASAP and thank me later)

Promotion link with image:

Other banners:

More incoming

Text link:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

hyacinthian.livejournal.com

(2/3)

Your hand shakes when you hold your pencil, but that's normal. Your fingers curl around the pencil, and confuses it for a weapon. Maybe that's normal. It's too light on the wrist. You need heft. You expect the weight of a sword, full and round, and you roll your wrist before you begin writing.

You have tried, and you have failed. There is still work to do. There is always work to do.)

-

Raleigh stands at your door, and says you don't have to just obey him.

You want to ask him how a man can live a life without loyalty, how a man can live a life without deferring to the knowledge that there is something greater, that a love is worth something greater than your defiance. That trust demands this, and that does not make you weak or carve you hollow.

it's not obedience, you answer, and you wonder if a man who has saved so many lives can understand the debt that comes with being saved. If a man who continues to fight for the rest of the world can understand the weight of being patient and just watching as the world around you collapses to pieces.

After all, the world remains everybody else's world, fighters or not. The world was still yours when you were cowering in the streets; the city was still your city; no matter how much you willed it so, you could not defend it with your own small fists, with your own body.

No matter how much you wished. You want to know if he can understand. So, you try: it's respect.

-

And when you are in the suit the second time and the third, when the weight of it grows familiar, when you clench your fist and the giant machine does the same, part of you curls at the notion. You had expected… not more, but something different. You had expected something greater in the blood. Less fear. More preparation.

Still, there are other things you could not have anticipated. The fullness in your head and Raleigh's voice, Raleigh's presence, dirtying everything like smudging fingerprints on clean glasses, and part of you knows that you will never be able to strip those clean again. (Part of you wonders if you would ever want to.) There is the smooth tone of his voice, the even rhythm, as you move together, and the noise of the machine follows like a heartbeat, a two-beat noise of squealing metal and joints before the resounding footstep echoes across the sea bed.

And there are things even Stacker did not tell you about battle. The way your blood makes everything seem too present, the noise of it drowning everything out, the way the inside of the machine can spark from the blows sustained; Raleigh is in your head; Raleigh whispers, Raleigh groans, Raleigh feels the blows and you feel them too --

But now you are heavy; now you are a soldier; now you can throw your weight against the world and hear the echoes of a landing blow.

-

From:

hyacinthian.livejournal.com

(3/3)

There is a moment in the battle when the sparks are coming too frequently, when the computer is shouting warnings, when you feel Raleigh's panic in your own head and part of you knows that you are going to die on the ocean floor staring into the open gullet of an acid-spitting monster.

And fear aside, isn't that fine? Fear aside, what else is there to you than this --

You have always wanted to peer into the face of the monster, to see the ugly twisted face of the evil that tore your home apart, that tore through your people and your family and left you alone. You have wanted to see it destroyed the way you were destroyed. (But you were reconstructed, like your city; you rose again; you are not a thing to be permanently defeated, and isn't that strength? And couldn't that be strength?)

The monster will have you the way it has everyone else. The monster will defeat you the way you have been defeated before. (You should be used to it by now, shouldn't you? The weak become used to defeat; the warriors become used to blood in the mouth; and the victors? Well, the victors often are combinations of the two.)

You look into the face of the monster, and you turn and catch Raleigh's profile (and at least you will have this, to die in the midst of battle with a capable partner; to die, and know that you will have died fighting), and the air is getting thin now.

Raleigh says your name. Once. Twice.

The air is getting thin, and you can hear your mother's singing.

mother, i am coming, i am coming, i am here

-

There is an end. There is a beginning. It follows that way, doesn't it?

Your pod bursts open and your first gasp of air is sharp salt on the tongue and a spray of seawater, and -- alone again. But you can still feel the fight going on in your head, can still hear the noise of battle, the roar of crushing metal, and where is he? What has Raleigh done without you?

There is a moment of waiting, and your heart thuds hard in your chest. Oh, to lose another person. To lose a co-pilot --

You have waited before. You swallow the fear. You count.

(And after, when his pod is up and his body is still, so still, you crawl over and you cradle him in your arms because what else can you do? Oh, the time for fighting has passed; the time for being a warrior has gone, and now you are a scared little girl holding something else you have lost to this war; you are scared, and you are alone again, and the tide buoys you up and over, up and over, until you feel you will never be able to be anything other than adrift again.

A little girl lost on the sea. Lost to sea. Lost.)

-

He speaks, and you nearly jump. He speaks; he is alive; he laughs against your shoulder and you feel the vibrations echo along your own body. Just like drifting. His skin is still cool to the touch, but you hold him against your body like an anchor (and now you are a thing that anchors others; now you are an anchor holding fast to the sea floor; now you have weight) and feel the change in his temperature as best you can with your own skin.

He speaks and you can hear the noise of your own laugh, and you had forgotten that you could still - that with so much lost, joy still finds a way out of you. The ocean carries you. The salt lingers in the air and you taste the sea and you remember an island; you remember your home; you remember standing on the shore and listening to the roar of the waves and the feel of the sand grains beneath your feet.

This was your city; this was your home; this was your world.

You fought for it once. More than once. You fought, and maybe this time, you will have finally proven that you belong; that you deserve the weight of the sword; that you can bear the weight of everything the title means.

You fought. You remain.

From:

hyacinthian.livejournal.com

(4/4)

You cleave a monster in two and avenge your family; you feel the warmth of spirits ghosting along your forearm; you feel the burden of someone else sharing your memories; the monster is cloven in two; the monster is halved; you are holding the sword; the sword is yours.

The sword is yours, and your throat is hoarse from shouting, but vengeance, vengeance --

You have finally tasted a victory and it is salt and blood and the sea, and the roar of someone else's triumph in your head.

The child has chased the fear back down the alley, out of the street, and off of her home. The child stands and refuses to cow to anything that assumes it is greater than anything she is capable of.

The child becomes a giant; the giant fights; the giant wins.

From:

songandsilence.livejournal.com

I am legitimately freaking out over this. INCREDIBLE.

The fullness in your head and Raleigh's voice, Raleigh's presence, dirtying everything like smudging fingerprints on clean glasses, and part of you knows that you will never be able to strip those clean again. (Part of you wonders if you would ever want to.)

But now you are heavy; now you are a soldier; now you can throw your weight against the world and hear the echoes of a landing blow.

(But you were reconstructed, like your city; you rose again; you are not a thing to be permanently defeated, and isn't that strength? And couldn't that be strength?)

I just.....

OKAY, I'm done. I swear.