The Same Watari As Always

Remix reveals are up, yay!

I wrote two stories: Identity Crisis (The More Things Stay the Same remix) in Weiss Kreuz, from Dynamic Stasis by therck;

and

Last Boat Out of Hell (The Union of the Snake remix) in Yami, from Five Things that Never Happened to Hisoka by Bridgh, aka wordsofastory.



So I have gotten wordsofastory in remix exchanges before. So many, in fact, that my first instinct was to email back saying you can't stick her with me again! But then I had two second thoughts. Second thought #1 was:

Remix is such a pain to match up, maybe I shouldn't complain.

Second thought #2 was:

I can remix club!Soka.

See, here's the thing: I thought about remixing Five Things before, especially girl!Hisoka. But clubSoka is special. (Proof!) It's a short segment of a longer fic, but it's got so much energy and anger and possibility, and it feels like a window opening into a whole world.

So I decided, finally, after saying 'no' a couple different times, to say yes to that world. I was still worried because I knew how special the story is to Brigdh, but I decided the best thing to do was to just write the best story I could.

So I did what any smart person would do: I ran to threewalls and panicked in her metaphorical ear for a couple of days. This was pretty much the smartest thing I could do. I can't thank her enough for her support, guidance, and beta work. I bounced ideas, checked canon, and had her careful, smart eye. (I later brought lindentreeisle in to do last-minute SPAG checking when threewalls had some RL time constraints. She is awesome too, in part for not yelling at me every time I cheerfully noted which horrifying detail in the fic was actually canon.)

This was not an easy fic! It kept expanding on me, and I kept finding bits in canon that were never adequately explained or brushed over (Hijiri falls unconscious, and the fight's over! REALLY?) And going through canon so carefully with an eye to Hisoka's backstory, it really brought home how much his life before Meifu sucked. Abuse, isolation, that whole snake god thing ... I mean, I already knew Hisoka was tough as hell, but holy shit. We all need to write more Hisoka fic, because he is ten times tougher than you will ever be.

But the title was easy! Beautiful Small Machines' "Simple Joys" has been a Hisoka song for me ever since I actually listened to the words, and his relationship with Tsuzuki has a lot of learning 'the joy of simple joys' to it. Add Tatsumi's accurate realization that Hisoka was probably quite literally better off dead than at the Kurosaki family estate, and "last boat out of Hell" sounded like the perfect title, with the little twist that the land of the dead is where Hisoka fled to.

The subtitle came both from the conspiracy between Yatonokami and Hisoka's mother and the guest voice on "Simple Joys." (I like to think I'm clever, hush.)

ANYWAY it was fun, it was a hell of a lot of hard work, and even though Remix isn't a gift exchange I'm so, so, so glad Brigdh liked it. ♥!!!

Have some videos:



Simple Joys, Beautiful Small Machines



Union of the Snake, Duran Duran

oh, and wordsofastory's theme for ClubSoka:



Cherry Lips by Garbage!



I want to talk about the Weiss fic too, but let's do that later.