flemmings | Drabble thoughts

Drabbles are indeed looking at the white spaces instead of the drawing. You have to make that white space your friend, something that works /for/ you, because you're deprived of the usual stock of words to work with. I see now why people use conversation and that reflective omniscient- they give you the meat with the fewest trimmings.

Drabbles are also close to poetry as I've written poetry, which usually is haiku/ waka or something rhymed and metre'd, where again you don't have much leeway. Put in a word here, take out another there: a word for a word, always.

With these constraints on you you then up the difficulty a good deal by stating the pairing when you have a theme of some kind. 'The theme is colours and it's Gojou and Hakkai' at once demands that you betray, and betray sucessfully, the readerly expectation that red or green will turn up in that one. A pro like

incandescens can side-step the obvious as if it didn't even exist, but not everyone has that expertise.

I find the same goes for cross-overs. Name the two series involved and most of your readers can at once make a stab at guessing the theme. (Unless it's Onmyouji/ Teletubbies where the points of congruence don't exactly leap immediately to the eye.) That's the problem with this: I like the idea- I've always liked it, though it isn't worth more than a drabble- but it's so obvious there's no real point in writing it.

But I did. It's half Wild Adaptor:

'A puppy?'

'Or a kitten. Not for me,' he extemporized. 'A young friend who needs cheering up-- I thought maybe a pet...'

Polite smile. The man knew his store was being checked out: it amused him. Not guns or drugs then. Politics? No. The atmosphere was tourist-trade 'Chinese': incense, ceramics, cheap brocade. Aimed at the locals. Ahh. 'Perhaps you have more... exotic animals for sale?'

'I have all kinds of animals. I will accommodate your request.' He spoke as if the transaction was finished.

Kou blinked, startled, and met the owner's bright smile:
'I think a cat should do it.'

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Thanks. And oh, that one is very neat.

(Though... how can you introduce the concept of Onmyouji/Teletubbies and then leave it hanging like that?)

I love drabbles when they're well done-- but I absolutely cringed when I saw colors as the Saiyuki prompt this week because I knew there would be a horde of red and green cliche ones (a few surprised me into liking them though).

The problem I often have with drabbles is a lot of the time I think I miss something that the author obviously expected me to pick up on (in crossovers especially). For example in the above, it's obvious to me what the second fandom is, but I don't see the significance of the cat. I'm guessing it's because I'm not familiar with Wild Adaptor, but I don't -know.- It could be that there's something else I missed.

Or even perhaps I'm giving it too much significance and a cat is just a cat. ;) Which is why I like to stick with the more familiar fandoms.

Count D, meet Kou. Kou, Count D. :D I think you mentioned once in a blog entry long ago of this crossover idea. It very much works.

Drabbles are hit and miss. If too much is explained (both in the drabble notes, or in the drabble itself), then the drabble loses its punch (for me.) It's too easy. The beautiful thing about a very-very-short piece is that it can leave lingering thoughts and wonders in just a few words because of what's unsaid and what's implied. I like the "...Oh." feeling as things sink in.

So, thank you for the suprise and the implied. Very cool.

I don't know why it makes me ponder Kou/Kasai ideas though... (<- see, lingering thoughts...)

Thank you. But the Onmyouji/ Teletubbies concept was introduced, not by me, over here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/flemmings/30387.html#cutid1) and I'm still poking at it mentally to see if it will yield anything. So far all it yields is a desire to write 'Now the sun sets in the sky/ Teletubbies say Good-bye' in classical Japanese, when all I remember of my grammar is the past form, arikeri.

our hands wave like grass
stomachs jiggle at sunset
pinkness veils the world

Drabbles can be very close to injokes- you need to know the series to understand what's being referred to, because 100 words doesn't give you space to do more than drop the reference in. Hard to do a story in 100 words that's sufficient to itself so that it doesn't need outside referrents. That goes double when it's a crossover, of course.

In fact so compact a form is it that if you're unaware of even one element you miss the point. We don't do televangelists here so

monkeybarrel's join me in PARADISE (http://www.livejournal.com/users/monkeybarrel/42479.html#cutid1) drabble went right past me.

WA is one of those series that has a human 'cat', named Tokitoh, that the jaded anti-hero Kubota picks up off a street one day for no discernable reason at all. (There's an indiscernable reason, but you have to deduce it.) Kubota does odd jobs for Kou, a quack doctor and provider of illegal objects to the denizens of Yokohama's Chinatown. Kou knows everything that goes on, possibly because people tell him things but also, I thought, because he checks out any unvouched-for new places himself. Thus the drabble.

See, it has to be a tanka because they didn't do haiku back then. Unless you were doing renga but even so, the 5-7-5 bit didn't stand by itself: the 7-7 always followed.

the baby yawns and gurgles
periscope sinks underground

Mmm. I love formed poetry. ;)

If you're on just the right wavelength for it, a drabble can be as good as a haiku for that sudden flash of thought/ insight- the inside of a room seen for a minute as the train passes by.

If you're not it's like one of those annoying riddles: I don't get it. Or worse, like a shopping list.

And now it makes perfect sense. ;) I knew the cat was significant, but not exactly how.

And your explanation of drabbles makes me feel a bit better since it's a little disheartening having to ask an author to explain 100 words. *^_^*

Actually, Homura wasn't a televangelist. He was selling timeshares (in his future heaven.) So, drabbles can also not work if the referencing is too obscure that people don't know what you're talking about. :)

I shall go google timeshares. Aren't they those things for Florida condos?

If it were 500 words you wouldn't have to ask. It's the compression that causes the obscurity. Half the time I walk away from a drabble thinking 'I didn't get that one,' and don't know if the people going Lovely! Marvellous! Awww-- really think that or if, to quote

kickinpants, it's "That's a beautiful suit, Emperor!"

Sort of, but also other places. You pay, like 10k or 20k, and then once a year for every year, you get a week in this condo "in paradise". (A lot of places will have a chain of them, so you can also sign up to stay in another. So if you buy one in Florida, but they also own one in Arizona, you can switch your place for that week.) But you don't really own it. And they always offer "free vacations" to their places where all you have to do is check out their seminar one morning on timeshares and everything else is free. And somehow, spookily enough, they're able to sway people into buying into these not-real-investments.

That's a lot of money for a week's vacation, even if you use it for a few decades. A several-month time share I could see maybe.

True, but if you're getting into the several months a year thing, saving up to invest in your own place there might be better. Then you can rent it out when you're not there to all these weekly or monthly people. (And rental companies can manage your property even if you're out of state.)

Timeshares are selling vacation homes that you never really own, and can never retire in. Just like their "free vacations", they rope you into something that sounds great, but really isn't.

Well, my thoughts on the issue... ^^

For a while a couple years ago I was doing (what I considered) weird and/or unlikely crossovers. I wrote an Iron Chef/X-Files crossover, and had plans for an Iron Chef/One Piece story and an Iron Chef/Harry Potter one. Having since fled Iron Chef fandom, those last two projects are on the shelf, probably permanently.

Can't do drabbles, though--I lack the discipline. (upends a potted plant to prove the "lack of discipline" point)

I'm a fan of cross-overs; I like the sensation of familiar characters seen through the eyes of different familiar characters so they look, uh, different. Alas that people seem to want to write them in Omniscient, so that all the characters look the way they do to you anyway.

I love both of you. =D

And we love you, qwerty!

(Ohh look what neat things happen now when you delete a comment. Cool.)

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