250-word meme

[eponymous_rose]

You may have noticed (if you've seen this journal for more than a few seconds, that is) that I post memes from time to time.  Just for the heck of it, I've made up my own.  It's a writing meme, meant to kill writer's block in... well, however many minutes it takes you to write five super-quick half-drabbles.  That's right, half-drabbles. 50 words. This'll be nuts.

In fact, it's a multi-fandom fanfiction meme!

The rules?  (Of course there are rules! Sometimes you've gotta add structure to get the creative juices flowing - that's how this works.)

1. There are no rules.  (Um.  Wait.)
2. Pick five fandoms.  List them in alphabetical order.

1. Doctor Who (classic)
2. Doctor Who (new)
3. Sherlock Holmes
4. Twin Peaks
5. The West Wing

3. Visit this site to find your first RANDOM POEM OF POWER.  Write down the 5th line (yes, even if it's an E.E. Cummings poem and you wind up with an apostrophe).  Repeat five times and - you guessed it - list 'em in alphabetical order!  (No cheating, mind!  This is a challenge and it's always been about creativity.)

1. "across the featureless fairytale"
2. "he'd have to love something else..."
3. "my grey hand upon her greyer grey,"
4. "stained glass face no longer paned"
5. "You are a glass that I have paid to shatter"

4. I think you can see where this is going.  Write a very quick 50-word half-drabble for each fandom (try to do it all in one sitting - make your brain explode!), using the line from the poem as a prompt.  You don't have to include it in the half-drabble - it's just inspiration.

5. Bravo!  Have a cookie.

1. Fractured
Fandom: Doctor Who (classic)
Prompt: "across the featureless fairytale"
Characters: Four
Spoilers: "The Deadly Assassin"

There is blood and water and poison in the air – the forbidding forest, closed off now from reality, rejoices in his pain.  In the silence of this moment, there is eternity.

(a sacrifice to the false gods)

He perches in a tree, terrified hunter, and waits for death, a stranger.

2. Substitution
Fandom: Doctor Who (new)
Prompt: "he'd have to love something else..."
Characters: Mickey Smith
Spoilers: Early first series.

The present is a cold place when you’re alone – he knows that with all the wisdom of one forever left behind.  He’s always been defined by her, shaped by her presence, erased in her absence.

And when they were together, he loved her smile, because that was easy to do.

3. Fall
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Prompt: "my grey hand upon her greyer grey,"
Characters: John Watson, Mary Morstan
Spoilers: "The Sign of the Four", coupled with a wee hint at "The Final Problem"/"The Empty House"

In my years as a medical man, I’ve discovered that terror is never so strong as when safety is within sight.  She cries.

She is a strong woman and I clasp her hand in mine, no vulgar fortune-seeker.

“We are dying,” she whispers, and I know it to be true.

4. Reflection
Fandom: Twin Peaks
Prompt: "stained glass face no longer paned"
Characters: Dale Cooper
Spoilers: Touches of the second-season Caroline stuff.

It’s about redemption.

It’s about her sad smile, the wind in the pines, the chill in the night.

It’s about the dead girl and all she never was.

It’s about the wary glances, the quickening heartbeat, the moments of openness, of vulnerability, of terrible grace.

It’s about the cherry pie.

5. Breaking Point
Fandom: The West Wing
Prompt: "You are a glass that I have paid to shatter"
Characters: A random creepy surgeon.
Spoilers: "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen"  Spoiler-free unless you already know what happens, which is sort of neat.

White face, cold hands.  Your blood outside, drawing us together.

The night creeps in when you least expect it – breathing isn’t something you want to be, not when it means letting go of perfection.

I read, over your shoulder, the truth of the gaze in the darkness.

It’s about intimacy.

Also: I'm taking drabble requests just for the heck of it.  Comment with a situation, a prompt, a punctuation mark!  Any fandom - anything goes.  I'll write you up something very quickly and we'll see what happens.

Comments

[vampire-cookies.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

That is a very sexy meme, m'dear! Very original too! I might just kill some time today plucking it, seeing as how I'm sickies.

*yoinks*

[eponymous-rose.livejournal.com]

Best cure for sickies = internet fluff! I'll be very interesting to see where that... um... yoinkage leads.

(Ooh, that sentence got away from me in a hurry...)

I have a few variations on this one lying around my brain somewhere - it's a fun one, because it's short. And, y'know, can be accomplished in less than half an hour while pretending to work. Yes. Work.

[eers.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Wow. *falls silent*

Um. I might try to do this sometime soon, but I'm not sure I'm going to make anything sensible out of it. But it sure sounds like a lot of fun. :)

[eponymous-rose.livejournal.com]

It's nice, because you don't really have to worry about looking the semidrabbles over. Also, because it's more than one fandom - I was all "who are the main characters again?" That's probably a good refresher.

Because I am a terrible procrastinator, I told myself: "No lunch until you finish the meme!" Because I like my food, it got done. :D

[curuchamion.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I had to do this one... I find I can't write Sapphire & Steel to a Robert W. Service prompt, but it was fun trying anyway!

This meme needs to be more popular.