Hey, y'all. Long time reader of this forum, but I just registered a short while ago. I'm looking forwards to trading ideas with you all. Don't strangle me if I accidentally break something valuable, though, please? I'm sure I'll get the hang of the unwritten rules of this forum soon enough.
Okay, for my first, tiny idea: what if, a little time after Keitaro made his famous promise, his family moved to America? Little Keitaro doesn't forget his vow so easily, though--he grows up and finds a way to get back to Japan, hoping to live with his granny and go to Tokyo U to fulfill his promise. This means, of course: a (stereotypically) Americanized Keitaro. How Americanized, and how does it affect the "normal" flow of things? That's up to the writer.
My second idea is bigger. In fact, I tried to write it up to put in the previews section, but chapter one just wouldn't flow. So, I tried chapter two, but that wouldn't flow either. I eventually managed to write a chapter of the story, but soon realized that I really couldn't write it the way I wanted to and soon gave up on writing the story altogether, which is why the chapter I did write is here instead of in the other forum.
Idea: what if Keitaro snapped?
Now, I know what you're saying: hasn't everyone tried this already? Yes, BUT!
Every "snaps" story I've seen to far that Keitaro turning his personality 180 degrees, making him violent and uncaring, et cetera, et cetera. Instead, the Keitaro in this story acts no differently at all, smiling and studying and getting beat like the normal Keitaro...unless he's alone.
Story overview:
-Keitaro blocks the hole from his room to Naru's. This point is glossed over in the story, a sort of "By-the-way", perhaps even just a single line spoken by some character.
-Keitaro acts the same as he does normally, but no longer goes FAR out of his way for others. Sure, if he sees someone in trouble, he'll go out of his way to help, but he doesn't bring hot chocolate to Naru's room for no reason, so to speak.
-At some point during a night Kitsune is asked by one of the others to "fetch" the landlord (for dinner? for something else?). She goes to his darkened room...
---
"Keitaro." again, she called into the pitch black, and again, there was no sound but the faint shuffling.
The sound warrented investigation.
Mitsune stepped into the room, stepped onto the edges of the faint light that spilled into the room from the hallway and was devoured helplessly like the meal of some great beast. Becoming more sober by the second, she took a first hesitant movement against the blackness.
Her foot slid, suddenly encountering significantly less friction than what a hardwood floor usually provided. Her eyes shot to the ground, to her foot, her brain momentarily refusing to process the sight given (It's blood, isn't it? He's dead, he's dead, and his murderer is in the room ahead of me he's going to kill me he's going) before she realized that the mystery object underfoot was paper.
Mitsune let out a clear, audible sigh of relief.
The shuffling stopped.
Heart racing, she bent down and retrieved the sheet of paper, lifting her foot to let it escape into her hand, and bringing it up to the faint hallway light to allow her eyes to decipher the image.
She remembered vaguely in the back of her mind that Naru had once mentioned that Keitaro was a passable artist. Now, Mitsune could see that the words had been an understatement. She stared, all her attention given to the picture, the rough sketch of Naru, somehow simultaneously far from perfect and ready to be given to some strict art teacher somewhere to be graded. Even with the guiding lines forming a cross here over the face and circles here over the hanging hands, the picture still seemed like a snapshot of the girl who was Mitsune's friend, a girl sitting, smiling at the viewer of the sketch, sitting in a nonexistant chair, one hand clutching a knee, the oppoiste arm dropping straight down, fingers curled slightly to the side of a wind-blown shirt below a neck that rose to a chin and a nose and eyes eyes that were supposed to be full of life but they weren't full of life because they had been ripped out, torn out and there were streams there were rivers of blood dripping from the empty sockets down the cheeks and even so the face was smiling smiling
She flung the drawing as hard as she could away from herself in sudden shock and disgust. It twirled in the air, dancing to and fro before floating towards her, and suddenly it wasn't a sheet of paper anymore but a wounded animal trying to make one last mad snap at the one that had triumphed over it. Mitsune staggered backwards, her feet moving silently, and the paper made a faint noise as it slid to a stop and everything was quiet again.
Go back now, before you regret it, a wise voice was screaming in Mitsune's mind, but at the same time, another was whispering come, come.
She stepped forwards again, unconsciously avoiding the sketch she had seen earlier, staggering into the blackness and realizing, suddenly, that there was another paper under her foot, a different drawing, and there was a drawing to the side of her foot, and a drawing to the other side, and
And as she looked ahead, her eyes adjusting to the dark, she realized that there were sheets of paper everywhere, and
She knelt down to the ground, then lowered herself to her hands and knees, bringing her face closer to the ground, her fingers grabbing wildly at the drawings and flipping them over and discarding and grabbing a different one and tossing it away and grabbing a different on and a different one and this one had Naru too, shaded clothing suddenly giving way to a bleeding wound in which the ribs were visible, ribs that were cracked and bent at an angle that pierced the lungs and you knew it pierced the lungs because her happy smiling face had blood that trickled from the corners of her grin
and here she was again, and this Naru's ribs were fine, and her smiling face was unblemished, but the entire lower portion of her body was gone but still she smiled, dragging herself by her hands and leaving a bloody trail behind her, the broken jagged end of her spine making a furrow in the ground the sand and as she dragged herself there were bits of bloody flesh dropping into the bloody trail but still she was smiling so happily so happily you could hardly believe
and this one wasn't a sketch of Naru at all, but one of Motoko, Motoko, the perfect swordswoman, who could fight off armies of bloodthirsty murderers and leave them alive but in terrible pain, except something had obviously gone wrong because here Motoko was, spitting up blood as she arched her back forwards in pain, her own sword running her through the stomach and exiting out her back
And here was Naru again, her neck bent
And here
And here
And
She couldn't stop herself, locked in some sort of cycle of grab-and-toss, like some moviegoer watching some else's actions and she saw and saw and saw and saw and suddenly, there he was.
Keitaro.
Mitsune looked about herself, realizing that somehow, she had made her way from the door to the far corner of the room. Her eyes slid over to the face of Keitaro, Keitaro, who was curled up in the corner, sketchpad in one hand, the short nub of a sharpened and resharpened pencil in the other hand, which was blackened with graphite all the way down to the wrist. Keitaro, who wore the widest smile she had even seen on his face, a smile that instantly reminded her of a skull's
Mitsune fought down her rising gorge, somehow managing to force air out of her lungs and across her vocal cords, forming it into words, whispers. Her throat felt dry. "Keitaro...what..."
He looked up from his pad, looking at her and smiling (smiling normally again normally thank god) at her, the same way he had smiled at Shinobu while he had complimented her on the lunch she had made, the same way he had smiled at Naru when he he had finally solved the math problem that had been giving him trouble for two hours straight. But his eyes, which Mitsune had once seen shining, were dull and lifeless. But still, his mouth smiled and opened, and, in a quiet, perfectly normal voice, he suddenly started speaking, the words tumbling over themselves like a waterfall of sound. "It's okay, Mitsune. It's okay. See? It's not like I'm really doing it. It's okay, okay? It's okay. It's not just them, besides. It's just that those two are the most of them, so it just seems that way, but it's really okay, it's okay--"
And he was flipping the sketchpad over, turning it around so she could see--
"--prove it to you that it's okay. See? This one isn't either of them. This one isn't Naru or Motoko or Su who kicks me, but it's okay because she doesn't really mean it, even though it still hurts. See, it's a drawing, because I--"
--so she could see herself, it was a sketch of herself, except this one was much more detailed than the other ones. It was a sketch of some flat surface, and on that surface was a bottle, jsut like the bottles she Mitsune had constantly drained sake from earlier that day, except something was wrong with the bottle--
"--know that you don't hurt me as much as the others but you still do a little, so I felt bad for not drawing you so much, but it's okay now, see? It's okay, because even though I'm only drawing one, this one's extra pretty, and I--"
It was really two bottles, joined at the neck to form some sort of brown, translucent hourglass, except instead of sand it was full of sake, enough sake to fill entirely the bottom bottle and fill the top one halfway, and in the bottom bottle she could see herself, drowning, her mouth wide open to breath in air that wasn't there, and even though it was a still image, in her mind Mitsune could see herself thrashing, thrashing in the liquid, trying to--
"--spent more time than the other combined, but it's okay. Because see, now that I draw this just one I can go back to the others, see, and you can keep it because that's the only one I'm going to do, but it's okay. Now I can go back--"
She tore her eyes from the drawing, looking over the pad, over to her landlord's happy, smiling, crazed face.
A stream of drool ran from the corner of his mouth to his chin.
---
In some weird attempt to cope, Keitaro draws his tormentors, tortured. It's his way of getting revenge. He normally keeps his papers well hidden, but Kitsune busted in on him at a bad time, I suppose, which is why he's not acting 100% normal to her face.
From there, I don't know where to go, really. Kitsune might tell one of the others--or she might not. She might immediately try to snap Keitaro out of it--or she might suddenly flee after that part. It could be a depressing, no-pairing story, ending with Keitaro spiraling permanently into a deeper insanity. It could be a no pairing story that ends on an upbeat note. Kitsune might try to help Keitaro go abck to normal, or his latest picture might change her. I'm seeing a Kei-Kit pairing, or possibly Kei-Kit friendship or even Kei-other character if Kitsune spilled the beans.
How is that? Not too bad?
Okay, for my first, tiny idea: what if, a little time after Keitaro made his famous promise, his family moved to America? Little Keitaro doesn't forget his vow so easily, though--he grows up and finds a way to get back to Japan, hoping to live with his granny and go to Tokyo U to fulfill his promise. This means, of course: a (stereotypically) Americanized Keitaro. How Americanized, and how does it affect the "normal" flow of things? That's up to the writer.
My second idea is bigger. In fact, I tried to write it up to put in the previews section, but chapter one just wouldn't flow. So, I tried chapter two, but that wouldn't flow either. I eventually managed to write a chapter of the story, but soon realized that I really couldn't write it the way I wanted to and soon gave up on writing the story altogether, which is why the chapter I did write is here instead of in the other forum.
Idea: what if Keitaro snapped?
Now, I know what you're saying: hasn't everyone tried this already? Yes, BUT!
Every "snaps" story I've seen to far that Keitaro turning his personality 180 degrees, making him violent and uncaring, et cetera, et cetera. Instead, the Keitaro in this story acts no differently at all, smiling and studying and getting beat like the normal Keitaro...unless he's alone.
Story overview:
-Keitaro blocks the hole from his room to Naru's. This point is glossed over in the story, a sort of "By-the-way", perhaps even just a single line spoken by some character.
-Keitaro acts the same as he does normally, but no longer goes FAR out of his way for others. Sure, if he sees someone in trouble, he'll go out of his way to help, but he doesn't bring hot chocolate to Naru's room for no reason, so to speak.
-At some point during a night Kitsune is asked by one of the others to "fetch" the landlord (for dinner? for something else?). She goes to his darkened room...
---
"Keitaro." again, she called into the pitch black, and again, there was no sound but the faint shuffling.
The sound warrented investigation.
Mitsune stepped into the room, stepped onto the edges of the faint light that spilled into the room from the hallway and was devoured helplessly like the meal of some great beast. Becoming more sober by the second, she took a first hesitant movement against the blackness.
Her foot slid, suddenly encountering significantly less friction than what a hardwood floor usually provided. Her eyes shot to the ground, to her foot, her brain momentarily refusing to process the sight given (It's blood, isn't it? He's dead, he's dead, and his murderer is in the room ahead of me he's going to kill me he's going) before she realized that the mystery object underfoot was paper.
Mitsune let out a clear, audible sigh of relief.
The shuffling stopped.
Heart racing, she bent down and retrieved the sheet of paper, lifting her foot to let it escape into her hand, and bringing it up to the faint hallway light to allow her eyes to decipher the image.
She remembered vaguely in the back of her mind that Naru had once mentioned that Keitaro was a passable artist. Now, Mitsune could see that the words had been an understatement. She stared, all her attention given to the picture, the rough sketch of Naru, somehow simultaneously far from perfect and ready to be given to some strict art teacher somewhere to be graded. Even with the guiding lines forming a cross here over the face and circles here over the hanging hands, the picture still seemed like a snapshot of the girl who was Mitsune's friend, a girl sitting, smiling at the viewer of the sketch, sitting in a nonexistant chair, one hand clutching a knee, the oppoiste arm dropping straight down, fingers curled slightly to the side of a wind-blown shirt below a neck that rose to a chin and a nose and eyes eyes that were supposed to be full of life but they weren't full of life because they had been ripped out, torn out and there were streams there were rivers of blood dripping from the empty sockets down the cheeks and even so the face was smiling smiling
She flung the drawing as hard as she could away from herself in sudden shock and disgust. It twirled in the air, dancing to and fro before floating towards her, and suddenly it wasn't a sheet of paper anymore but a wounded animal trying to make one last mad snap at the one that had triumphed over it. Mitsune staggered backwards, her feet moving silently, and the paper made a faint noise as it slid to a stop and everything was quiet again.
Go back now, before you regret it, a wise voice was screaming in Mitsune's mind, but at the same time, another was whispering come, come.
She stepped forwards again, unconsciously avoiding the sketch she had seen earlier, staggering into the blackness and realizing, suddenly, that there was another paper under her foot, a different drawing, and there was a drawing to the side of her foot, and a drawing to the other side, and
And as she looked ahead, her eyes adjusting to the dark, she realized that there were sheets of paper everywhere, and
She knelt down to the ground, then lowered herself to her hands and knees, bringing her face closer to the ground, her fingers grabbing wildly at the drawings and flipping them over and discarding and grabbing a different one and tossing it away and grabbing a different on and a different one and this one had Naru too, shaded clothing suddenly giving way to a bleeding wound in which the ribs were visible, ribs that were cracked and bent at an angle that pierced the lungs and you knew it pierced the lungs because her happy smiling face had blood that trickled from the corners of her grin
and here she was again, and this Naru's ribs were fine, and her smiling face was unblemished, but the entire lower portion of her body was gone but still she smiled, dragging herself by her hands and leaving a bloody trail behind her, the broken jagged end of her spine making a furrow in the ground the sand and as she dragged herself there were bits of bloody flesh dropping into the bloody trail but still she was smiling so happily so happily you could hardly believe
and this one wasn't a sketch of Naru at all, but one of Motoko, Motoko, the perfect swordswoman, who could fight off armies of bloodthirsty murderers and leave them alive but in terrible pain, except something had obviously gone wrong because here Motoko was, spitting up blood as she arched her back forwards in pain, her own sword running her through the stomach and exiting out her back
And here was Naru again, her neck bent
And here
And here
And
She couldn't stop herself, locked in some sort of cycle of grab-and-toss, like some moviegoer watching some else's actions and she saw and saw and saw and saw and suddenly, there he was.
Keitaro.
Mitsune looked about herself, realizing that somehow, she had made her way from the door to the far corner of the room. Her eyes slid over to the face of Keitaro, Keitaro, who was curled up in the corner, sketchpad in one hand, the short nub of a sharpened and resharpened pencil in the other hand, which was blackened with graphite all the way down to the wrist. Keitaro, who wore the widest smile she had even seen on his face, a smile that instantly reminded her of a skull's
Mitsune fought down her rising gorge, somehow managing to force air out of her lungs and across her vocal cords, forming it into words, whispers. Her throat felt dry. "Keitaro...what..."
He looked up from his pad, looking at her and smiling (smiling normally again normally thank god) at her, the same way he had smiled at Shinobu while he had complimented her on the lunch she had made, the same way he had smiled at Naru when he he had finally solved the math problem that had been giving him trouble for two hours straight. But his eyes, which Mitsune had once seen shining, were dull and lifeless. But still, his mouth smiled and opened, and, in a quiet, perfectly normal voice, he suddenly started speaking, the words tumbling over themselves like a waterfall of sound. "It's okay, Mitsune. It's okay. See? It's not like I'm really doing it. It's okay, okay? It's okay. It's not just them, besides. It's just that those two are the most of them, so it just seems that way, but it's really okay, it's okay--"
And he was flipping the sketchpad over, turning it around so she could see--
"--prove it to you that it's okay. See? This one isn't either of them. This one isn't Naru or Motoko or Su who kicks me, but it's okay because she doesn't really mean it, even though it still hurts. See, it's a drawing, because I--"
--so she could see herself, it was a sketch of herself, except this one was much more detailed than the other ones. It was a sketch of some flat surface, and on that surface was a bottle, jsut like the bottles she Mitsune had constantly drained sake from earlier that day, except something was wrong with the bottle--
"--know that you don't hurt me as much as the others but you still do a little, so I felt bad for not drawing you so much, but it's okay now, see? It's okay, because even though I'm only drawing one, this one's extra pretty, and I--"
It was really two bottles, joined at the neck to form some sort of brown, translucent hourglass, except instead of sand it was full of sake, enough sake to fill entirely the bottom bottle and fill the top one halfway, and in the bottom bottle she could see herself, drowning, her mouth wide open to breath in air that wasn't there, and even though it was a still image, in her mind Mitsune could see herself thrashing, thrashing in the liquid, trying to--
"--spent more time than the other combined, but it's okay. Because see, now that I draw this just one I can go back to the others, see, and you can keep it because that's the only one I'm going to do, but it's okay. Now I can go back--"
She tore her eyes from the drawing, looking over the pad, over to her landlord's happy, smiling, crazed face.
A stream of drool ran from the corner of his mouth to his chin.
---
In some weird attempt to cope, Keitaro draws his tormentors, tortured. It's his way of getting revenge. He normally keeps his papers well hidden, but Kitsune busted in on him at a bad time, I suppose, which is why he's not acting 100% normal to her face.
From there, I don't know where to go, really. Kitsune might tell one of the others--or she might not. She might immediately try to snap Keitaro out of it--or she might suddenly flee after that part. It could be a depressing, no-pairing story, ending with Keitaro spiraling permanently into a deeper insanity. It could be a no pairing story that ends on an upbeat note. Kitsune might try to help Keitaro go abck to normal, or his latest picture might change her. I'm seeing a Kei-Kit pairing, or possibly Kei-Kit friendship or even Kei-other character if Kitsune spilled the beans.
How is that? Not too bad?
