batyatoon | (no subject)

So! Since nobody seems to think I particularly need a filter, I'm not making one.

Here, therefore, are the first few entries in the Heroes Season 1 Episode Title Drabble* Project. ...Which needs a new name, because that is a long and clunky name. I'm taking suggestions!

I'm not writing them in order, so the first one is #5. ~~I'm also not introducing them with the fandoms; they should be recognizeable, but not always immediately.~~ [ETA] ON SECOND THOUGHT: as

mtgat points out, people may want to avoid spoilers. So: introducing with fandoms after all.

Fandom: Supernatural, pre-canon
Title: 5. Hiros

He wasn't in her third-grade class for very long; the family arrived in the middle of February, and was gone again before April was over. Troubled kid, single-parent family, tendency towards sullenness and acting out. Far behind his classmates in most of the basics, and aggressively uninterested in catching up.

But she still has his drawing from the class assignment that asked the kids to draw a favorite memory or daydream.

A small figure and a larger one, both holding silver sticks that might be swords or guns or magic wands, their feet set triumphantly atop a crumpled heap rendered in black and red and yellow.

Underneath, in Dean's laborious clumsy lettering: my dad n me r hiros.

-----

Fandom: Quantum Leap
Title: 3. One Giant Leap

"...oh boy."

Sam's breathing sounds unnaturally loud in his own ears. Intellectually, he knows that isn't true; it's just that his breathing is the only sound anywhere nearby.

The barren gray sand stretches in all directions, brilliant and desolate under a black sky jeweled with stars. A black sky that holds an impossible blazing sun, throwing stark shadows from his feet and the wheels of the dune buggy.

"Sam?" He turns to see Al standing there, incongruous in his Hawaiian shirt. "Okay, the bad news is, Ziggy's got no idea what you're supposed to do. The good news is, we didn't have any trouble figuring out who you are." A beat. "I'll tell you, it's nice to see Neil again, but he's really kind of pissed off at us right now."

-----

Fandom: Doctor Who, revival version, Season One
Title: 15. Run!

It was the first word he ever said to her. She took his hand, and she's been running ever since.

Sometimes for their lives, as on that first day, an inexplicable threat at their heels, terror in each gasp for breath. Sometimes for the lives of others, family or friends or total strangers, running toward the threat instead of away.

But sometimes for the sheer fantastic joy of it, for the wind of time buffeting their faces and all the worlds rushing past, for the light in his eyes like the firework flare of stars being born. Close to a thousand years old and he still has that delight in the traveling; there are times she knows she could do the same.

The universe is bright and strange, and vast: if you want to see it all, even with all the time in the world, you have to keep running.

-----

Fandom: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, post-canon
Title: 13. The Fix

The words of Litany in Time of Plague keep running through Kivrin's mind. Farewell, adieu, Earth's bliss -- / This world uncertain is.

There's nothing uncertain about the look on Dani's face as she circles the net, almost dancing in her eagerness to be off. Her clothes and hair are right, nothing to startle the early-20th-century contemps; she's memorized her story, rattled off the responses easily when Kivrin quizzed her. Her accent is as close as they can make it -- not that there's any chance of her being burned as a witch during the First World War, but suspicion of foreigners was at its usual wartime high.

It's not the war she's going to study, though. It's the influenza pandemic.

"We've got the fix," says Brasenose's tech, and Dani grins; she looks exhilarated, and determined, and about ten years old. Oh, Mr. Dunworthy. Is that how I looked to you?

"Godspeed," says Kivrin softly, knowing Dani can't hear her.

-----

More coming as I write them.

[ETA the second] *Drabble: yes, I am aware that strictly speaking a drabble should be precisely one hundred words. I subscribe to a somewhat looser interpretation, to wit: if it's between 75 and 150 wordcount, I don't feel too bad about calling it a drabble. Call them postcard fics if you prefer that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Could you maybe please list the fandoms for those of us who don't folow the same shows you do and won't necessarily want spoilers? ("No" is an acceptable answer, btw.)

... oh spoilers good point.

Um. I should probably do that then.

*facepalm* This time with actual own LJ and not RP LJ!

You made

abrazak3 snarf with the second one! *high-fives you*

Love 'em! :D (And thanks.)

*grins* I owe the second one entirely to the fact that Alex recently reminded me that Al Calavicci used to be in the space program.

3 and 15 are obvious. 13 I'm pretty sure I know--just read that recently, as it happens. 5...I have a guess, but no way to confirm--don't know the fandom I'm guessing, after all.

I like, though.

5 is Supernatural, pre-series.

That was the guess. But I had no way to confirm, because all I had to go on was the name.

...and I would have said To Say Nothing Of The Dog for 13, but six of one, right?

Do you know, I still haven't read To Say Nothing Of The Dog?

I really need to.

*shrug* I need to read Doomsday Book. It's on the list.

To Say Nothing of The Dog is, I think, a more successful book than Doomsday Book. Connie Willis does better at nineteenth-century farce than at fourteenth-century drama. That is, I find myself wincing less often when Willis is not attempting to describe matters medieval.

Still, as (I believe)

thistleingrey pointed out once, there's a major problem with the whole setup, namely that no Oxford college could ever change its history departments in such a way that they rely solely on time travel.

Also, I like your Doomsday ficlet. :)

And thankee-sai. :)

I didn't get the impression it was solely. Was it?

What nearly spoiled Doomsday Book for me wasn't imagining that a world-class university like Oxfor would have a time machine. It was trying to believe that they'd let a lowly *undergrad* anywhere near it.

Ooops. Anonymous, c'est moi. That's weird; I'm logged on in the window I opened this one from.

The fics are all lovely. The QL is my favorite -- moon landing uber alles, with the soundtrack quoting "Hope Eyrie."

But the I think the DW one best captures the spirit of its source.

Actually my soundtrack for the QL one was "Toast For Unknown Heroes".

A man is walking on the moon with his eyes turned up toward space / And the bright blue world that watches him reflected on his face...

Aw, Kivrin.

Oh, I like both the Dr. Who & Doomsday drabbles! Thank you. :)

These are lovely. I like how vivid they are, even in so few words.

Love the QL one. :)

Shiny shiny shiny Quantum Leap drabble! I'd love to see more. :D

*laughing hysterically at the Quantum Leap one*

Nice, every one -- and a great idea for a drabble challenge!

Heeeeee. I like them all muchly!

Even the last one, for which I don't know the canon and thus am only guessing at the context of it. But still!

5. Underneath, in Dean's laborious clumsy lettering: my dad n me r hiros.

Eeeee! :D

3. omg. BEST. LEAP. EVER. (Seriously, if the show had continued, they might've done that to him.)

15. Oh, lovely. And just, yes. :)