LKK's Journal

I was bit the by drabble bug last night after dinner. Bitten twice, as a matter of fact. But this time, it wasn't for Tolkien but for the Get Backers anime / manga. I doubt that anyone on my friends list has even heard of the anime much less watched it. But still, I figured I'd bore you anyway with my latest writing endeavor. You can read or not read at your discretion.

You should know the drill by now even if it has been a long time since I've posted a drabble here. Behind the LJ cut is a drabble (actually two) followed by a ridiculously long discourse on how the drabble came into being.


Tinny Waltz 1
The fingers of Ban's left hand danced. His right arm stroked in precise movements. The magic he wove wrapped around him, entwined with Madoka's, and flowed outward bewitching all who heard their violins' music.

Ban closed his eyes and lost himself in childhood memories. He had spent long hours under his grandmother's gaze practicing scales and etudes, hours punctuated with staccatos of juvenile disdain for the instrument. Yet in private, there followed more hours practicing nothing but the ability to call the violin's wondrous magic, a magic untainted by curses.

Today, Ban reveled in that magic and it in him.

Tinny Waltz 2
Ginji watched as the fingers of Ban-chan's left hand danced and his right arm stroked in precise movements. The magic Ban-chan wove entwined with Madoka's and flowed into Gingi bewitching him.

He rose to his feet and danced in the alley. Beside him, Natsumi and Hevn twirled while Master banged a steel drum like a drum. Street persons laughed and cheered at the joy in their alley home. Even Shido and his beasts danced. Ginji glanced at Ban-chan's face and realized Ban-chan could create magic even with his eyes closed.

Today, Ginji reveled in Ban-chan's magic and it in him.

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Author Discussion

** I bet you're wondering what's going here, aren't you? This is an interesting test. I have always believed that the essence of a drabble, if not the specifics, should be easily understood even if the reader is unfamiliar with the drabble's setting. So my question to you is "How much did you understand? Do the drabbles make sense even though you don't know exactly what's going on?"

As for what's going on, here's the setting / story behind the drabbles. This scene comes at the end of a three-episode arc. Madoka, a world-class violin prodigy, hires Our Heroes Ban and Ginji to recover her Stradivarius that has been stolen. During the recovery mission, we discover that Ban plays the violin as well. (Ban's surprisingly good at playing the violin, to the point of impressing another world-class violinist.) After the violin is recovered, Madoka and Ban give an impromptu recital in a back alley for their friends, the neighborhood animals (don't ask), and the homeless people living in the alley.

The drabbles are set during this impromptu concert.

** I never planned to write in the Get Backers universe. It's not as if I sat down and said, "What can I write about in this universe?" But some time after dinner, I got the urge to write the first drabble, TW1. While I was planning TW1, which was focused on Ban, I realized that there needed to be a companion drabble, TW2, which was focused on Gingi. There just had to be. To not have a companion drabble felt wrong. I can't really explain it much better than that. Some things just have to be, you know?

After those two decisions were forced on me (they certainly weren't my decisions!), the drabbles wrote themselves fairly quickly. I did both of them in about 2 ½ hours, each one only had about 5 major revisions. For me that practically qualifies as instant drabbling.

I don't think these drabbles are up to the standards of my Tolkien drabbles. But the fact that they wrote themselves so quickly and unexpectedly pleases me in a weird way. So I'm content to let them stand as is.

** Why two drabbles versus one double drabble? Good question. I'm glad you asked. This was another thing that just had to be. Ideally each drabble can stand on its own. The second drabble, TW2, is weaker than the first. But it could still stand by itself if it had to. A double drabble would have felt divided because of the dual focus and would have been weaker overall as a result. However with each 100 words a separate entity, they act like two sides of the same coin: a heads and a tails, separate but joined and somehow the whole is stronger for their unity.

I didn't think of this while I was writing, but that also perfectly describes Ban and Ginji's relationship: two separate persons who are strong apart but even stronger when together.

** The title Tinny Waltz is a strange one, I suppose. Strange, but functional and appropriate. The duet Madoka and Ban played is called Tinny Waltz according to the anime's soundtrack album. (Animes often release CDs with music from the series just like movies soundtracks are released in the US.) Tinny Waltz is an upbeat, bouncy little violin piece with a gypsy or Spanish flair. I believe it was composed for the show. If you want to listen to it, you can hear it here.

http://www.coucoucircus.org/ost/generique.php?id=98

You might need to click the Play symbol to get the music to start.

** What's with the "Ban-chan" in TW2? The simplest answer to that question is that Ban-chan is Ginji's nickname for Ban. The real answer is far more complicated than that and is actually a deep insight into Ban and Ginji's relationship. If you would like more thorough explanation, just ask. I'll go into detail as to why calling Ban "Ban-chan" is so inappropriate and why the fact that Ban allows Ginji to call him that is so revealing about their relationship. (Sadly, the English dub of the anime dropped the use of Ban-chan thereby losing a whole layer of the relationship.)

** Etudes versus Études? Word's spell checker kept barking at me whenever I used the accent on études and kept suggesting etudes so I gave up trying. I think Word is wrong on this one but I didn't want to fight with a stupid word processor.

I don't play the violin (I even had to double check which hand held the violin and which hand held the bow!) but I did study piano for several years. I wanted to incorporate some technical music terms into Ban's drabble because I think he would think in those terms. That's why words like scales, etudes, and staccatos are in the drabble.

** The paragraph about Ban's childhood memories is interesting to me. At an early age, Ban was sent to live with his paternal grandmother. From what little we know, Ban and his grandmother did not get along too well. I have visions of Ban as a boy being forced to practice violin for long hours under his grandmother's strict gaze. Knowing Ban's personality, he probably didn't enjoy those practice sessions.

Somehow despite that distaste, Ban developed a professional-level skill for the violin. How? It doesn't seem to fit what we know about his childhood personality. So I developed the theory that Ban pretended to hate the violin to maintain his childish ego yet practiced in secret, teaching himself how to improvise and create music rather than simply playing the traditional scales and whatnots.

** Just because I can now that I have a DVD screen capture program, I captured the final image of the impromptu concert in the alley. Ban, in the foreground, has his back to us. He's the guy with the violin. (duh.) Ginji is in the mid-ground, blond-haired, wearing a green vest and brown shorts, and dancing like there's no tomorrow.



** The fingers of Ban's left hand danced. His right arm stroked in precise movements. The magic he wove wrapped around him, entwined with Madoka's, and flowed outward .... If you were thinking something else was happening at this point, and that something else you were thinking of was slightly smutty, yay me. I was going for a sensual feeling because I happen to think making music can be a highly sensual affair.

** The magic and curses references are not metaphorical. Ban can create magic, and his magical ability does come from a curse. The eyes closed reference is not metaphorical either. Ban has the power of the Evil Eye, but in order for him to use it, Ban must have his eyes open. The magic from the violin is metaphorical however. At least in the traditional sense of the word magic, at any rate.

** I doubt that you would notice but this is the closest I've come yet to writing slash. It lurks in TW2, the Gingi section in the way that Gingi reacts to Ban's music. Get Backers as an anime flirts on the edges of shonen-ai, a Japanese term that translates as "boy love". Shonen-ai is a common genre in anime. If Ban and Ginji aren't a couple off-screen, they're about as close as you can come without actually being a couple. I tried to incorporate that ambiguous "Are they? Or aren't they?" feeling into the second drabble but I suspect only fans of the series would actually pick up on it.


I think that covers most of the thoughts behind these two drabbles. You know something … it never ceases to amaze me how I can babble on about a mere 100 (or this case 200) words. I should give up on the drabble format and just go straight to writing essays. It would be much easier in the end.