Beam's Blog of Writing and Other Things.

So I felt like doing a blog post today on one of the two 'verses I currently have going on in my drabble dump thread. Was going to make it MoS!Rin, but I can't pass up the opportunity to gush a bit about Ayaka/Shirou because my God, I love it to pieces. It's my excuse to write Ayaka, write fluff, and write Shirou getting some lovin' all in one!

The concept of the pairing, from what I remember, initially started in my Grandfatherly Gifts thread; at the time, it was a thought of Shirou being engaged to Ayaka from a young age, while Sakura was off being a pimp and seducing all of the other available ladies (and some dudes) in school, and would have featured Sakura giving her old friend some advice on how to score with his lady love. It was discussed for a bit, and while I liked the concept at the time I just didn't feel the spark. I didn't know much about Ayaka's character, and at the time her character design was a bit lacking (compared to this which is just, my God, she's gorgeous here).

Then Fate/Prototype happened. It was only twelve minutes or so, not much of anything, but it gave me a base for Ayaka's character and some sense of how she'd interact with Shirou if they were, by any chance, in a romantic relationship. Thus was the thought born, and eventually became a small series of drabbles which I plan to go back to because somehow, in some way, I have utterly fallen in love with this pairing. I don't even know how that happened.

Some other minor tidbits:

-On Ayaka: One thing I always loved about her character was her obvious inferiority complex. I don't know why, I'm just a sucker for characters with low self-esteem who eventually realize no, they have worth, even if it's not the measure of worth someone else has used. My version on her in this 'verse has a mild, lingering case of the complex, but a few years with Shirou has knocked it out of her pretty decently. She totally initiated their first time, because he was too much of a gentleman to push her and thought she was okay with waiting until they were married.

-On Shirou: My God, he's happy and he's sane! I didn't think that was possible! All joking aside, though, the major difference between the boy here compared to canon is he never heard Kiritsugu's dream, and instead was able to make Ayaka smile when they met as kids. Thus, his ideal never became 'be a superhero' and is instead 'make Ayaka smile', which is overall an easier ideal to accomplish. It's also a slightly more selfish, narrower ideal, but he's happy with it. Several years with his girl has overall made him more relaxed and generally more teasing, especially with her.

(Seriously, I could write this AU all day just for Shirou. I love how he's turned out here.)

-On Manaka: I completely blame the current arc ('Manaka is batshit insane') on Aiden, who went and wrote his Manaka drabble to counteract my fluffy Ayaka/Shirou stuff, mostly because we always wondered if she'd latch onto Shirou like she did Saber in Prototype. I will probably write very little from her POV, sadly; I personally can't stand her character all that much, though I like how Aiden and others have written her. I'm just not a fan of the yandere archetype in general, and Manaka's yandere tendencies are a bit too strong for my tastes.

-On the background: So this is basically an AU where Kiritsugu was successful in destroying the Grail, so there will be no Grail War any time in the near future or any time after (don't ask me how it happened, I just made it so because honestly, I prefer writing Shirou not in the War). Basically, boring normal AU with an emphasis on ROMANCE.

-On the Sajyou family: My head canon for this family here is that they're a small, no name group of magi that pretty much fly under the radar; Ayaka is a mediocre magus at best, and Manaka is a freak of nature, so no one's really sure how to view her, even the magi. Ayaka's father was basically a friend/friendly enemy of Kiritsugu's who helped him in the past, and figured he might as well put his second born, mediocre daughter to use for a political marriage to please Kiritsugu; the fact that it became genuine love was of little concern to him. He died in a research accident when Ayaka was in her late tweens/early teens, or at least, that's what she says when anyone asks about him.

'Tis all for now. I may have put too much thought into this as a romantic series, but eh, what the hell, I enjoy it.