See, once again I have to second guess a joke. You write a line that would be a perfectly normal kind of joke to make, the kind that in real life no one would think twice about, but say it to the wrong person and it becomes incredibly insensitive. Like I'll just be typing and it comes out:

“She let you fly alone?” He was good, but there was no way Noelle would let him go out on his own.

“Well, it took some convincing,” he admitted sheepishly, “but I’ve had enough hours in the air with both her and Ginji. Although if I so much as scratch this baby, it’s going to cost me my house, my sword, and my first-born child.”

And then I look at it and realize you can't have Guy make a joke about giving up his kid to a girl who was actually literally taken from her birth parents as a baby and given to someone else.

So I've changed it to:

“Well, it took some convincing,” he admitted sheepishly, “but I’ve had enough hours in the air with both her and Ginji. Although if I so much as scratch this baby, it’s going to cost me my house, my sword, and one limb of her choice.”

“You’ll miss your sword the most, won’t you?”

“Yeah. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Better? God, no one in Natalia's life lost a limb, did they? I mean, people die and stuff, but no amputations, right?


....Crap, can I even make the joke about the sword? The one that hung like a trophy in the house of the man who killed his family?

Dammit, this is just getting too complicated.

Hell, I'm leaving it anyway. Who's going to think that much about it?

Tags: fic snippets
Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: 9 crimes--damien rice