starzki | "Poppy, you're getting so big now! How old are you?" "I'm 60. Can we get past the small talk?"

Fanfiction.net got over whatever glitch has been plaguing it and I've published my new story. It's here.

Let me say that although it's not a Mir/San, and although she might really dislike it, I've dedicated it to

aamalie for all of her hard work on the MiroSantas and because of the miscommunication with the fic for her. This story does have a lot of Mir/San influence even though it's centered around Sango's relationship with Inuyasha post-manga. It's my first real try at a friendship fic.

Some thoughts/additional author's notes:

I was reading random fanfics the other day and came across a few friendship fics that were really sweet and nice. I loved reading them. Also, it inspired me to do something similar. I immediately wanted to do a Sango-Inuyahsa friendship story, but I'm so bad at voicing Inuyasha that I wasn't sure I could pull it off (nor am I still sure, even with the fic being done and published).

So I pondered on it for a few days and figured when during the storyline it should be set (post-ending), and what the characters should be doing/talking about. And then I thought of something that made me laugh. So that's what I went with. It's about 3000 words of set up to get to a cheap, silly, stupid, and really cheap punchline.

When I sat down to write it, I lost a little confidence. I write from Miroku's perspective much more easily than I can Sango's. I desperately wanted to change the story up a bit so that I could write with a bit more ease. But then I realized it wouldn't be nearly as funny if it was Miroku, plus I really wanted to explore Inuyasha and Sango's friendship. With them being both fighters and not having any romantic interest in each other, I thought they would probably treat one another as teammates. Playing soccer nearly all of my life, I do have a little experience in the way teammates interact when there is genuine affection between them.

However, I've primarily played on girls'/women's teams, so I really thought I needed to go a bit beyond my own actual experiences. Sango grew up training as a slayer in a village where it seemed it was mostly men who were the fighters. All-boys/men teams have a very different dynamic from what I've observed. Theirs tends toward more teasing, bravado, and bragging. It's usually all good-natured and is meant to make everyone else laugh. Also, Inuyasha seems to embody a bit of this attitude about his fighting and training as well. Therefore, I figured that it was the male-teammate dynamic that Sango would have been most exposed to, so it would be the attitude she would adopt when training alone with Inuyasha.

I've written this with the understanding that Sango, like a lot of athletes, lets go and reveals other parts of her personality while training and practicing with friends. Personally, people who know me through soccer are always shocked at how quiet and reserved I am off the field and people I know who first see me play are similarly shocked at how loud, bossy, and (at times) ruthless I am when I play. While Sango's change in character might seem extreme for this story, based on my own experiences, I'm standing by it. I think she'd draw on her childhood and training with boys, her increased familiarity with Inuyasha over the three years Kagome was gone, and Miroku's perverted influence on her as she talked, sparred, and joked with Inuyasha.

So I think it's pretty in-character for my experience and understanding of Sango. scribefigaro looked it over for me and said I should take out the "yo mamma" jokes (no, they weren't the standard "yo mamma" jokes about being fat or stupid, fyi). Those jokes were more for me than for the readers and I guess he did have a point and the story is better without them. But still, I miss them a little. :(

Anyway, this is a long post for a story that's probably not going to get a lot of traffic. I just wanted to talk about it (and pimp it a bit) because I did have a pretty good time writing it. It's a bit of a departure for me.