In My Life, a Gravitation fanfic by Sailorspazz (sailorspazz@yahoo.com) (real name Stacey Rice)

Back story: Gravitation is the story of an up-and-coming rock and roll singer named Shindou Shuuichi who unwittingly meets the love of his life one night while strolling through the park as he contemplates a new song he’s been working on. The person he meets: a man named Yuki Eiri, a cruel and ruthless romance novelist whose first action is to harshly insult the lyrics of Shuuichi that blew on the wind and landed at his feet. From this shaky beginning blooms a relationship that neither man seems to be able to explain (especially given the fact that neither of them had considered themselves to be gay). Through hardships ranging from Eiri’s overly protective brother-in-law (and the president of Shuuichi’s record label) demanding that they break up to Shuuichi being hauled off to New York by a crazy fangirl record producer, the two men still end up coming back together, almost as if gravity is pulling them in.

Eiri’s character is not cruel without reason. A major betrayal in his past has caused him to almost instantly dislike and distrust everyone he meets, and throughout the story Shuuichi is faced with the seemingly impossible task of breaking down those walls and getting Eiri to open up. He makes progress throughout the manga, and by the end it even seems like Eiri might be ready to admit his love for Shuuichi. However, he still harbors feelings for the past love who betrayed him, and in this fanfic I explore Eiri’s thought process as he makes an effort to forget his painful past and move forward with Shuuichi. As will be explained in the opening author’s notes, Eiri has a few flashbacks that give him perspective on his life. Some of these flashbacks flesh out events that were mentioned but never fully shown in the manga, and some are entirely my own invention. The result is a piece that ranges from tragedy to complete goofiness, and I’ve previously identified its genre as romance, though this contest doesn’t appear to have that category so I guess it best fits with drama.

The original author’s notes (all of which I’m leaving intact, even though some may be irrelevant since they sometimes contain apologies for long gaps between chapters) explain a little bit of what this fic means to me, but perhaps I can explain it more clearly (and in one piece, rather than small fractions scattered about) if I do it here. The time when I wrote it was one plagued by both stress and relaxation (an odd combination, and pretty trying to oscillate between them as I was at the time). I graduated from college two terms early in December of 2004, and during the time when I wrote this fic (March to July 2005) I was, for the bulk of the time, an unemployed college graduate still living with my parents. For once, this left me time to actually sit down and write a fic in a somewhat decent amount of time, as opposed to previous fics I’ve written where I would go for moths between chapters because I was too busy to have much time to write. However, this was a time when I really shouldn’t have been sitting back and relaxing because I was getting married in August, which meant I needed to get a job so I would be able to move out while simultaneously planning ten thousand little wedding details that I had never imagined I would have to think about. This fic ended up being a distraction and escape from the stress, which turned out to be both good and bad since it kept me from getting too stressed out, but it also ended up hindering things that I should have been worried about getting done. Towards the end, the fic started losing out a little to my more important responsibilities (hence the reason why the final chapter took longer than the others), but after all was said and done, everything turned out how I wanted: I was very proud of the end result of my fic, I found work, and the wedding (on August 20th....we’ll be celebrating our two week anniversary together at the con ^_^ v) went off smoothly, thanks to a lot of last minute scrambling (kind of an unusual occurrence following a three year engagement, but my procrastination knows no bounds ^_^;;).

While writing the fic, you could say I was in a loving state of mind (with all the wedding stuff I had to get done, I really had no choice but to think of anything besides love :P). This may be why the fic turned out to pretty much about just love, without much of an actual story going on. It may not be a very exciting read for those looking for something more action packed, but I tried to go very in depth with the emotional thought process of the troubled man known and loved by Shuuichi as Yuki Eiri, and I believe I accomplished that.

Well, I’ve babbled on long enough (that’ll be a theme in any of my author’s notes type sections, trust me :P). This is the first time I’m submitting my work to a contest, so I hope it stacks up to the other entries. Proceed forward through the next section of rambling and enjoy the fic!

September 2, 2005

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Places to read the fic:

My own site: Boy's Love Shack, Fanfiction

Fanfiction.net: Click here

Gurabiteshiyon: Click here

Mediaminer: Click here