rionaleonhart | Haru, Get Out Of The Sink.

Haru is probably my favourite character in Free!. At first glance he appears to be the typical serious, emotionless protagonist, but a viewer will quickly come to realise that in fact he is driven by a powerful emotion.

'Ah, yes,' you might say, nodding sagely. 'He's driven by his deep-seated love for his friends. I've seen this before.'

You would be incorrect. Haruka is driven by his uncontrollable desire to be immersed in water at all times.

Here are some notes I scribbled down on the train yesterday, illustrating why I should probably not write Free! fanfiction:

I sort of want to write a Haru/water fic, but I've got no idea how to make it work. Possibly for the best. Makoto keeps walking in on Haru and... water... in compromising situations? THIS IS DIFFICULT TO ENVISION.

Haru wouldn't be remotely abashed, either; he'd just stare at Makoto with his perfectly serious expression.

(Later:)

Haru wears his swimsuit in the bath. Is it more intimate, in his eyes, to be in his swimming gear in the water than it is to be nude in the water?

Am I seriously thinking about this question?

This makes a compromising Haru/water situation even more difficult to depict, particularly if Makoto is to recognise it as such. Blast!

(Later:)

How do you write about a guy losing his virginity to a swimming pool???

Part of the problem, I think, is that I'd want to take the Haru/water pairing seriously if I ever wrote fanfiction for it, because my Haru/water 'shipping is entirely sincere; it's easily the truest pairing in Free! and possibly the truest pairing in any work of fiction ever created. But it's inherently absurd! If I try to write about it in a serious style, the mere fact that I'm working in a serious style will make it seem silly! So I think this will probably have to remain unwritten. Sorry, Haru; I've failed you. You'll have to assuage your disappointment by sitting in a fountain and staring unsettlingly at passers-by.

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COMMENT THAT IS ENTIRELY UNRELATED TO THIS ENTRY:

So I spend time on a video game streaming site called Twitch - I think I've mentioned this, right? And someone is sometimes playing DANGAN RONPA, so it made me think of you. I watched a little bit of it too. I thought you might appreciate this knowledge!

http://www.twitch.tv/themasterll/b/436733781 (the subtitles are English)

I dunno if they'll play anymore, but thought you might be interested.

-timydamonkey

It's not the translation I'm familiar with, so it might be interesting to have a look; thank you! My Internet connection's being too slow to play more than two seconds at a time right now, though. What part did you watch? (And were you already familiar with the story, or were you just jumping in blindfolded?)

What I know about Dangan Ronpa I learned from your LJ. :P

The bit I watched... not sure where it is in that long clip, but it had Monobear in it (since he's the one whose name I know and he was being ridiculously hammy lol) and I just assumed it was some kind of DRAMATIC SHOWDOWN!! but who knows, I couldn't follow any of it. xD

Also if you leave it loading for a bit as you pause it might work better: that clip's around five hours, so what looks like it not loading may just be it needs a bit of time to get ahead of it.

I just skipped through a bit and the bit I saw is around about the five hour ten minute mark (I recognise the stagey set up), but I wouldn't skip there without the build up as it's all... well, heavily built up (though you likely know what happened anyway from the translation, but it might look a bit different animated?).

Ah, that's just after a trial! (So, yes, I suppose it was some kind of DRAMATIC SHOWDOWN!!) The trials are my favourite parts of the game. The Let's Play, although it's mainly in screenshot form, actually had videos for all the trial segments, as they're fully voice acted and more visually dynamic than the other sections.

How do you write about a guy losing his virginity to a swimming pool???

I know this feeling. Hockey fandom - the place where one of the most-written-about players took an ice rink to prom.

I'm trying to work out how this can be possible and failing. Do you have to relocate the prom to the ice rink?

Kind of?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94j-gjc8W0A

Just so you know, I read this post and decided, hey why not try an episode of this since I didn't have anything else going on? ...And then I ended up watching all four episodes in a day. So, um. I'm not sure how I feel about myself knowing that the thing that finally sold me on this show being 'it's an epic love story between a teenage boy and water', but I am incredibly happy to have watched it.

(Especially since you're 100% correct! He just gets this wobble in his eye whenever he sees a body of water. He probably goes outside and rolls in the puddles after it rains.)

Ahahaha, oh dear. I sort of feel as if I should apologise for bringing this ridiculous thing into your life. Well done for being tempted by the epic boy/water love story, though; your priorities are entirely correct.

(He probably goes outside and rolls in the puddles after it rains.

THIS IS ADORABLE. Yes!)

I still haven't seen Free!, but I think it's hilarious that you're doing this a few weeks after I started doing weird woman/water original fiction. (I got inspired by a vacation earlier this year where a friend and I were joking about the sea trying to take my top off. The mechanics of anything sexual are hard to figure out, and I eventually scrapped the porn version for the moderately suggestive weirdness version, but you can definitely ramp up the sensuality and create an interesting vibe.

...don't ask me about the woman/fire one.)

That is... quite curious timing. I suppose Free!'s particular brand of fanservice wouldn't really be to your tastes, but it's certainly the thing to watch if you're interested in person/water. (This should not be considered an actual rec.)

Yeah, that is a bit odd. Is it us, or something in the water?

Um, I don't think woman/water porn would be as tough as you'd imagine, considering my first orgasm-y feels as a kid was to a public pool water jet.

Interesting. That suggests some definite possibilities, although I was mostly thinking of the ocean.

You could always go with a supernatural personification of the ocean

True. I'm trying to do something a bit more direct, though.

I love that this is the first comment you've made here in over a year; what a re-entrance! It'd certainly be easier to write about Haru losing his virginity to a pool if he weren't a (cis, I'm fairly certain) male.

Hah, yeah, I'm pretty random when it comes to commenting.

Maybe the TRUE ship is Haru/water/swimshorts! He was rather pleased that he found better fitting ones.

True; it's the only time I can think of that we've seen him smile. But Haru's love for water is so pure that it seems strange to complicate it by bringing in third parties.

I'm definitely thinking too seriously about this.

What if somehow the water created pressure on the swimshorts in a rather pleasing way? But you'd still need currents and jetstreams in water.

MAYBE this is why he is so sad all the time, he's realised he can't have sex with water.

I tried to watch Free!, having heard so much about it, but unfortunately Googling "watch free anime online" doesn't yield very helpful results... hehe.

Really, though. None of my usual hosting sites seem to have it, either. Where are all the fangirls getting hold of this show?

Ha, that is a bit of a problem! Its full title is Free! - Iwatobi Swim Club, if that helps.

That helps a lot, thank you! I thought for a while there that the makers had called it Free! literally just to mess with anyone wanting to search it online. XD

Haru, Get Out Of The Sink.

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