Pairing: IkariShipping, Dawn/Paul...but not really.

Rating: K

Songfics

or Love Story

We were both young when I first saw you

I close my eyes and the flashback starts

I'm standin' there

On a balcony in summer air

Dawn was standing on the Juliet balcony of the hotel's presidential suite, still unable to truly come to grips with what she was feeling. She'd just won the Top Coordinator title in Hoenn—her first one. And she wanted to bask in it. She wanted to feel joy that she knew should have been making her extremities tingle, her heart flutter. But the feeling was hard to wrap her fingers around, filling her with a sense of melancholy. She couldn't even enjoy the lovely feeling of the hot summer air turning cool as the sun set.

See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns

See you make your way through the crowd

And say, "Hello"

Little did I know

"Wait, wait!" Dawn cried to no one in particular. "Since when am I down in the crowd? Oh, hold on."

Dawn looked down and saw a purple head of hair weaving through the crowd, tugging at his tie as he did so. Dawn had always liked black tie affairs—any opportunity to dress up was a good one—but she knew that boy didn't feel the same. Regardless, he was looking for her, and not looking up to find her.

With as much grace as possible, Dawn heaved a leg over the railing and tossed her many-layered skirt over as well. It wasn't the safest way down to the party, but it was the quickest.

It would have been easier if she'd been wearing her tennis skirt, but, somehow, Dawn and her ball gown managed to shimmy down the balcony's supports, landing at the edge of the crowd just in time for Paul to find her.

"Hello," he said, not looking at all happy to have found her.

That you were Romeo, you were throwin' pebbles

And my daddy said, "Stay away from Juliet"

And I was cryin' on the staircase

Beggin' you, "Please don't go," and I said

"Wait, throwing pebbles?" Dawn asked frantically. "I think there's supposed to be a scene break or a time skip or something so that the party's over and I'm back in my room and there's a staircase inside the hote—"

"Stay away from Dawn!" a low voice interrupted.

Suddenly a man with dark hair was throwing his body between Dawn and Paul, arms out on either side. Paul took a step back but, otherwise, looked bored.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I'm Dawn's father!" the man shouted.

"Wait, really?" Dawn asked, stepping to the side so she could get a better look at the man. "Are you really my dad?"

"Of course I am!" the man declared. "Now you listen here, sonny—"

"No, no," Dawn interrupted. "I've never met my dad before. He left when I was a baby. So either you're not my dad or you are and that's probably what this story should be about."

The man finally bothered to look at Dawn, one eye squinted as he tried to grasp what she was talking about. "Huh?"

Romeo, take me—

"No, no, no!" Dawn shouted. "Stop the music! This is no love story and, even though I could play the part of Juliet any day, Paul is no Romeo. He's closer to Macbeth."

"I resent that," Paul grumbled.

"Not my fault I can't draw a better comparison," Dawn said. "The authoress disposed of most of her Shakespeare knowledge after college. And she was never great at it to begin with. She only remembers that ambition is Macbeth's main trait because of Hamilton. But the point stands. You're not any kind of a Romeo. Not Shakespeare's and not Taylor's."

"Oh, I know," Paul said, ripping off his tie. "I've gotta be well rested for training tomorrow, so…"

He didn't bother finishing his sentence as he lumbered off, dropping his jacket on the grass as he left.

"Yeah…Stay away from Ju—Dawn!" the mysterious man shouted at Paul's retreating form.

Dawn narrowed her eyes at the man as he seemed to lose confidence in himself, shoulders dropping and giving a soul crushing sigh. "Who are you?"

"Ah, I'm an actor," he said, tossing a limp wrist in front of him, as if to show the futility of his efforts. "Someone said Taylor Swift and Pokémon and I was like, woah, those are two entertainment powerhouses, this is gonna be huge."

"Yeah, tough break buddy," Dawn said, reaching up to pat his back. She could feel a piece of paper inside his jacket and frowned. A rented suit. "You should go now."

Moral: Okay, ffnet has a rule against 'songfics' but I don't really give a crap about that. The problem with songfics is that people think that you can drop any old pairing into any old song and that that can work. This song/pairing match didn't work on multiple levels. For one, it was trying to stick too closely to the literal lyrics of the song. Songs are a different storytelling medium than short stories—you can't expect that direct an interpretation from one form to another to work. Secondly, Paul would have to be supremely out of character for him to have a place in this song. Not okay. Thirdly, I tried to give a little context at the beginning to round out the story and give it a stronger foundation. That's good! But then I quickly abandoned it for the sake of sticking to the song. Deviating from the song and just using it as inspiration would have been better.

Exception: For a songfic to be at all successful, a great deal of transformation needs to happen there. Let the song serve as inspiration, take the best from it, and leave everything else out. Make sure you're not forcing your characters out of character. Ideally, by the end, you wouldn't have to mention the song at all, you know? No lyrics in the story. Please.

Full disclosure: I've written a songfic before! Yes! And I think I did a good job of only taking core themes from the song and transforming it, but it did center on the main character doing something OOC, so still pretty much a failure. It happens! I've lived and learned since then.