Generally A Mess

Hello and welcome to the thirteenth edition of Ghost Swap overall, third edition in fest form! As always, we are here to create fanworks based on each other’s ideas, to eventually post them all on the game’s anniversary to celebrate it with a bang!

Schedule: Prompting begins: May 12th Prompts are posted: May 19th Works are posted: June 19th

It’s a simple schedule for a simple format. First we gather the prompts, our big pile of cool shiny things, then we pick whatever we like and fill it, with no intermediate steps.

At the form, you can submit up to eight separate prompts, anonymously (“Jowd orb”) or listing your name at the start of each one if you would like to be tagged in any potential fills (“laughingmango - Jowd orb”). You can also specify fic or art if you want. If nothing is specified, the prompt is meant for either medium.

In each prompt, please write in a loose description of the character(s) you would like to receive and of the situation(s) you would like to see them in. The prompts don’t have to feature completely different characters and situations - one could be a sad take on Yomiel and Sissel’s friendship, another could be post-game Yomiel and Jowd friendship fluff, a third one could be a fantasy AU where Sissel is Yomiel’s familiar. Or the old GSwap staple Rindge/Sith, of course, what is Gswap if not three rats in a trenchcoat and the uncollapsed possibility of Rindge/Sith. Crossover prompts are allowed. As always, you can look at past prompts for inspiration. If you want to avoid something that might come up in filling your prompt (maybe you are prompting a scenario that might lend itself to a shippy reading but you don’t like that ship), state it simply and politely in the prompt itself - there is no separate field for likes and dislikes (“laughingmango - Jowd orb, art, please no Missile swapping Jowd for a ball”).

On may 10th, the list will be published and everyone will be free to pick whichever they like best and create a fanwork based on that request. Late prompters are welcome but will get less visibility. It’s okay if more than one person is working on the same prompt, we don’t have to coordinate. It’s very welcome if one person decides to fill more than one prompt.

As usual, all works will then be published on Tumblr on June 19th, the anniversary of Ghost Trick’s original release.

These light rules mean that you are free to pick what you like and work with the prompt of your dreams. However, there is no guarantee that one of your own prompts will get picked. All the same, from past experience (and last year’s smashing success!) I sincerely hope that among the works posted on June 19th we will all find something that’ll make us happy, regardless of whether we prompted it ourselves or whether it came from someone else with similar (or surprising!) tastes.

These new rules also mean that there is no mod checking that all participants have a work ready to post on the 19th. Honor system: if you submit some prompts, please try, in good faith, to then pick someone else’s prompt and give it a spin. If RL then gets in the way, it happens and that’s okay.

Happy prompting!

Yomiel (Ghost Trick, 2010)

List Of Archetypes

Animal Theming

Angst

Chronokenetic

Criminal

Deadpan Snarker

Detective

Dominating

Duality

Spectacles

Intelligence

Magnificent Bastard

Pale Twink

Technical Antagonist

Well Dressed

@fyeahghosttrick  it be the #ghost swap and it be for you, @katecattus​ I ended up following three of your prompts (mostly by accident, mind you XD). Here they are: Prompt #1 Anything on how Yomiel met Sissel, could be at any point in their lives, any situation, just give me a first spark that attracted them to each other Prompt #2 I don’t get tired of Yomiel in prison, so anything on that note, be it a story or an art would be nice Prompt #3 The main cast interacting with Yomiel post canon. Make it an accident or something planned, apologetic on one or both sides, but something with a feel-good vibe And here’s the Ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48004426 ____

It has been said that ‘the fog comes in on little cat feet’; perhaps that is why your thoughts came in like fog, a gradual build-up of emotions and memories.

That’s when I met you, old friend.

I had ransacked your body, claimed it as my own. I had pitter-pattered those little cat feet - no, little kitten feet, given how small you were (as small as you are now, because I took away your ability to grow up) - off in search of food, of water, of comfort and 'home’. All I could hear originally were your base thoughts: 'I need food’, 'I’ll die of starvation’, 'it’s just so cold’, and 'I’m lonely’. 'I’m lonely, lonely, lonely, abandoned by all those who might love me.’ (I was so lonely, too. That’s almost certainly what drove us together.)

So I took you out, traveled away from the corpse I didn’t realize was mine, and gathered you food, and gathered water water, and gathered even the occasional appreciative human. In those days, as you slept on the brink of consciousness and I had forgotten my own twisted existence, life was vaguely peaceful, a sort of fuzzy cohabitation where neither party was truly in their best minds. And then I found her, dangling down from our ceiling, and everything I had forgotten came rushing back.

All the memories of yours that had crept in like mist, the immediate recollection of who was in front of me - they made me realize that I was somehow in someone else’s body, rummaging around a house I just traveled to on subconscious instinct alone, parading around some cat while my own body was gods-know-where and my fiance was, well. I don’t even remember what happened directly afterwards; I know I retrieved my corpse at some point and had puppeteered it back home, but how exactly I did that has only gotten fuzzier over time. Despite the whole “taking over your body” thing, I still had yet to fully absorb the implications of my abilities, or my state of being, because wow, who’d have thought that the lack of feeling was some weird side effect of being a walking corpse and not just an awful trauma response? All I know is that a few days later, I was somehow taking care of the starved kitten I accidentally saved, adopting a name for you I never thought I’d use again.

…I think it was that convergence of memories that netted you the name Sissel.“

And so, the ghostly black cat who moved as though he was transient, blue mist - he blinked back, his fur rippling against the blood-red backdrop. "I see.”

 (I’m fighting the urge to facepalm, Sissel, because that was a non-response if there ever was one.)

“Yes, well,” a slight bristle here, a twitchy whisker there, “I’m not sure if I have any good responses to this.” (I can’t mess up on my words here…!)

“Cat got your tongue?”

“….”

“…still,” the man-formerly-in-red-but-now-currently-in-pink spoke with an-almost smile, a sight more common as each day in the new world passed, “thanks for listening. You and the other Sissel check up so frequently that I can almost push past the leftover despair.” And with that, his not-quite-smile darkened with melancholy, a much more familiar sight. “Almost.”

And so, in lieu of a response, Sissel leaned himself into Yomiel’s shoulder; an ethereal feeling, as everything in the ghost world is, but a comforting touch nonetheless. “Then,” with a patented cat smile, “I’ll just keep asking you questions until you can truly smile. Okay?” And without waiting for a response, the mental link ended, the world no longer painted in hues of red, a ghostly black cat no longer (visibly) gracing his presence.

@fyeahghosttrick‘s ghost swap exchange!! for @wyrmswears ! >:) I was your secret ghost santa,, the prompt was “Sissel makes a not-so-convincing human”