Icebreakers was written by Suppi-chan [aka Suppi no Miko, or Meg, and one of the three is my name], from Saturday, September 16 2000 to Sunday, June 24, 2001.  Card Captor Sakura is (c) CLAMP and associates.  This is a fan work, with no permission or association with the copyright holders.

Thanks to Meimi for translating Nanka Shiawase [Somehow Happy] by the Oystars [the Flame of Recca theme, if you're going to try to look for it] for me.

The bit quoted at the last translates to:

   I'm somehow happy, sort of happy
     It's the times you feel like that, that are the greatest happiness
     I'm somehow gonna go for it, it's gonna work out
     That's how it will be, so tomorrow I'll be happy again too

The song really sums up this last part -- oh, heck, all of Icebreakers -- for me.  Don't wait for perfect happiness, the song says, cos it's never going to come.  You look for the little happinesses, and then you realize that that IS perfect happiness, after all.

Over the nine months I've written Icebreakers [and yes, it DID occur to me that I could have had a baby with less time, trouble, and effort =_=;], it evolved from the foundation built by Tin -- Touya and Syaoran are forced to get along -- to the huge structure it ended up as.  I'm afraid it's less than well-built.  Looking at it, I can see badly nailed joists and floors that aren't quite flat, but it's my poor little house and I quite like it, and a number of you have been kind enough to say that you quite like it too.  And laugh at the funny bits.  People who are willing to laugh at the funny bits are important.

I didn't put in all I wanted to.  There's a file, about ten kilobytes long, with bits that didn't quite fit in, and another 20 or so lying somewhere in a notebook.  Maybe I'll take them elsewhere, as builders often do, and use those planks and nails for another story.

The primary purpose of Icebreakers was -- and is, don't get me wrong -- to make people laugh and enjoy themselves.  I'm not an 'artist' as such, I don't think.  I don't set out to write something 'deep' and 'full of meaning'.  My intention was to write a story which people would enjoy and read and [let us be honest] tell me that they enjoyed it.  I don't enjoy performing at vacuums, and to a certain extent, that's what writing is.  A performance.

I'm still not quite sure what the theme is, although I know it crept up and became part of it early on, when Eriol was still being Fandom Eriol and not Meg!Eriol [the tendency for characters, even other people's characters, to take on the writer's personality and points of view always surprises me a little. >.> Although it probably shouldn't], and Tomoyo was still being the Fandom Tomoyo that bosses Fandom Eriol around outrageously. I can see it, if I look sideways, but not clearly.  I made a list, actually, when I was thinking about what to say here, and the possible themes that I saw in Icebreakers were:

*Go on and be happy.
*I think CLAMP's idea of Ichiban Suki Na Hito [the person you like Best] is on complete crack.
* Learning to step forward, even if you like where you are, to grow.

And probably more things I'm not aware of.  Writing, again, is not a vacuum -- it takes my imagination to make them move, and the reader's imagination to make them live.  And had I started out with a moral in mind, I think the story would have suffered.  Stories should be stories, not jam around a pill.

I think the theme of Icebreakers could be summed up in 'The world is changing, I am changing'.
But then again, maybe I don't have themes, I have questions.  There were, er, two or three Discussions about the Validity of Eriol and Tomoyo Fic during the writing of Icebreakers [and the people who were involved know who they are], and the primary objection always seemed to boil down to 'Tomoyo wouldn't do that' [of course, the people who objected to ExT the most always seem to be the most ardent proponents of Tomoyo x Sakura, which *coff* has about the same chance of happening as I have of seeing a brilliant flash of light and waking up to no depression, no panic attacks, and an actual work ethic, all of which are part of why Icebreakers was so slow. >.>  Which is to say, it might happen but one might get struck by lightening, too] or 'ExT ficcers never consider Tomoyo's feelings for Sakura', among several arguments.

There isn't a lot I can answer to the 'Tomoyo wouldn't do that' or the others, but I damn well can answer to the question 'ExT ficcers never consider Tomoyo's feelings for Sakura'.  I honestly doubt I could write a serious Eriol and Tomoyo fic without bringing Sakura into it, and I have tried.  I wrote a LEMON about Eriol and Tomoyo, and still ended up bringing the subject of Sakura into it.  As furious as the Discussions made me, and as much as I was forced to bite my tongue lest I feed the trolls [and the one time I didn't, I ended up accidentally flaming someone's fic, but apparently Sakura's 'invincible spell' was looking out for me, too, and that person (after I frantically apologized before my fevered imaginings of someone telling her, her hating me for the rest of her life, and so on, came to pass) ended up being a great and much needed influence on part three of Icebreakers], they had a huge impact on Icebreakers.

In other, less flattering words, Suppi-chan comes from a long and honorable line of pigheaded cranks.  You Do Not Tell Me Something I Like Is Wrong, without backing it up and producing certificates of veracity, in triplicate, possibly in blood.  Because I will get mad, and then I will prove you wrong, if it kills me.  Also, it is a bad idea, a very, very bad idea, to imply that I do not take important character information into account.  Because pigheaded crankdom and outraged pride do not, shall we say, mix.  And boy, was I furious at the very idea that I would not take something like Tomoyo's feelings for Sakura into account.  So if you found Tomoyo a little too angstfilled in part three, you know why now.

So that was one major influence, especially in part three.  I'm not so sure of the others.  Friends who put up with me suddenly appearing on AIM, sending them 30 or 40K of Icebreakers and then staring at them [as well as one can online, of course] and waiting anxiously for them to laugh at the funny bits, or people who wrote and asked that I complete it.  [I read all my mail about my fics, by the way, but I am a very poor correspondent.  >.> Even the lovely big fat 5K+ letters, which I love very much.]  Books I read at the time.  Questions I was playing with.  It's hard to explain how all that goes somewhere and ferments for a while, and then pops up again; how vague ideas, scenes played over in your head, and then tweaked just a trifle, again and again, condense somehow into something that goes through your fingers and onto a piece of paper or onto a screen.  Maybe it's unlucky to speak of it.  I don't know.  I don't know 'how' I write, I just know that I do, and I am very grateful that I can.

And I am especially grateful, and a little surprised at times, at how many people are reading what I write. One funny thing that came up a few times was someone mentioning casually that I was becoming something of a 'name' in CCS fanfiction, and me, who associates '"names" in CCS fanfiction' with people like Tin or Shi-chan, blinking rapidly and saying 'I am?'  It was strange.  Although possibly not as strange as the times a random somebody popped up on AIM and spent ten minutes telling me how much they loved my fics, which is certainly flattering and I hope I will be forgiven my vanity if I admit I like it when it happens.  But it is still rather ... odd.

Thanks in particular go to Janice, Catsy, Thea, Tin, Shi-chan, Meimi, Jin, Ann, Erin, Sakura, Jae, Amy, Michi, Talya Firedancer, and everybody else who ever found themselves faced with a 'Meg wants to Send File: ccs_icebreakers*.txt' message on their desktop.  Thanks go in special go to Tin, who allowed me the original concept, Amy, who will steal my damn notebooks to read, Janice and Tayla, who preread part three extensively, and to Sakura and Ann, who both sent me fanart.  And to many others whose kindnesses I am forgetting.

And thank you very much to all the people who read what I write.

*bows*

Minna-san, doumo arigatou gozaimasu. Kore kara mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu!
[Thank you very much, everybody.  Let's go on together from now on, too.]